psalm 34: remembering - tuesday 1st week lent

Our psalm today has two parts.  First there is the exhortation to remember together the good that the Lord did for us.  Last week if you can still remember, I invited you to make and fulfill your panaad to the Lord as a reflection on Psalm 50 which exhorts us to fulfill our vows to the Lord. A panaad is a vow made to God when you were in trouble.  It is not to bribe God.  It is not to pay God his salary for doing his work on us.  Rather, a panaad is simply fulfilling your word to God.  It is going back to the time when God helped you when you were in deep trouble.  It is remembering.

Today as we reflect on our responsorial psalm, psalm 34, the psalm also invites us to look into, to examine once more, to relive as it were the personal goodness of God to you, to each one of us.  Many times, we easily forget God's loving care for us when he answered our prayers.  So, in first stanza of today's responsorial psalm the psalmist tells the people of the time when, he sought the LORD, and the Lord answered him and delivered him from all his fears. Thus, he asked the people to come and Glorify the LORD with me, let us together extol his name.  Remembering in the bible is very important.  In Greek the word used is anamnesis.  Anamnesis is not just a mental exercise of remembering.  It is not just a remembering in one's head, using just one's memory.  Rather anamnesis is making present what has happened in the past.  Every prayer we make is an act of remembering what God has done in the past so that God will continue to do what he has done in the present.  That is how important remembering is in our relationship with God so much so that Jesus every time we consecrate the bread and wine in the mass will tell us to do this in remembrance of me.

Dumduma ang kaayo sang Dios sa imo.  In the bible as I often say not to remember is not simply to forget or nalipat ukon malilipaton.  In the bible to forget is to commit sin.  So, the first part of the psalm is a way of exhorting us not to forget God's personal care for each one of us.

Second.  In the third and fourth stanza of our responsorial psalm we are reminded that the righteous, those who do good, those who serve God, ang mga wala sala, these too will suffer – they will have troubles, in fact they will have many troubles says the psalm.  No reason is given kon ano ang ginhalinan sang ila pag-antus but it can be in the form of persecution or it can be because of their counter cultural beliefs – ang pagtuluohan nga la-in kag kontra sang kadam-an.

Subong halimbawa sa facebook kontrahon mo lang ang extra judicial killing, kontrahon mo lang ang death penalty ay grabe nga mulay sa imo, daw wala ka bili.  I never participate in discussions on facebook or wherever in the net.  I just watch, I read just to know what is happening.  But a lot of times we are becoming less and less civil.  Wala na respect.  There is so much anger, there is so much desire for vengeance, there is so much rudeness.  Our children are all growing up in this kind of atmosphere.  Our faith will be lived in this kind of environment.  But psalm 34 is merely reiterating the reality that the righteous will suffer, even the good will suffer, even the innocent and god-fearing people will be contaminated by such vileness. I just hope and pray that this will not last.