We were made out of love. We were made to worship. The antiphon in the Responsorial Psalm is a compelling invitation to this truth! The psalmist sings, If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

Every monastery, religious house, community of priests, deacons, and lay people break the silence of night as they utter this common strophe. This phrase is commonly experienced in the daily recitation of Psalm 95.

Psalm 95 is a psalm used for a great procession to God’s temple. The opening stanzas build on the invitation to praise and our reason to praise. The psalm reveals our purpose: to praise and love God.

We hear the insistent call to praise: come, sing, shout, cry out, and greet God. We sing:

Come, let us sing to the Lord
  and shout with joy to the Rock who saves us.
Let us approach him with praise and thanksgiving
  and sing joyful songs to the Lord.

We then sing the reason for our praise. God is mighty and great. There is no other god greater than Yahweh. One senses the cosmic dimension of our praise from the mountains, the sea, and dry land. All of it was formed in the hands of Yahweh. These same hands guide us as a loving shepherd for we are God’s loving possession. We sing:

The Lord is God, the mighty God,
  the great king over all the gods.
He holds in his hands the depths of the earth
  and the highest mountains as well.
He made the sea; it belongs to him,
  the dry land, too, for it was formed by his hand.

Come, then, let us bow down and worship,
  bending the knee before the Lord, our maker.
For he is our God and we are his people,
  the flock he shepherds.

Recognizing that we belong to God, we are reminded not to be complacent. As we enter the temple for liturgical worship, we are mindful of God’s saving deeds and warned not to repeat the mistake of our ancestors.

God calls us out of complacency! God invites us to listen, to believe in the plan God has prepared for us and ready to act on it. We sing:

Today, listen to the voice of the Lord:
Do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did
  in the wilderness,
when at Meriba and Massah
  they challenged me and provoked me,
Although they had seen all of my works.

Making Sense of Today’s Psalm

In the First Reading, the third-century sage struggled with the emptiness of all our human efforts. Without a foresight on life after death, the sage concludes that death destroys pleasure, wealth, and learning. The sage exhorts us to see the moment in front of us as a gift from God.

In the Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the rich man who cared for his treasures. The rich man desired to rest, eat, drink, be merry. He allowed his wealth to harden his heart and not be receptive to Qoheleth’s exhortation to remember one thing in life. Qoheleth reminds us,

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

Paul reminds us in his letter to the Colossians that our hearts must be set on Christ. We must

put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.

In another place, Paul addresses the heart. In his joy of service to the Corinthians he says,

Open your hearts to us; we have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one (2 Corinthians 7:2).

The following verse speaks of such intimacy with the people of Corinth, Paul wants these people to live and die in his heart. He knows this to the depth that even in his affliction, he is overjoyed. The joy of loving Christ was so precise that suffering was secondary! Paul’s heart was open to God. Paul’s heart was made for worship.

Where does our heart rest? In the fleeting things of this world, in wealth, or in the gentle hands of our Creator? Let us hear that loving voice who always calls us into his merciful presence. We were made for love, we were made for worship. And if this is true, worship leads us to service, especially service to the poor.

Below is a video of the monks of Mount Angel chanting Psalm 95. It was recorded during my early years on the hilltop. Watching it brings back many happy memories of my time there.