Our help is in the name of the Lord.
July 17, 2023 - Monday, 15th Week in Ordinary Time
Psalm 124:1b-3, 4-6, 7-8
Psalm 124 belongs to the fifteen Psalms of Pilgrimis (120-134) and its main theme is help. In Psalm 121, the psalmist asks this question: “From where does my help come?” (Ps 121:1). His help comes from the Lord (Ps 121:2). The same answer is given by all the people of God: “Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Ps 124:8).
Many of us have heard the term “final solution”. Encyclopaedia Britannica defines it as “the culmination of a state-sponsored campaign against Jewish citizens in German territory that began shortly after Adolf Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933”. That “final solution” was “implemented from 1941 to 1945 and resulted in the systematic murder of 6 million Jews across 21 countries”. The psalmist declares that “had not the Lord been with us”, the people “would swallow us alive” (Ps 124:2-3). That was the aim of the “final solution”. But, it failed.
Three years later on May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was born and the Jewish people have their home again. The event took place 1878 years after the destruction of the temple by the Romans in 70 AD. And as the historical records tell us at 4 pm an elderly man was singing the national anthem of Israel, the song of hope: “Our hope is not yet lost, it is two thousand years old, to be a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem”. This song was composed in 1886. How were the Jewish people able to sustain their hope that one day they would see each other in Jerusalem? The answer is: Faith and tradition.
Wherever the Jewish people lived during those nearly two thousand years they kept reading their Scriptures and celebrated their religious holidays. They never forget God’s promise given to Abraham: “To your offspring I will give this land” (Gen 12:7). They could not forget that all the patriarchs and the prophets were buried there. In the Declaration of Independence, we read: “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books”.
When the psalmist wrote that the Lord helped them to flee from the fowlers' snare (see Ps 124:7-8), he could not realise how applicable his poem would be in the history of his people. But, it is also applicable in the history of all those who are persecuted, who lost their nationhood, a place to live due to the abusive power of governments and influential groups of people. In the face of such powerful force, together with the psalmist we declare that “Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Ps 124:8). He will never let our enemies triumph over us.