Psalm 127 Commentary 1B, Sunday 31st December 2023, Feast of the Holy Family
Psalm 127 is often sung at wedding services. It offers a blessing for marriage, that sacred calling to home-making. It is therefore so appropriate for us to sing it on the first Sunday of Year B, with its Gospel picture of Jesus’ pious family, as the parents present the 8-day old child Jesus in the Temple in accordance with the Law for the Jewish first born.
The psalm of course goes back a long way and may have its origins in a blessing given in the temple at the climax to the great pilgrim festival of Tabernacles or Booths when families would have built leafy shelters on their seven-day camping trip on the pilgrim way to the Temple. The ritual involved had families waving branches as a celebration of the agricultural blessings God had given them in the past year.
This psalm is addressed to an individual “you”, to a father of the family. But mothers are included too in the lovely symbols of fruitful vines and the olive tree with its young tender shoots of new life. The psalm then moves on from father and mother to include the whole family of Israel in its final blessing.
That blessing in our psalm is first addressed to the husband, telling him that true happiness lies in walking in the “fear of the Lord”, that is, respecting the Lord, and living as God wants him to live. It goes on to pray for a three-fold blessing: firstly, for a blessing on his wife as a fruitful vine, secondly on his work as a means of providing food so that the family may eat together round the family table, and thirdly on the family itself with its responsibility to be a bringer of “peace on Israel”, that is on the wider community, keeping a family door open to those in need.
It ends with a final blessing: “May you see your children’s children!” or as someone has paraphrased it: “May you live to see your grandchildren playing around you.”
In our weekend liturgy, the psalm makes a bridge between the first reading from Ecclesiasticus about respectful family relationships, and the Gospel story of the journey to the Jerusalem Temple for the presentation of Jesus to the Lord and the purification of the mother after the birth with its possible loss of blood, something so sacred in Jewish Law.
The psalm centres round the family’s shared table. When we gather round our tables today at Mass, the table-service is done by Christ the Host. His hospitality welcomes us into greater Communion as we gather for food around the table of the Word and the altar of the Eucharist.
Can we now recall with affection the many blessings we have received from our parents and think again about using our talents as we pass these blessings on to those around us and to future generations?
Commentary by Dr Noel Donnelly.
Ps 127: words and music Noel Donnelly (c) Kevin Mayhew.
Recorded by Dorothy Gunnee
