Psalm Reflection: The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B

“Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” - Psalms 34

If you have any background in the Protestant or Evangelical traditions, you know about sword drills. Sword drills are done at church and even in the home to get people familiar with finding things quickly in the Bible and memorizing Scripture. The leader would say a Biblical citation and then say “go” and the first person to find it was awarded a point. These would become more difficult to the point that the verses needed to be cited or read from memory. If you want to see the impressive results some people are able to achieve, look up The Bible Bee and watch children quoting full paragraphs of Scripture verbatim from memory.

This is not a new phenomenon. In the time of Jesus, parents would teach their children the alphabet by smearing honey on a wax tablet, and would help their children learn to trace letters in the honey with their fingers, which they could then lick off. This was to remind them to always associate learning with sweetness. 

I have read about a similar practice in synagogues: when children would go to Torah school beginning around the age of five, they would study under a Rabbi and only the best of the best would be able to continue on in school. A method of instruction was to give each student a stone tablet with a dab of honey on it, and if the student was able to adequately quote a cited passage or law from the Torah they could like the honey off of their tablet. That is why the Psalm 119:103 says: “How sweet to my tongue is your promise, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” 

The Psalmist this week, the words taste and see encourage me to be in Sacred Scripture and to experience the sweet words of salvation every single day. Jesus is the Word made flesh, and so every time we open the pages of Scripture we can encounter Him in a new and powerful way. This sweetness culminates in the gift of the Eucharist, where the Word made flesh is offered as food and drink for us to consume and be reminded of the sweetness of salvation.

What are you consuming in your everyday life?

What is your spiritual diet composed of? Are you filling up on junk? Are you starving?

Do the words of Scripture sound sweet and good to you, or are they challenging? If they are more of an acquired taste for you, how are you giving yourself the opportunity to develop a taste for them?

Let us be more excited to receive the Eucharist than we are to have a great meal. Let us be more compelled to pick up Sacred Scripture or spiritual reading than we are the latest novel. Let us be overjoyed to come to Mass to worship the living God, more so than going to a concert or sporting event.

When we consume the wrong things too much, we do not have a taste for what is good for us. When we change our spiritual diet to something that nourishes our soul, we begin to crave the things that bless us and deepen our relationship with the Lord. So, feast on good spiritual food this week, and allow the Lord to satisfy every single craving of your heart.

I am praying for you, please pray for me, and I will see you in the Eucharist.

Matt

This reflection is based on the Responsorial Psalm for this Sunday, August 25th, 2024, which is the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B: Psalms 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21.