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Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,
During Great Vespers on Saturday evening, and during some feasts, we sing a hymn that we call “Blessed is the Man.” Those are the very first words found in Psalm 1, and hence at the very beginning of the Psalter (Book of Psalms). The hymn in its entirety (the shortened version that we normally use) is actually a medley of verses taken from the first three psalms of the Psalter. In other words, our Great Vespers hymn is comprised of various verses taken from the first stasis of the First Kathisma, appointed for Saturday evening. For my purposes here, I would like to simply quote Ps. 1:1 (realizing that we do not even use the full verse at Great Vespers):
Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the
wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
I have highlighted the words “walks,” “stands” and “sits.” There is clearly a progression in these three bodily movements or positions. Actually, a regression, for understood metaphorically, we find a description of the descent into sin – a descent that the psalmist is exhorting us to avoid, and saying that any person who does so is truly “blessed.” If one is aware of the “counsel of the wicked” – from meaningless and frivolous gossip, to destructive plans of betrayal or worse – then it is truly blessed to “walk on by,” so that one’s attention and then attractiveness to such pernicious plans do not enter the mind or heart. Yet, a person who chooses to stand and listen for a while is that much more susceptible to giving this wicked counsel a hearing. And what a person hears, though acknowledged as sinful, becomes more attractive, with whatever tools of rationalization are used for that purpose. But, to then sit, is to declare: I am in! A person then becomes quite open on that “counsel of the wicked.” Extricating oneself at that point will not be easy!
This insight is expressed with great depth by the saints in a more technical language that belongs to our ascetical tradition. With such terms as “(initial) provocation,” “momentary disturbance,” “coupling” and “assent,” the ascetic tradition outlines with great psychological penetration, the pitfalls embedded in the scriptural terms from the psalm: walking, standing, and sitting. Once we are “sitting,” they basically teach us that we are then facing a “predisposition” (to sin), followed by slavery to a/the “passion(s).” The passions bind us to such an extent that they can be called "addictions" as we use that term today. And it takes some work to liberate oneself at that point. A reason why the teaching exhorts us to practice “rebuttal” when we are first faced with an initial provocation. In other words, to use another term that I notice is gaining popularity: Avoid going down that “rabbit hole.” Which, on the spiritual level is equivalent to a “black hole.”
Those of us from an older generation remember well the pop song, “Walk on By,” sung so smoothly, but also achingly, by Dionne Warwick. That song surely did not have our spiritual tradition in mind! But, as an expression, it can stay with us, and it captures the significance of the first verse of the Book of Psalms: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked.”
I thought to append the remainder of the hymn “Blessed is the Man” that we sing at every Great Vespers on Saturday evening:
for the Lord knows the way of the
righteous, but the way of the wicked
will perish.
Serve the Lord with fear,
And rejoice in him with trembling;
Blessed are all who take refuge in
him.
Arise, O LORD! Save me, O my God!
Salvation belongs to the LORD; thy
Blessing be upon thy people!
(Ps. 1:1,6; 2:11; 3:7-8)
