Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord

Treasures of Our Faith with Deacon Richard Vehige

On Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time our church invites us to reflect on a passage from the book of the prophet Micah (4: 1-7) entitled “The nations go up to the mountain of the Lord”. Our treasure, which follows, is from a discourse on the psalms by Saint Augustine, bishop.

Micah is the sixth of twelve Old Testament books. Most of this book explores Micah's accusations and warnings of God's impending judgment on Israel, but Micah also had a message of hope that countered these warnings and told of the restoration that God would one day bring about. The main message of the Book of Micah is that the people and their leaders need to leave behind their lives of sin and corruption in order to receive the grace of God. If they do not do this, their cities will be destroyed.

Saint Augustine was a late fourth century, theologian and philosopher, and Bishop of Hippo, Roman North Africa. He is also a preeminent Catholic Doctor of the Church. His writings influenced the development of western philosophy and western Christianity, and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period.

Throughout its many pages, Psalms encourages its readers to praise God for who He is and what He has done. The Psalms illuminate the greatness of our God, affirm His faithfulness to us in times of trouble, and remind us of the absolute centrality of His Word. The focus of Augustine's Explanations of the Psalms is on Christ. In fact, at one point he says, "Christ is the comprehensive mystery underlying all of Scripture."