Monday, January 23, 2012

For our Marchers for Life

Psalm 83 from today's Morning Prayer  is one of the "gradual" psalms, or  "psalms of ascent", sung by the Jews as they made the ascent up from the lower lands and mounted the hills leading to Jerusalem. Some of the other gradual psalms are in the complementary psalter for Daytime Prayer. They are the ones you use if you want to say more than one daytime hour. What's nice about these psalms is that they are short and easily memorized. Once learned by heart, you can pray them while out in your car on errands during the day. That's one way to do a bit of daytime prayer, even if you don't have a book or device with your for the reading or ending prayer.

But back to 83. These lines should be dedicated to our tireless marchers who make a yearly pilgrimage, often in inclement weather, to make reparation for the sin of abortion, and to keep ever before the minds of our leaders that the pro-life movement will never go away:
They are happy,  whose strength is in you, in whose hearts are the roads to Zion.
As they go through the bitter valley, they make it a place of springs,
the autumn rain covers it with blessings.
They walk with ever growing strength,
they will see the God of gods in Zion...
...the Lord will not refuse any good to those who walk without blame.