By the waters of
Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows
there we hung up our lyres.[1] When we read passages such as this,
we normally look at them in a historical sense.
It is something we should do, in order to get the context; nonetheless,
we need to sit back and contemplate how such passages are relevant to us. Holy Scripture is not a mere history book,
with superfluous words just to make it flow.
If we study and contemplate, every sentence in Scripture can have a meaningful
impact upon us.
This occurs after the Babylon king, Nebuchadnezzar,
besieges and overthrows Jerusalem and takes many of the Jews into
captivity. The Catholic Commentary informs
us that this is “the only psalm that unmistakably
speaks of the Babylonian Exile. It was
composed during or soon after the Captivity. Gathered together on the banks of Babylon’s
streams … the captives, with tears in their eyes, remember [Z]ion.”[2] The Catholic Church reminds us that we, the
members of the Body of Christ, are exiles in this world. Paragraph 769 of the Catechism teaches us: “‘The
Church … will receive its perfection only in the glory of heaven,’ at the time
of Christ’s glorious return. Until that
day, ‘the Church progresses on her pilgrimage amidst this world’s persecutions
and God’s consolations.’ Here below she knows that she is in exile
(emphasis added) far from the Lord, and longs for the full coming of the
Kingdom, when she will ‘be united in glory with her king.’ The Church, and through her the world, will
not be perfected in glory without great trials. Only then will ‘all the just from the time of
Adam, from Abel, the just one, to the last of the elect,’ … be gathered
together in the universal Church in the Father’s presence.”[3] In Paragraph 1081, we find: “The divine
blessings were made manifest in astonishing and saving events: the birth of
Isaac, the escape from Egypt (Passover and Exodus), the gift of the promised
land, the election of David, the presence of God in the Temple, the purifying exile (emphasis added),
and return of a ‘small remnant.’ The
Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, interwoven in the liturgy of the Chosen
People, recall these divine blessings and at the same time respond to them with
blessings of praise and thanksgiving.”[4] “Purifying” includes sacrifice and
suffering. Many of us desire to enjoy
this life, as if there is nothing else.
For many, we are not in exile; we’re just living life. We need to be availing ourselves to
purification, desiring our real country.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux[5] tells
us: “[The Bride of Christ], she is black but beautiful, O daughters of
Jerusalem, for even if the labor and pain of her long exile may have discolored
her, yet heaven’s beauty has adorned her.”[6] Thus, “by the waters of Babylon,” there we
sit down and weep.
St. Alphonsus de Liguori explains: “This
psalm shows us the Jews, who, captives at Babylon, bewail their miseries and
sigh for their return to Jerusalem. It
is most suitable to the Christian soul that mourns in this exile here below and
desires to go to its heavenly country.”[7] This starkly contrasts to the mindset of
modernity. Many Christians today are
mostly concerned about evading hell, not about desiring their heavenly country
of which they are citizens. They desire
to enjoy their lives here on earth, living in comfort and pleasure, and then “go
to heaven” when they die. They do not
mourn the fact that they are exiled from their country.
St. Robert Bellarmine, commenting
upon this passage, says: “In a spiritual sense, such is the language of God’s
elect, who are held here below in captivity, are inwardly detached from the
world, and know themselves to be citizens of the Jerusalem above, for such holy
exiles sit on the banks of the rivers, instead of being hurried away by their
waters, and rolled along to the sea.”[8] He goes on to explain: “The rivers of Babylon
mean the temporal things of this world; and, when one gets attached to them by
his desires, such as the avaricious, the ambitious, the voluptuary, they are
carried away by the rapids and hurled headlong into the sea, into the great
abyss, to be punished there for eternity…
[F]ellow citizens with the saints sit on the banks of the rivers, on a
very low spot; they seek not an elevated one; they have no desire for place or
power; they pride themselves not on their wisdom; and should they chance to be
raised to rule over a Babylon, as was the case with David, and many Christian
kings, however high their position may be, their ideas do not go up with it,
nor do they look upon their elevation as an honor, but as a burden, under which
to groan; and, instead of glorying in it, as far as they are personally
concerned, they will seek to sit in the lowest place, if they have the true
spirit of him ‘who was meek and humble of heart’… [T]hey will not only seat themselves lowly down,
but they will lament and deplore, not the loss of the things of this world, but
their own captivity, when they bring their sweetest country to their
recollection, that of Mount Zion. They
who forget it fraternize with the children of Babylon; but they who long for
it, and whose longings cause them to remember their country, however prosperous
they may be, they don’t feel satisfied, but still sigh for their country… [T]he severest test we can apply to
ourselves, as to whether we belong to Babylon or to Jerusalem, is to reflect on
what pleases us or what delights us, for ‘where our treasure is, there our
heart will be also’.”[9]
This coincides with what St.
Augustine teaches: “Observe ‘the waters of Babylon.’ ‘The waters of Babylon’ are all things which
here are loved and pass away. One
man, for example, loves to practice husbandry, to grow rich thereby, to employ
his mind therein, thence to gain pleasure: Let him
observe the issue and see that what he has loved is not a foundation of
Jerusalem but a stream of Babylon…
[O]ther citizens of the holy Jerusalem, understanding their captivity,
mark how the natural wishes and the various lusts of men hurry and drag them
hither and thither, and drive them into the sea… Humbling ourselves then in our captivity, let
us ‘sit by the waters of Babylon,’ let us not dare to plunge ourselves in those
streams, nor to be proud and lifted up in the evil and sadness of our
captivity, but let us sit, and so weep… For
many weep with the weeping of Babylon, because they rejoice also with the joy
of Babylon. When men rejoice at gains
and weep at losses, both are of Babylon. [You should] weep, but in the remembrance of
Sion. If you weep in the remembrance of
Sion, you should weep even when it is well with you in Babylon.…”[10]
St. Methodius advises us: “Come, let
us take in our hands and examine this psalm, which the pure and stainless souls
sing to God, saying: ‘By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion. We hanged our
harps upon the willows in the midst thereof,’ clearly giving the name of harps
to their bodies which they hung upon the branches of chastity, fastening them
to the wood that they might not be snatched away and dragged along again by the
stream of incontinence. For Babylon--which
is interpreted ‘disturbance’ or ‘confusion--signifies this life around which
the water flows, while we sit in the midst of which the water flows round us,
as long as we are in the world, the rivers of evil always beating upon us. Wherefore, also, we are always fearful, and we
groan and cry with weeping to God that our harps may not be snatched off by the
waves of pleasure and slip down from the tree of chastity.”[11]
The saint goes on to explain: “If,
then, the rivers of Babylon are the streams of voluptuousness, as wise men say,
which confuse and disturb the soul, then the willows must be chastity, to which
we may suspend and draw up the organs of lust which overbalance and weigh down
the mind, so that they may not be borne down by the torrents of incontinence
and be drawn like worms to impurity and corruption. For God has bestowed upon us virginity as a
most useful and a serviceable help towards incorruption, sending it as an ally
to those who are contending for and longing after Zion, as the psalm shows,
which is resplendent charity and the commandment respecting it, for Zion is
interpreted ‘the commandment of the watchtower’.”[12]
From St. Ambrose, we hear: “…Of
those who … will be entangled in the errors of the world, you hear [the
psalmist] saying: ‘By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we
remembered Zion.’ He sets forth the
wailings of those who have fallen and shows that they who are living in this
condition of passing time and changing circumstances ought to repent, after the
example of those who, as a reward for sin, had been led into miserable captivity.[13]
St. Chrysostom encourages us: “The
people which were in Babylon say this, ‘Being there, I will remember you;’ therefore,
let us also, as being in Babylon, [do the same]. For although we are not sitting among warlike
foes, yet we are among enemies… Let us
fear God, beloved, let us fear [Him]: even should we be in captivity, we are
more glorious than all men. Let the fear
of God be present with us, and nothing will be grievous, even though you speak
of poverty or of disease or of captivity or of slavery or of any other grievous
thing. Nay, even these very things will
themselves work together for us the other way.”[14]
During every Mass, we get a glimpse
of our country. Our Lord is physically
present with us in the Tabernacle. He
teaches us, and shows his love for us on the altar, in the Eucharist. Then he gives himself to us—body, blood,
soul, and divinity—in the consecrated bread.
This glimpse, this taste, of our “country” should cause us to yearn for
what we are missing, sitting down beside “the waters of Babylon,” weeping as a
result of the sin that remains in us, because God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved
us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with
Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us
sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he
might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ
Jesus. For by grace you have been saved
through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God— not
because of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand, that we should walk in them.[15] We weep because we do not see the fulfillment
yet. We weep and “cling to the willows”
of chastity, fearing the pleasantries and the comforts of the world will sweep
us away. We weep, also, because of the anguish
God endures, resulting from our sins, the God who loved us so much that he sent
his Son to become one of us, to suffer, and to die for us, the Creator becoming
one of the creatures. For
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him
should not perish but have eternal life.
For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that
the world might be saved through him. He
who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned
already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
If we believe in the Son, then we
believe he is God. Since he is God, he
must be obeyed. Since he is God, it is
his will which should be done. Sitting
beside the “waters of Babylon,” we bewail the times we desire our will to be
done, the times we strive to do our will, not thinking of God’s will. We lament because of the next sentence: And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men
loved darkness rather than light (emphasis added), because their deeds were evil.[16] The darkness is a type of Babylon. In Lumen Gentium 16, referencing Romans 1:21,
25, the Church teaches us: “But often men, deceived by
the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth
of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator.”[17] We lament the myriad of times that we have
allowed the Evil One to deceive us, becoming vain in our reasonings, exchanging
the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator, in
essence [loving] darkness rather than
light, notwithstanding the suffering our God endured for our sakes.
By
the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. Now, this is not something that we can
just conjure up within ourselves.
Realizing our fragility, we must implore the Lord to make us desire our
heavenly country. This world is the only
“country” we know; however, we are, through Baptism, citizens of the new
Jerusalem, and we need God to make us desire it, to “see” it, fearing that
otherwise we will be swept away by the “waters of Babylon.” If we meditate upon the Mass, on what is
going, God will begin to show us glimpses of our “country.” We must desire it, pray, and put some work
into it, through contemplation. Mass is
so much more than just “going to church.”
Not only do we get a glimpse of our country, it is a transforming
experience, wherein God is [creating us]
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should
walk in them. He is transforming us
into the likeness of his Son. The more
we are transformed, the more we will sit by “the waters of Babylon,” weeping
when we remember Zion.
[1]
Catholic Biblical Association (Great Britain), The Holy Bible:
Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, (New York: National
Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, 1994), Ps 137:1–2.
[2] T.
E. Bird, A Catholic Commentary on Holy
Scripture, 1953, 471.
[3]
Catholic Church, Catechism of the
Catholic Church, 2nd Ed., (Washington, DC: United States
Catholic Conference, 2000), 202.
[4] Ibid.,
281.
[5] St. Bernard of Clairvaux,
In Cant. Sermo 27:14: PL 183:920D.
[6]
Catholic Church, Catechism of the
Catholic Church, 2nd Ed., (Washington, DC: United States
Catholic Conference, 2000), 203.
[7]
Alphonsus de Liguori, The Divine Office:
Explanation of the Psalms and Canticles, ed. Eugene Grimm, The
Complete Works of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Third Edition., (New York;
Cincinnati; Chicago; London; Dublin: Benziger Brothers; R. Washbourne; M. H.
Gill & Son, 1889), 487.
[8] St Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of
Psalms (Illustrated) (p. 638). Aeterna Press. Kindle Edition
[9] Ibid., (p. 638-639).
[10]
Augustine of Hippo, Saint Augustin:
Expositions on the Book of Psalms, 1888, 8, 630.
[11]
Methodius of Olympus, Fathers of the
Third Century: Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius the Great, Julius Africanus,
Anatolius and Minor Writers, Methodius, Arnobius, 1886, 6, 323–324.
[12] Ibid.,
324.
[13]
Ambrose of Milan, St. Ambrose: Select
Works and Letters, 1896, 10, 358.
[14]
John Chrysostom, Saint Chrysostom:
Homilies on the Gospel of St. John and Epistle to the Hebrews, 1889, 14,
485.
[15]
Catholic Biblical Association (Great Britain), The Holy Bible:
Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, (New York: National
Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, 1994), Eph 2:4–10.
[16] Ibid.,
Jn 3:16–19.
[17]
Catholic Church, Vatican II Documents,
2011.
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