Ps. 84.4 (liturgy: the drama of beauty)

How blest / are those who dwell / in your house
who can continually praise you. 

In man of the other psalms we have looked at, the picture of ‘blessing’ is of an almost tangible, living power: it confers authority, longevity, abundance and goodness. From father-to-son it passes down and makes virile (in both pasture and family) the lineage of the son. Creation itself is the primordial blessing and image of all others. Here, by contrast (it seems), we are provided a glimpse into another aspect of blessing: liturgy. Liturgy—the praising of God within his Temple, following the liturgical rules he has established—is the blessing. For this psalmist, this is not at all surprising. We have pointed out how he has an intensely aesthetic perception of God and his dwelling—he is attuned to the beauty and glory of God. For him, God’s presence is at its most fundamental level—beauty. And, for this reason, his presence ‘makes beautiful’ his Temple in a profound manner. Indeed, so profound that his entire being is caught up in his desire to be in the Temple, to be with the object of his desire. Such consuming desire was what enabled him not simply to ‘see’ the birds in the Temple but to perceive how blest they are to build a home with the sacred space of God’s home. All of this leads up to his perception of those who ‘dwell in your house’. This verse, in other words, is of a single piece—the perception of the beauty of the Temple, the perception of the birds…all of this must now be seen to be consummated in those who engage in liturgy to God. The liturgy, in other words, is the ‘drama of beauty’ that this psalmist seeks. As we pointed out in the opening reflection—beauty is anything but static in this psalm. Indeed, the closer one gets to the object of beauty (the Temple) the more active one becomes. Here, the ‘drama of (sacred) beauty’ becomes ‘continuous’; time itself partakes of the beauty of the Temple (which is what ‘liturgy’ is). In a sense we could say that the further one moves form God the closer one moves to stasis (through disintegration and ‘wasting’; vs. 2).  It is tempting to suggest that just as those who have little aesthetic sense would likely never perceive the reality of the birds’ blest state (nor, consequently, the beauty of the Temple), so too would they not perceive the beauty of liturgy. For this psalmist, however, the ‘love of God’ (that which consumes him utterly) is expressed in his ardent (and total) attachment to God’s beauty. That love is liturgy. I don’t believe it a stretch to say that, for this psalmist, the vision at the end of Revelation would be entirely consonant with how he would envision the consummation of creation—as the descending Temple of God such that now the entire creation becomes, utterly, remade into liturgy. From the animal realm to the human, creation now ‘dwells’ in God’s dwelling and that ‘dwelling’ is ‘continuous praise’. It will be blessing.