True and Strong, Finding Rescue in Him

"May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." (Col. 1:11-14)

The other day I got a message from someone who signed himself in Latin, after the manner of St. Augustine, as the "restless heart". Whether inadvertently or through auto-correct his message put me off as it came out the "iniquitous heart". Fortunately I didn't cancel immediately and received his nice message. In a sense, even the word "restless" correctly spelled is ambiguous as we are restless only until we rest in the Lord. You could say that everything depends upon our ultimate referent, namely Christ. Restless or in danger of being lost, that is where we are without the Lord Jesus.

One of the odd-ball mantras repeated by some of the more relevant of my priest contemporaries was a lament against psalm praying, declaring David's, Israel's and the Church's song prayer as all of a sudden irrelevant and burdensome. These days I find those psalms which lament the oppression by wicked rulers to be strikingly to the point. My heart is restless, waiting to pass beyond the iniquitous, the usurpers of power, and to pass into the hands and under the dominion of the Righteous One.

LIBERA NOS, DOMINE, AB OMNI INIQUITATE!