Fr Matthew Reese

My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.
—Psalm 45:1, King James Version).

Dear friends,

Extensive scriptural recall is a thing many of us associate with evangelical Protestants—folks who have grown up doing “bible drills,” and committing hundreds of verses to memory. I will confess, it is not a skill Anglicans or Catholics are particularly known for.

If I’ve ever impressed with my own scriptural memorization, I have a life in the choir stalls to thank for it. I’m not really reciting a verse I memorized out of the Book itself; I’m reciting the lyrics to a piece of music in my head.

That’s why I was delighted to come across Psalm 45 this morning. Though the Prayerbook translates this one quite elegantly, the famous musical translation comes, not from Coverdale, but from the King James.

“My heart is inditing,” is a favorite of composers, notably Purcell (1685) and Handel (1727), because it often forms a part of the coronation liturgies.

It’s not hard to see why.

This Psalm—traditionally interpreted as a wedding ode for King David—is replete with regal images. We see the trappings of royal office (“myrrh, aloes, cassia, [and] ivory palaces”), we see the mechanisms of royal hegemony (“gird thy sword upon thy thigh”), we see the aims of royal authority (“thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness”).

Whether James II and George II actually lived up to the lofty words of the Psalmist is an entirely different matter.

But I’d like to focus on a different—often overlooked—line: “ride prosperously because of truth.”

What does it mean for us to be valiant for truth, for that truth sent from above?

How do we live out the truth of Christ? How do we serve as messengers of that truth in the world?

The nature of political authority and the nature of truth are no less contested now than they were in Handel’s day, or Purcell’s, or indeed that of the Psalmist. But true authority has never really come from swords and arrows. It has always come from the cause of truth.

This Lent, may we have the courage to diligently seek it out.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew