Ps. 78.3 (power and repetition)

Things that we have known about
that our fathers / told us. 

Here we come to an important aspect of this psalm—that the perpetuation of God’s redemption, as contained in the memory of the people, is accomplished by way of repetition. The reason we know this is that these lines show that the telling is something already known about. It has already been passed down. It will now, in this telling, be essentially re-told. More importantly, it will be re-enacted. Here we come to delve deeper into the opening lines: the data of salvation history is not brute facts but mysteries. By mysteries I mean things that can be participated in and not exhausted. As we have shown, the psalmist is clearly aware that the community must actively perceive what he is about to describe. It must become an act of appreciation, more so than simply a mental act of recording. In the retelling something is, quite literally, being passed down. A power is being transferred (handed over; tradition-ed) from one generation to the next. The second point to make, which will emerge with greater significance, is that the passing down is a familial one. It descends by way of the fathers. We begin to sense in this what will become explicit: that the power of the story being passed down is the life and unity of the family of God (as mediated by the families). When this story is forgotten, the family itself becomes disrupted; disunity and chaos emerge. When it is handed down faithfully, however, the unity is maintained and passed down. If, in the last reflection, we saw how the telling of the story was the perpetuating of God’s deliverance, then here we see how that deliverance entails the binding unity of the family of God.