Today we will sing a very common Psalm in the church’s life, one that should shake off the complacency of our hearts in this digital age. Pope Leo XIV, in his first and recent letter to people of good will, warns us from building a modern “Tower of Babel,” a civilization built on pride, algorithmic efficiency, and the ambition to reach heaven without God. Pope Leo invites us to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, a civilization that “rediscovers a common language — not one of uniformity, but one of communion, namely the harmony that arises when all persons assume their own role and recognize that their strength comes from the Lord” (Magnifica Humanitas 8). At the heart of any true Christian community is Jesus, and the central activity is worship. Today’s Psalm is a fitting reminder of that call to worship and heed the warning to harden one’s heart to God. We sing with the psalmist, If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

Each monastery, religious community, and group consisting of priests, deacons, and laypeople breaks the silence of the night by reciting this common stanza. We sing these words while we are waiting for dawn, or when morning arrives, and the vivid expressions of this psalm call us to worship God, the God who will speak to our hearts.  

Psalm 95 is used in a large procession to God’s temple; the opening stanzas rest on the call to praise and the grounds for praising; the psalm makes our purpose clear: to praise and love God.

We hear the insistent call to praise: come, ring out, hail, give thanks. We sing:

Come, let us ring out our joy to the LORD; 

hail the rock who saves us. 

Let us come into his presence, giving thanks; 

let us hail him with a song of praise.

We then express the reason for our praise. God is powerful and great; no other god is greater than Yahweh. We praise God who created all that we see and do not see as we perceive the cosmic significance of our praise in the mountains, in the sea, and on the dry land; all of it was made in the hands of Yahweh, and these same hands guide us as a compassionate shepherd since we are God’s beloved possession. We sing:

A mighty God is the LORD,

a great king above all gods. 

In his hand are the depths of the earth; 

the heights of the mountains are his.

To him belongs the sea, for he made it, 

and the dry land that he shaped by his hand.

O come; let us bow and bend low. 

Let us kneel before the LORD who made us, 

for he is our God, and we the people, 

the people of his pasture, the flock of his hand.

Since we know that we belong to God, we should not become satisfied. We are urged to worship, yet at the same time warned; when we go into the temple for liturgical worship, we are to recall God’s acts of salvation and also be warned not to commit the mistake our ancestors made.

It is easy to show up, sit in the pews on Sunday, go through the motions of ritual, and let our hearts harden to liturgy. Why does that matter? Once our hearts harden in liturgy, we do not recognize the God-centered needs of those around us! The psalmist reminds us of our ancestors at Meribah and Massah, who doubted God’s care even after witnessing His miracles.

God is calling us to move away from complacency! He encourages us to listen, to place our faith in the plan which He has prepared for us, and to be ready to act upon it. We sing:

O that today you would listen to his voice! 

“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, 

as on that day at Massah in the desert

when your forebears put me to the test; 

when they tried me, though they saw my work.

Making Sense of Today’s Psalm

The relevance of this psalm in our lives is best expressed through Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul tells us: “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Our capacity to love another with all our hearts springs from our worshipping heart. Is my heart formed to love because it has recognized its source, its rootedness in God? One whose heart has been formed by its creator recognizes that it “does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”

Be more loving this week! That starts with true worship before God. Listen carefully to God’s voice. He wants to speak words of love, encouragement, and challenge to us today! If we fail to do so, we build our own Babel rather than rebuild the walls of a city centered on Love.

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