Category: Catholicism

Every Sunday in the Liturgy of the Hours Night Prayer we pray the following:

For he will free you from the hunter’s snare,
from the voice of the slanderer.
He will shade you with his wings,
you will hide underneath his wings. – Psalm 90

I recently came across some words of popular Anglican theologian NT Wright which I recall every time I pray this psalm:

He was writing about a passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus uses similar imagery:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing…” – Matthew 23:37-38

Here was his commentary:

“[The image] is of a farmyard fire; the hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and, when the fire has run its course, there will be found a dead hen, scorched and blackened, but with live chicks under her wing. Jesus seemed to be indicating his hope that he would take upon himself the judgement that was hanging over the nation and city“ – NT Wright, The Challenge of Jesus