Fr Matthew Reese

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills; *
from whence cometh my help?
My help cometh even from the LORD, *
who hath made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; *
and he that keepeth thee will not sleep.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel *
shall neither slumber nor sleep.
—Psalm 121:1-4

Dear Friends in Christ,

This morning’s Psalms (121, 122, and 123) are some of the most famous and most musical.

Psalm 122, “I was glad,” is perhaps most recognizable to English-speaking audiences through the coronation anthem of C. H. H. Parry.

Psalm 121, often used in funeral liturgies, forms an important part of Herbert Howell’s Requiem (as well as the later Hymnus Paradisi).

There are countless musical settings of these two psalms, but when I come across them in my own readings of the Office, it is these two pieces—by Parry and by Howells—that play in my mind’s ear.

Aesthetically, thematically, texturally, harmonically, they could not be more different. Parry’s setting of Psalm 122 was written for the coronation of Edward VII in 1902. It is triumphant, bombastic—definitional Edwardiana.

Howells’s setting of Psalm 121 from the Requiem was written in 1932, but the whole piece remained unperformed until 1980, at the very end of his life. Though it was written before his young son’s death in 1935, it has an affective association with that deep loss—Howells reworked the score again and again, perhaps in part to process his grief. The music is haunting and spare, full of unexpected and unresolved dissonances. It sounds like a song out of time.

As I read these two psalms back-to-back, and listen to these two pieces as well, I’m struck that—in spite of all the superficial differences—they are undergirded by the same sentiment: a deep, abiding trust in God’s goodness.

The one triumphant, the other reflective and calm.

The one assured in God’s presence, the other expectant for God’s coming.

The life of faith is never lived solely in one of these camps.

Our relationship with God surely bounces between Psalm 121 and 122 and everything else, besides. And yet, in all that searching, in all that breadth of spiritual experience, we must hold fast to the unsurpassed goodness of God.

“The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; * yea, it is even he that shall keep thy soul.

The Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in, * from this time forth for evermore.”

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew