Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends

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Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends

Psalm 42 with Augustine – Longing for God As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God (vv. 1–2). Who says this? It is ourselves, if we are willing! And why ask who it is, when it is in your power to be the one you are asking about? Such “longing” is not found in all who enter the Church: let all who have “tasted” the sweetness “of the LORD” (Ps 34:8) and who relish Christ, say: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God . My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” (v. 3). My tears, he says, have not been bitterness, but my food. Those very tears were sweet to me: being thirsty for that fountain; since I was not yet able to drink from it, I have eagerly made my tears my food. For he did not say, “my tears became my drink,” so he would not seem to have longed for them as for streams of water, but still retaining that thirst by which I am pulled towards the streams, my tears became my food, while I am not yet there. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me (vv. 5, 11). And, as it seems to answer, “Should I not be disturbed, since I am surrounded by great evil? Should I not be disturbed, since I long for what is good, thirsting and laboring for it?” What should I say, but hope in God, for I will yet praise him . This is the answer to a disturbed soul, and would gladly account for its disturbance from the evils that abound. Meanwhile dwell in hope, for “hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (Rom 8:24–25).