The Surrender Novena’s echoes in Psalm 90(91)
In this beautiful commentary on Psalm 90(91), Don Dolindo Ruotolo unveils the depths of divine protection and the power of unwavering trust in God. His insights resonate deeply with the essence of his renowned "Surrender Novena," inviting readers to abandon themselves completely to God's care. As you delve into Dolindo's reflections, you'll discover how the psalmist's words echo the same message of surrender that permeates the novena. This commentary not only illuminates the psalm's meaning but also serves as a practical guide for cultivating a life of trust amidst life's challenges. Prepare to be inspired as Don Dolindo's wisdom reveals how Psalm 90(91) can become a living prayer of surrender in your own spiritual journey.
Let us first read Psalm 90(91) according to the RSV-CE:
“1 You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, 2 will say to the Lord, "My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust." 3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence; 4 he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. 5 You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, 6 or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday. 7 A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. 8 You will only look with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. 9 Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, 10 no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. 11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. 12 On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. 13 You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot. 14 Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. 15 When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. 16 With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.”
Now, let us immerse ourselves in Don Dolindo's profound meditation on this psalm of trust:
“According to the Septuagint and the Vulgate, this Psalm was composed by David on the occasion of some public calamity. It is an act of trust in God, and an assurance given by the Lord Himself to those who trust in Him. For those of us who recite it, this psalm is a beautiful prayer that strengthens our trust in God—the foundation and essence of our entire life. If we truly grasped how beneficial it is to place all our hope in the Lord, we would eagerly embrace the various trials that each day brings, using them as opportunities to renew our surrender to our Heavenly Father. Indeed, humanity's greatest misfortune lies in our failure to entrust God with all our worries and needs.
The Prophet begins the Psalm by noting that he who dwells under divine assistance, dwells in the protection of the God of Heaven, that is, of the Almighty who can comfort us in every tribulation. It is not enough to have trust in the Lord, one must dwell under His assistance, abandon oneself to Him and make hope like the habit of our life. This absolutely excludes any uncertainty in divine protection, and any exaggerated trust in men or in natural means. We painfully trust in God always up to a certain point; we do not know how to put in His hands our every need, and above all we do not know how to wait for His moments. Therefore the Psalmist determines who truly dwells under God's assistance: it is he who says to Him with true heart: You are my defender and my refuge, You my God in whom I trust. My defender, trusting in Him in assaults; my refuge, taking shelter in Him in dangers, the sole end of all trust, which gives the soul rest and security in every anguish.
Having established the nature of true trust in God, the Psalmist shows its beneficial effects, so that the soul may increasingly understand that God alone is her only hope: God frees the soul from the snare of the hunters, that is, from hidden traps, against which our shrewdness can do nothing; He frees her from the destroying pestilence, that is, from those evils of the soul and body that assail us like a pestilence, because they are the fruit of nature infected by sin. God covers us with His wings, like a hen covers her chicks, putting us safe against external assaults of evil, and puts us safe under His feathers, warming us with His ineffable love.
His faithfulness, that is, the certainty of His keeping His promises, is like a shield in life's uncertainties, especially those of tomorrow. The soul, confident in God, is not frightened by the terrors of infernal darkness, nor does she fear the assaults that come to her by day from men, nor diseases, nor public scourges and devastations of the enemy. The soul feels secure as if she were fully armed; when attacked, she sees herself miraculously freed as if a powerful sword made a thousand and ten thousand of her adversaries fall, without them being able to approach her and harm her. As a ruler, the soul will observe evil from above, and as a victor she will see the punishment of the wicked. Therefore the Psalmist summarizes the divine protection of one who trusts, in a single word that expresses everything: You have chosen the Most High as your refuge saying: You, O Lord, are my hope; you cannot desire more, you cannot obtain more, because He is the Almighty. Evil will not be able to come upon you, and the scourge will not approach your dwelling, because the Lord guards you with a particular providence through the Guardian Angels, who lovingly carry you in their hands, so that you do not stumble, they render harmless for you the snares of death, and you dominate brutal force and malignant incursions, like one who walks, without receiving harm, on the fierce lion and the poisonous serpent.
The song of trust closes with a powerful word that confirms its effectiveness; it is God Himself who speaks solemnly from verse 14 to the end of the Psalm, making formal promises to those who trust in Him. These are absolute promises that should enlarge our hope. The Lord will deliver those who hope in Him, not with an uncertain or fleeting hope, but full and secure; therefore He says: Because he hoped in Me, I will deliver him. God delivers those who have hoped in Him, who have already abandoned themselves entirely to Him. The Lord will protect those who truly believe in Him, and who honor Him with a holy life: I will protect him, because he has recognized My name. When the soul hopes and is faithful to God, then He will hear her in her prayers, assist her in tribulations, save her from all evil, glorify her if humiliated, satisfy her with a long life and save her eternally.
Who can, after these promises, hesitate to place all his hope in God? Who can still anguish in worries, knowing in whose omnipotent hands he entrusts himself? Satan tempts us mainly to make us lose trust in God; all his malignant activity aims at this, since he knows that if he shakes us in hope he has conquered us. When he tempted Jesus Christ in the desert, he tempted Him on trust, and therefore distorted the meaning of this Psalm, quoting it in his own way (Matt. 4:6), so that the Redeemer would have trusted not in God but in His own power. Satan would have wanted Jesus Christ to have performed a miracle to obtain food, to have trusted in His own power to obtain glory, and to have trusted in him, infernal spirit, worshiping him to obtain the kingdom; he wanted to exclude from the Redeemer's life trust in Providence, hope in divine promises and abandonment in God. This is what he still does with us, and he tempts us by making us hope not in God's intervention, but in the effectiveness of our own and others' activities, and with some souls, even in proposing himself as the object of hope and help.
Nothing frightens Satan more than trust in God, full trust, and we would say blind trust, which does not even make us think about the means by which God can save us, but makes us place all our confidence in Him, and makes us rest in divine protection. Let us therefore close our eyes and abandon ourselves to the Lord, expecting from Him nourishment, health, life and any good, remembering that Jesus Christ began and completed His work with an act full of trust in the Father, for which He defeated Satan in the desert and commended His spirit into the Father's hands on the Cross.
When Jesus Christ was nailed to the Cross, the crowd mocked Him for His great trust in the Father: He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now. Satan himself, quoting this Psalm to the Redeemer in the desert, showed that he knew or glimpsed that it referred to Him. Perhaps he glimpsed it precisely because he noticed the great trust He had in the Father. These two circumstances make us understand that the Psalm that speaks of trust must prophetically refer to Him who wanted to give us the full and unlimited example of it, and who placed it as the foundation of the Church saying: Take courage, I have overcome the world.
Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, true Son of God, truly dwelt under the assistance of the Most High through the hypostatic union of human nature with the Eternal Word, and His Humanity dwelt in the protection of the God of Heaven, because it was governed by a very special Providence. Jesus Christ trusted in the Father as the only defense and only refuge, because in His Passion He was abandoned by all, and found no escape in the unjust sentence that condemned Him to death. He seemed defeated, but in reality, by dying, He was freed from the snare of contradictions with which His work was threatened, and His body was released from the bonds of mortality by rising to immortal life. Death, which for all is like a destroying pestilence, did not have full dominion over His Body; it could render Him lifeless because He willed it, but not dissolve Him, because He Himself resurrected it. He lived entrusting Himself to Him, died taking refuge in God His Father, and the faithfulness of divine promises was the shield that covered His work, His Church.
The Fathers apply to the Church the verses that follow in the Psalm, and the application is beautiful, since Jesus Christ has done everything for her, and everything that refers to Him refers to His Bride the Church. The Church, because of God's faithfulness in the promises made to her, does not fear the terrors of the night of persecutions, nor the arrow that flies by day, in the battles waged against her under the aspect of the false light of progress, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness of errors, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday [According to the Vulgate: she does not fear the noonday devil], in the persecution of the antichrist. Her enemies fall by thousands and ten thousands around her, but they cannot approach her; she observes them, defeats them, sees their ruin, and resting her trust in the Most High, she overthrows them not with human forces but with supernatural ones. For this reason no evil can come near her that would dismantle her, no scourge that would ruin her house; the Angels guard her, and she is indefectible, she cannot stumble on the stone of scandal and fall, but walks on the lion and the serpent dominating the powers of the world and those of hell, and is delivered by God because she trusts in Him and recognizes His Name by adoring and loving Him. For this reason, the Lord delivers her from tribulation, saves her from snares, glorifies her even in the world, satisfies her with long life, because He preserves her until the consummation of the ages, and will make her see her Savior in glory.
Trust in God is the soul of the Church's life, which has no defense in the midst of the world, indeed she passes through it like a warm and serene current, in the icy and stormy sea. Trust is true humility, because it is the recognition of one's own insufficiency. Trust is not an agitated and arid recognition, because it is fruitful of the greatest union with God. Trust is true faith, because it is the practical recognition of God, and it is living love because it is an intimate and filial relationship with Him. Trust destroys all obstacles, resolves all difficulties, calms all storms, because it makes the creature strong in her Creator. Trust is the door of grace and is the key to miracles, since through it God intervenes as master in human affairs. For this reason the Church, which is entirely supernatural in her life, although she passes through the world as a pilgrim, sustains herself, sanctifies herself, conquers and triumphs with trust. Whoever is a child of the Church cannot follow another path, and as has been said, must seize all occasions to renew trust in God, and make it the daily exercise of one's own piety.”
As we conclude our exploration of Psalm 90(91) through Don Dolindo's insightful commentary, we arrive at a beautiful tradition in his writings. It was customary for Don Dolindo to compose a paraphrase of each psalm, transforming the biblical text into a personal prayer. This practice allows us to internalize the psalm's message and make it our own heartfelt conversation with God. Let us now read Don Dolindo's prayerful paraphrase of Psalm 90(91), which encapsulates the spirit of trust and surrender he so eloquently expounded in his commentary:
“Whoever dwells under Your assistance, O Lord, abides in Your protection, You who are Almighty God and Lord of Heaven and earth. I am poor and wretched, and for this very reason I say to You with all the fervor of my heart: You are my defender, my refuge, You my God in whom I trust. Deliver me from the snare of those who plot against me, free me from sin and from all evil, cover me with Your wings of love, warm me with Your charity and put me in safety in You. You are faithful in Your promises, O Lord, and Your faithfulness is my security, for You have promised that whoever trusts in You is never confounded. With You I am not frightened by the terrors of evil, I do not fear the assaults of the wicked one, I do not dread evil influences; I trust in You and I feel secure. If enemies assail me to harm me in soul or body, they fall around me by thousands, by ten thousands, and they cannot come near; I will observe them fallen and defeated, I will praise Your justice that dismays them, and I will feel secure in Your hands. You are my hope, O Lord, You my shelter in distress; my trust in You is not in vain, for You remove all evil from me, and do not allow the scourges I deserve for my sins to strike me. You are infinite goodness, and You have ordered Your Angels to guard me in all my ways, so that I do not stumble in life's difficulties and do not go to ruin. Trusting in You, my God, I will dominate every opposing force, every snare of death, every danger and every evil. You are my deliverance and my protection, because I love and adore You alone. I cry out to You and You hear me, I turn to You and You save me, I confide my humiliations to You and You glorify me in justice and truth. You satisfy me with good things, O my Lord, You save me in time and in eternity. You are everything to me, in You I trust.”
Reference:
Ruotolo, D. D. (1939). Commento alla Sacra Scrittura. Apostolato Stampa, 33.
Author’s Note: If you would like to read more about Don Dolindo’s spirituality, check out this book: Don Dolindo’s Spiritual Guidance.
Beautiful Psalm and Fr Don Dolindo is an inspiration and Jesus is his friend and that's all that matters.