He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the highest mountains as well

Every day of the year - without exception! - I begin my day of prayer by praying the Invitatory Prayer.  This is the first prayer of the day for anyone who prays the Liturgy of the Hours.





The Invitatory Prayer is not too long or difficult.  It sounds and feels an awful lot like a Responsorial Psalm at mass.  There is an antiphon, which varies according to the day or the season, and there is a psalm, which basically doesn't vary.  Like the Responsorial Psalm at mass, the Invitatory psalm is divided into a few stanzas of several lines apiece - in the case of psalm 95, it's divided into five stanzas.  And then, as with all psalms and biblical canticles used in the Liturgy of the Hours, there is a version of "Glory be to the Father  ..." tacked on to the end.

The appointed psalm for the Invitatory is psalm 95.  If you've ever sung, as a Responsorial Psalm at mass, a version of "If Today You Hear His Voice, Harden Not Your Hearts", you've prayed parts of Psalm 95.  The church give three other alternative psalms (psalms 24, 67 and 100) that can be substituted for Psalm 95 as the Invitatory Psalm, but psalm 95 is the one printed in the liturgical book with the order of prayer, and I don't think I've ever prayed the Liturgy of the Hours with a group in which any psalm but psalm 95 is used.  If you pray some portion of the Liturgy of the Hours every day, you quickly memorize psalm 95.

Psalm 95, as I say, is not very long.  Here it  is as it appears in the American official liturgical book. 

(Antiphon)

Come let us sing to the Lord
and shout with joy to the Rock who saves us.
Let us approach him with praise and thanksgiving
and give joyful songs to the Lord.

(Antiphon)

The Lord is God, the mighty God, the great King over all the gods.
He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the highest mountains as well.
He made the sea, it belongs to him,
The dry land, too, for it was formed by his hands.

(Antiphon)

Come then, let us bow down and worship,
Bending the knee before the Lord our maker,
For he is our God and we are his people,
the flock he shepherds.

(Antiphon)

Today, listen to the voice of the Lord:
Do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did in the wilderness,
when at Meribah and Massah they challenged me and provoked me,
although they had seen all of my works.

(Antiphon)

Forty years I endured that generation.
I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray and they do not know my ways."
So I swore in my anger,
"They shall not enter into my rest."

(Antiphon)

Glory to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning, is now,
and will be for ever.  Amen.

(Antiphon)

For today, Christmas, the antiphon is "Christ is born for us; come, let us adore him."

Praying psalm 95 every day makes for an interesting prism to observe the passage of the liturgical seasons.  The psalm text doesn't vary from day to day and season to season, but whether it was planned or is just a happy coincidence, the psalm takes on different shades of meaning on different days and during different seasons.

For example: consider the third stanza:

Come then, let us bow down and worship,
Bending the knee before the Lord our maker,
For he is our God and we are his people,
the flock he shepherds.

During this Christmas season, praying about worshiping and bending the knee, one thinks naturally of the shepherds going to Bethlehem and finding Mary and Joseph and the child (Luke 2:16); as the season progresses to Epiphany, our thoughts may turn to the three magi prostrating themselves and doing him homage (Matthew 2:11).  On Good Friday, or Easter Sunday, or the Solemnity of Christ the King, we may see a different meaning in these same lines.

This association of an Old Testament text with New Testament events can be further heightened by considering a similar passage from one of the alternative psalms for the Invitatory, psalm 100.  Psalm 100 has a few parallels with psalm 95, including this passage which constitutes the third stanza for purposes of praying the Invitatory:

Go within his gates giving thanks;
enter his courts with songs of praise.
Give thanks to him, and bless his name.

Clearly, this passage refers to a palace or temple with gates and courtyards.  There is an interesting contrast here, not to say irony, when we think of the stable where the infant child and his homeless parents are staying.

Christmas is our great celebration of the Incarnation of God the Son as a human being.   There are (at least) two aspects of the Incarnation that are worthy of contemplation.  The first is that God somehow became human.  That is a wonderful grace for the human race, indeed it represents the first healing of the great rift between humans and God that had existed since the Fall.

But beyond God becoming Man, there is the sort of human being he chose to become.  Luke's account of the birth of Jesus, which is likely what you heard proclaimed at your Christmas mass yesterday or today, goes to some length to juxtapose the lowliness of Jesus's birth with the might and power of the monarchs and rulers - Ceasar, Quirinius - whom his reign will supplant.

As we gaze upon the infant lying in the manger in our parish or home creche scenes, it's worth recalling that this tiny and wholly dependent child, who can't even eat for himself without his mother's help, is the same one about whom the church sings in the Invitatory Psalm every day:

The Lord is God, the mighty God, the great King over all the gods.
He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the highest mountains as well.
He made the sea, it belongs to him,
The dry land, too, for it was formed by his hands.

This weakest of all human beings, this newborn who literally was born in a barn, is the very divine agent of our creation.  Ponder that for a while.