This is part of a series of articles that will run for 30 consecutive days! Each day, The Lord will unveil the silent beauty of St. Joseph through one line of his Litany. The Litany of St. Joseph is a stunning, illuminating prayer. In fact, the Church grants us a partial indulgence (under the normal requirements) just for reciting it.
Day Three
Illustrious Son of David
Today is not a day for cursory reading or surface-level knowledge. On the contrary, today St. Joseph invites you to experience this mysterious title “Illustrious Son of David” from the inside out.
“Knowing things is fundamentally different than living them.” If we leave things at “yeah, I believe that” or “oh that’s interesting”, we will never enter into the glorious inner life of our faith. And we will most certainly not enter into the glorious inner life of this most hidden Saint Joseph.
To drive the point home, let’s look at Pope Benedict XVI. He was asked his opinion in 2002 on what to do for people who don’t feel anything when they pray or go to Church. This was his response:
“I can actively and methodically investigate material things; I can subject them to my control, because they are inferior to me. But even another person is beyond my understanding if I treat him this way. On the contrary, I only come to know something of him when I begin to put myself in his place, to get inside him, by some kind of sympathy.”
Pope Benedict XVI
This is exactly what we aim to do today. We are going to put ourselves in St. Joseph’s place. More than that, we are going to get inside him, and we are going to open our hearts to his heart!
We are going to do this by memorizing and performing one psalm.
Don’t panic
Welcome to Psalm 1
This will only take 1o minutes of your time.
It’s going to be okay. I promise.
I’m a trained Shakespearean actor. Subsequently, it has been my specialty to memorize and to train other people to memorize lines of very complicated verse and prose for years. And I am not going to put an undue burden on you. I realize you have other commitments in your day.
So, to clarify the bold statement above, let me say that for today, we will be memorizing and praying the first verse of Psalm 1. This process should only take 10 minutes, at most!
First, let’s look at the Psalm in its entirety, which is just 6 verses (NRSV-CE translation):
Psalm 1: 1
1 Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on His law they medidate day and night.
3 They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in their season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.
4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff which the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
Okay. Like I said, we are just memorizing and praying the first verse, which is just four lines. Here is the step by step guide I follow for Shakespearean memorization, and which I have successfully adapted to the memorization of Psalms!
- Step 1: Write it and SAY it
- Get out a piece of paper and a writing utensil.
- Write the four verse lines while saying the Psalm out loud! Physically writing and saying it out loud is super important because it engages a lot of your senses at once, essentially incarnating the Psalm into your body. Also, make sure you’re sticking to the spacing and indentation given to you (it helps you memorize too).
- At the end of this step, you should have a transcribed piece of paper that reads like this:
Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers.
Once you’ve written it, it’s a good idea to read it out loud about three times!
- Step 2: Write every first letter and RECALL it
- Now, turn the piece of paper over.
- On this side, you’re going to write the verse again, with the same exact spacing and indentation as on the back, but you’re only going to write the first letter of every word.
- It should look something like this:
H a t
w d n f t a o t w
o t t p t s t,
o s i t s o s.
After writing it this way, try and read it out loud once or twice! Let your mind automatically fill in the rest of the letters. If you ever get stuck, just flip the piece of paper around!
- Step 3: Pray it without looking!
- Put the paper away
- Ask the Holy Spirit to help you, and pray the beginning of the Psalm!
CONGRATULATIONS
Some of you have just memorized your first verse of any psalm. That’s amazing in and of itself. On top of that, you’ve intentionally stepped into the heart of St. Joseph and connected with him by seeing the world through his eyes.
Remember that he was a Jew. More than that, he was a just man. That means he kept God’s word always on his heart and mind. Today, as we look at him as the Illustrious Son of David, we cannot ignore the priceless inheritance Joseph got from his ancestor: the psalms. These prayers likely shapes Joseph’s whole outlook on life.
Welcome to the chaste heart of St. Joseph.
