May 4, 2015
by Fr. Jerome Kodell, OSB
After they had safely crossed the Red Sea, Moses and the Israelites sang a song of praise to God: “I will sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously triumphant; horse and chariot he has cast into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has been my savior” (Ex 15:1-2). The thanksgiving song beginning with these verses is one of the oldest texts in the Bible
“The Lord is my strength and my song”: This phrase resonated in the minds of the people of God over the years and was repeated in Isaiah 12:2 and Psalm 118:14. It is a beautiful statement but also a prayer for what each of us wants our life to be: I want God to be my strength and my song. I want the Lord to be the song that my life sings, the song that people hear when they get to know me.
On the way to his martyrdom in Rome in the earliest days of the Church, St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the Christians in Ephesus: “When you are united in harmony of mind and heart, the song you sing is Jesus Christ.”
When the two disciples at Emmaus realized that their mysterious companion had been Jesus, they said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us when he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” (Lk 24:32). This can still happen to us today when we are in the company of disciples completely dedicated to the Lord and filled with his Spirit.
How do we let God become our strength and our song so that God is the song that we sing with our life? We cannot make this happen ourselves, because it is a gift of God, but we can open ourselves to God’s gift by seeking him daily in prayer and by serving others as Jesus did.
