Saturday of the Thirty-FirstWeek in Ordinary Time
The smile and the praise
I will extol you, my God and king; I will bless your name forever. Every day I will bless you … Great is the Lord and worthy of high praise … One generation praises your deeds to the next and proclaims your mighty works …They publish the renown of your abounding goodness and joyfully sing of your justice. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love. The Lord is good to all, compassionate to every creature. All your works give you thanks, O Lord and your faithful bless you …Your reign is a reign for all ages, your dominion for all generations …The Lord supports all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look hopefully to you; you give them their food in due season … You, Lord , are near to all who call upon you, to all who call upon you in truth …, Lord , watch over all who love you … My mouth will speak your praises, Lord ; all flesh will bless your holy name forever. Psa 145
This psalm is a wonderful hymn of praise and thanksgiving: David extols the Lord for his glory and blesses him for his goodness. Many are the psalms inspired by the momentum of love for God, but this of today is a summary of all the others because it shows us the myriad of reasons why any man could make as its own the words of David. Each of us, in fact, as this great king of Israel, can recognize the tangible signs in his life of the goodness and of the mercy of the Lord: it is enough just to look back over the past years to recall the escaped dangers, the overcome difficulties, the lenited sorrows, as well as the moments of joy and glory. Is it not like a royal house the house which seeks the blessing of the Lord, requests his aid and, once received it, thanks him from the deep of the heart? Are not moments of glory those when the families get together and the elderly people see the growing together of the sons of their sons? So we also do not hesitate to raise prayers of praise and thanksgiving, seeking always new reasons for it in the daily occurrences, from the providence which reaches us up to the beautiful changing of the seasons. We will discover, thus, that the more we praise and thank the Lord the more reasons we have to do it. “All your works give you thanks, o Lord, and your faithful bless you”. The mouth of those who bless you is always open to smile.