NOTES for Psa 99

Here it is, one of the most joyful psalms. Even if we had only the text before us and knew neither which instruments sounded when it was created nor what its musical rhythms were like at the time, it would still not be difficult to hear them through the words and rhythms of the psalm itself. By its very sound, it proclaims that the news of the Lord is joy. After the Fall it became difficult for humans to stand before the Lord, and the desire to hide from Him arose and became habitual for many. But now the psalmist calls everyone to come before the Lord. He is good, and therefore every earthly fear crumbles before Him.

Here the faithful are called the sheep of His pasture, while in another, more dramatic psalm they are called the sheep of His hand. The same image speaks of His nearness to us both in joy and in difficult trials, and it is hardly by chance that the call to serve the Lord with gladness echoes Christ’s call not to look gloomy while fasting. The joy He gives is not an illusory emotion or a mad euphoria, but that deep joy which will not fade and which no one will take away from us.

Psalm 100, one of the shortest psalms, is nevertheless remarkably rich in content. What first strikes us is the very logic of this prayer of praise. The psalmist calls on all who live on earth to glorify the Lord and rejoice in His presence. ‘Know that the Lord is God,’ he says. These are words of prayer addressed to God Himself, but this is a special kind of prayer. On the psalmist's lips, the common prayer to which he calls all people becomes more than the communion of one person's heart with God. This common prayer enables people to share with one another their experience of standing before God. We see two dimensions in such prayer. On the one hand, it is a dialogue between all the people and the one presiding, in this case the psalmist. On the other, it is a dialogue between the whole community and God. This principle of combining two dialogues finds its definitive embodiment in the prayer and worship of the Church of the New Covenant.

Then, calling us to discover through our own experience what has been revealed to him, the psalmist draws attention to a key fact of spiritual life, perhaps the most important of all. It concerns the relationship that binds God and human beings. ‘He made us, and we are His, His people and the sheep of His flock.’ We might call this a relationship of belonging, encompassing both the fullness of God's authority over us and the fullness of His care for us, as well as our acceptance of such a relationship. The sheep of the Lord's flock is a very important and profound image of our relationship with God, to which the Lord Jesus Himself will later turn.

Indeed, the text of this psalm brings to mind chapter 10 of John's Gospel, in which the Evangelist conveys Christ's words that He is the Good Shepherd. Enter His gates with praise, says the psalmist. The Lord, too, speaks of the gate of the sheepfold. Then He says: ‘I am the door: whoever enters through Me will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.’ Herein lie the Lord's goodness, mercy and truth, which the psalmist praises in the psalm's closing words. And while Christ speaks of the meeting between Shepherd and flock from the Shepherd's point of view, the psalmist sees this meeting from the point of view of the ‘sheep’, from our point of view.