February 16, 2025

Dear Brothers and Sisters, I don’t often comment on the psalms of our weekend liturgy in this space. I absolutely love the psalms, and they’re one of the foundational pieces of my prayer life, but they are rarely in the forefront of the Sunday liturgy. The way it usually works is that the psalm normally provides a bit of a meditative reflection on the 1st reading and the Gospel. But this weekend, in many ways, the psalm speaks just as clearly as the readings. We’re privileged to sing the words of Psalm 1 this weekend. Aside from being literally the first psalm, it’s often called the “gateway” to the entire Book of Psalms, because it describes a particular spiritual outlook that’s needed to understand the spiritual depths of the rest of the psalms. The psalms propose a way of life where every moment, every thought, and every emotion are occasions to seek God. When we rejoice, we praise his goodness. When we feel down, we ask for his help. When we need guidance, we seek his light. There’s a reason the Church has constantly used psalms as the basis of our daily prayers: our lives would be so much better if we lived that way. But to get to that point of experiencing God in every moment, we have to want to experience him—and if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that means we need to change. We have to “be converted” to delighting in God’s words and will at each moment. Psalm 1 reminds us that the starting point to entering the lifestyle of praise found in the psalms, and lived so fully by Jesus Christ, requires us to reflect on the two ways we can go in life. With God or without him. We can choose either the instability and uncertainty of life without him, or the confidence of walking in accordance with his will. Brothers and sisters, let’s choose to walk the journey with God, and claim the promise of Scripture that in doing so we will be “like a tree planted near running water, that yields fruit in due season, and whose leaves never fade.” Through the intercession and example of St. Thomas our patron and Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, let’s live the life of praise laid out in the Psalms. God bless,

Father Jantz