“When I called, the God of my righteousness heard me; in my affliction you gave me glad tidings; have compassion on me and hear my prayer.”

“A Psalm of David at the End of the Songs of Songs”

“In the end”: He speaks of the end of the spiritual struggle; he speaks of the resurrection which is the manifestation of the world to come and the end of the present. As St. Gregory of Nyssa says, this psalm is a suitable prayer for every soul that enters into a struggle, because it confirms the expected and hoped-for victory and thus strengthens those who struggle.

It is believed that David composed it as a hymn of victory and thanksgiving for the great things God had done for him in relation to Abishalom (Theodoretius). It is a beautiful psalm for the heart of every Christian who has begun a spiritual struggle and hopes to be freed from his passions and difficulties. It is a psalm that gives impetus, energy and a start.

“Since the desired end of every jihad is victory, the mujahidin look forward to it in order to enter the field with courage. The word ‘in the end’ immediately motivates the mujahidin to live the virtues. As they look to the end, that is, victory and crowns, the fatigue of their jihad becomes easy…”

“The Secret of Prayer and Supplication – Spiritual Warfare – Me and God”

(1) When I called, the God of my righteousness answered me.

To get to the bottom of this joyful cry, it is perhaps easiest to begin by explaining its end, from the words of John Chrysostom, who has poured his precious golden pearls down through the ages. He explains the word “God of my righteousness” and confirms that David here does not boast of his own righteousness, like the Pharisee, for example! Here, on the contrary, David, with a contrite heart, returns the credit for his righteousness to the Lord, “For all that we do, we are unprofitable servants,” and “without Him we can do nothing,” and every human achievement is a gift and a divine gift.

This phrase is like, for example, a great musician who, when praised, says, “So-and-so is my teacher,” attributing the credit for his mastery to his teacher. Thus, David knows deep down that the reason for his happiness and righteous life is the result of God’s compassion and the fruit of his relationship with God and life close to Him. Feeling a righteous and happy life is not wrong, but attributing it to oneself is Phariseeism. Joy in our Christian life is a real thing. The Christian is grateful deeply and deeply, because he has come to know God, and God knows him, for He is the God of his righteous life, that is, the God of his righteousness.

On the other hand, Chrysostom stops at these words and confirms that in order for a person to be answered when he calls upon God in prayer, he must not only “come forward,” but come and “offer”; what does he offer? His righteous life! Prayer is not intellectual contemplation and is far from being mere personal feelings. It is a dialogue with a person and not the directing of poems and hymns to an idea!

This is why the prayer pause, as Al-Salami calls it, is a “court” and a trial. It is a confrontation, and in this confrontation I must turn to Him and “He” must turn to me. When God is absent from the Christian’s prayer, he repeats his prayer with David: “How long, O Lord, will You forget me? Until the end? How long will You turn Your face away from me…”

Prayer is not a message to God, but a conversation with Him. This requires not only my presence, but His presence and approval as well. If we talk to someone who turns his back on us, the conversation does not continue, and the conversation remains just a bunch of words or chatter.

The Christian faces God in prayer, so we must “not prolong vain talk in prayer.” The Christian does not repeat mere phrases in prayer, but rather presents his life before God. So we are not talking about services and prayers, but about the life of prayer. Prayers and liturgical services are expressions of that life. What is required is that the whole life become prayer, and that we repeat with the praying Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Constant prayer is not only in the temple and not only in front of the icon, the latter are the prayers of those who are still standing on the first steps. He who has truly entered into prayer is he whose life Christ has entered and become its center. The Lord does not enter into a life in which He has no place or into temples in which there are other gods.

We always repeat in our prayers and supplications – and often forget the depth of the words, so that they become boring repetitions – the phrase: “And all our life is for Christ God.” Giving our life to God does not mean cutting ourselves off from our life, but rather living and working for God, and walking with our world and with our brothers towards God. Everyone works and labors, gives birth and is born, but the question is: why and for whom? Life is for the Lord. The life of righteousness is not only the profession of monks, but the vocation of every Christian, each from his place. Life for Christ does not mean a contemplative life and distancing oneself from the world. Life for Christ means that He is the goal of our existence, through Him we live and toward Him we move. “Not for us, Lord, not for us, but for You.” This is how we respond to all requests: “For You, Lord.” This is the righteous life whose goal and end is “He.” This is how life becomes bliss, when it takes on meaning, a true and correct meaning. On the contrary, life remains an anxious existence and an insatiable demand if it does not turn into enmities and a race for the pleasures and positions of this world, seeking to satisfy our self, which will never be truly satisfied if it does not encounter Christ.

God does not ask us to prolong our conversation with Him, but rather our lives. He does not ask us for a hand, a sense, a limb, or a part of our lives, but rather He says: “My son, give me your heart.” When we give the heart to God alone, then He roams within it and we hear the sound of His footsteps, and the heart becomes not muscles but a world that carries all people, loves all people, and hates no one. In the midst of injustice and hardship, the heart knows how to pray, how to move, and how to strive. This is the secret of God’s response, the secret of prayer.

The Lord is quick to answer such a heart. Isaiah the prophet says: “Call, and God will hear you; when you call, he will answer you. Behold, I am present.” (2)God is truly present and looks at us, when we come without a mirror; when we come to Him and do not hide within us His enemies, and He is the examiner of hearts and kidneys… The mirror in prayer is its poison. It is prayer with the lips. To such praying people the Lord’s rebuke applies: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” Who can face the Lord with a crooked heart?

The mirror creeps in among people. Unfortunately, it often takes the form of politeness, courtesies and etiquette, but before God, the stand is a frank trial, “for actions are revealed and thoughts are examined.” We cannot please God “with words,” but with life. No matter how much we cry out, He will not answer us if we do not come to Him with a righteous life.

§ In sadness you gave me relief

This is the secret of the cross. “Every man has his own cross” is a well-known saying, but we may misunderstand it when we give it a pessimistic meaning. The cross is a sign of victory and sacrifice, not a sign of dark fate; Christ changed its meaning.

Here, David expresses in his prayer the secret of pain, calamities and hardships in the life of the Christian. The Christian does not seek to escape from facing life, nor does he pray for God to spare him hardships, for God tests those he loves. Monks and saints consider the periods in which they do not experience hardships as periods of “divine abandonment.” When difficulties intensify, the Christian raises a cry: “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” Our world is a world mixed with hardships, hardships, diseases and sorrows… and the Christian cannot seek to escape. In the midst of these hardships comes the Lord. In other words, we cry out to the standing “present” Lord, and these hardships are transformed from a black fate into a magnificent cross on which we raise ourselves with seriousness, fatigue, sacrifice, redemption and love for others. Thus, hardships bring relief instead of sadness, joy instead of depression, and happiness instead of pessimism, and joy instead of pessimism.

In sorrow you brought me relief: The Lord did not lift David’s distress here, but made him strong-hearted, resolute, faithful, and faced the world with joy. The Lord, as Isaac the Syrian says, does not test anyone beyond his capacity, and with every hardship he allows, he sends a way out. We know the story of the night that Saint Anthony the Great spent fighting and being tested by demons, when he sighed in the morning when they left him and raised his sigh to God: Where were you all that night? God answered him: I watch and prepare your victories near you. God is like a mother who leaves her child alone for the first steps, but is above him and behind him, not letting him fall.

The story of that Christian, who was always complaining to the Lord: My cross is big, is also well known. When God showed him all the crosses of the world, he wandered among them until he liked one of them, a small and beautiful cross, and when he chose it, it became his own personal cross. Here, David thanks the Lord not because He lifted his hardships, but because when He allowed them, He helped him to find them not as “troubles” but as “relief.”

§ Have mercy on me and hear my prayer

Here, as Saint Cyril says, the prophet David changed the tense of the verb. That is, instead of saying “You had compassion on me and heard my prayer” once, he says this as always, asking God to remain close to him in the hardships that surround him, and to listen to his supplications, which are his relief and strength.

Have mercy, yes. Life, even if pure, does not buy God’s response. Response is an act of God’s love, not “in exchange for our struggle.” Our struggle and our righteous life are the taut sail that allows the breaths of the Spirit to blow to steer the ship of life. The wind blowing on a folded sail is of no use, and a taut sail without wind leaves the ship tossing and turning in the ocean. Our righteous life is only “evidence” of our sincere request to God, and then everything we achieve is from God and for God alone.

“O children of men, how long will you be heavy-hearted?

Why do you love falsehood and seek lies?“

With these fervent words, the Prophet David stirs up our souls! These are words that perfectly address the reality of man, who finds himself one day loving falsehood and falling, and one day loving truth and rising. What is this human secret? There are two inclinations, the first toward falsehood and the second toward truth? Sometimes man’s heart is heavy and he seeks out lies, and sometimes a strange power stirs his heart “and he slaughters the sacrifice of truth”!

 There are three worlds: God, man, and the material world. God is a spirit, abstracted from matter, the material world is abstracted from what is spiritual, and man is a boundary being who shares both worlds. Man, as a material creation, can commune with the Creator and communicate with God, and this is his true uniqueness from all other elements of the universe and the material world. In fact, man is in constant dialogue with these two sides: God and the material world; and each side draws him to itself. Man is a being drawn by desires, sometimes his desires draw him to God and sometimes to the world. Man cannot remain on the borders. His life is characterized by dynamism. Man is a being of desires. Desire is always the opposite of static. Desire pulls outside the current reality; it is gravity. Therefore, man is changeable and not static, and his positions are not always fixed.

 Man, then, carries within his nature the ability to communicate with God as well as with the material elements of the world. When he leans toward the first extreme, he flies in divine love, becoming like God by grace and not by nature; when he leans toward the second extreme, he loses his spirituality and becomes closer to matter, lifeless, thus by condition and not by nature. Man can become spiritual or material to the extent that he leans toward God or matter; he can by nature go in one of the two directions.

This transformation towards the spirit or towards matter is not natural, nor spontaneous, nor automatic, nor by chance! Man is capable of what is spiritual as he is capable of what is material. This is in human nature, yes. But to turn to what is spiritual and seek it or to what is material and desire it and attract it, this is in his will. Man’s freedom plays the fundamental role in choosing one of the two directions and accepting the attraction of one of the two sides, the spiritual or the material.

 Yes, the world has an inherent attraction in the needs of life and human nature, and this is a fact that God created in it so that it tends to use the world and care for it; and this is the motive for all development, improvement, responsibility, and the desire to respect material things and qualify them for better uses and with better returns. But the issue becomes a problem when man tends with his desires towards worldly things to the point that he surrenders to them and they become a subject of worship, hope, and love, and not just a valuable tool for life. Then the human dimensions decline to the limits of the value of worldly matters, and this is at the expense of the loftiness of the spiritual calling that man is expected to adhere to. Every “servant” use of the world is right, and raises the spiritual value of man. But any “devotional-romantic” use lowers man, and kills his spiritual elevation, and he declines.

 God is very attractive to man. In the language of ascetics, the righteous fly with divine love. David forgot to eat his bread when he meditated on God. There are many cases in which, when necessary, people sacrificed everything material for the sake of what is spiritual. The martyr is the absolute image of the victory of the choice of the spirit over the choice of matter in man, and for this reason the martyr has a special dignity. We must not forget that these cases of martyrdom are colorful and varied, and as the Apostle Paul said, “For your sake we are killed all day long,” it is the death of the testimony of life. The death that the Bible demands of us as the price for living: “He who kills his life for my sake will find it.” This movement from the love of material things to the love of the divine is what Paul calls the removal of the old man (his death) and the putting on of the new man (his resurrection).

There is an inner human love that draws man’s attention to all that is good, divine, and sublime. This is the arena of encounter and the space of communication between God and man. These encounters draw man from his present state to “what is more” in the relationship with God. This spiritual attraction makes man’s life in constant spiritual movement as well. Therefore, man always appears driven by these motives toward God. The attraction of God to man is His beauty and goodness. The divine image responds to man’s true inner love. The attraction of the world to man is the need for him. The world provides man with the means of life.

 The continuity of life inevitably compels man to turn to the world, but sometimes after he has used it he desires it. God also moves in his goodness towards man through divine revelation and constant care, for the righteous and the wicked; and this is what generates in man, when he is aware of it, a feeling of brokenness and gratitude to God who remembers him even when he forgets him. The Holy Spirit arouses in us the desire for the divine and moves the dormant image in us and the postponed or frozen desire towards seeking heavenly things. The Spirit arouses what draws our attention to that world that we forget or ignore; perhaps we will return and “repent” to God. And if this happens and the desire moves in us towards God, the Spirit moves it and guides it with grace. But all this without usurping man’s freedom. The Spirit calls, and if we respond, He helps. But the Spirit does not force. Because the condition of love is first and foremost freedom! And love by force is submission. There is no love without freedom of choice.

Human thirst, for God or for matter, is in human nature, but turning to one side or the other is a human choice.

Thus, our commitment to fasting and its practice as an exercise develops in us turning to God and detachment from the world’s desires; fasting makes us choose divine love for our longings. Fasting accepts that we use the world, but it preserves the heart for God. The world is not its desires. While we fast, we remain in the world, but our desires are drawn to God. Through fasting, we try – while living in the world – to unite with God.

Fasting tames what is in us and what we have of the world. Fasting ignites within us the divine love, about which Saint Ignatius the God-bearer wrote: “I write to you while I am still alive that I desire death, that my passion has been crucified and that there is no longer in me the love of material things, but living, flowing water that says, ‘Come to the Father.’” (3).

This flowing spiritual water, enlivened by the Spirit, draws us to the Father and to our neighbor as well, and creates in us the dynamism of a good life. Amen.

Footnote related to the title: This psalm is recited at the Great Compline.

(2) Isaiah 58:9.

(3) “The Epistle to the Romans,” 3, 7.