“I will give praise to thee, O Lord, with my whole heart: I will relate all thy wonders. I will be glad, and rejoice in thee: I will sing to thy name, O thou most high.”
Praising God with one’s whole heart is to take joy in Him with every fiber of the fabric of one’s being; it is said of St. Arsenius that a disciple of his found him completely aflame in prayer; this is to be in love: “I am come to cast fire on the earth: and what will I, but that it be kindled?” (Luke 12:49). To praise Him with one’s whole heart then signifies that the one loved is of the greatest importance, to be loved with all that one has to give: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind” (Matthew 22:37). To sing in love is to pray with a particular fervor, and no matter how much your every atom leaps with rejoicing: “And David danced with all his might before the Lord” (2 Kings 6:14), you cannot praise God enough for His glory, goodness, and love: “Glorify the Lord as much as ever you can, for he will yet far exceed, and his magnificence is wonderful. Blessing the Lord, exalt him as much as you can: for he is above all praise. When you exalt him put forth all your strength, and be not weary: for you can never go far enough” (Ecclesiasticus 43:32-34). To praise God with one’s whole heart could also mean to accept nothing into the garden of your heart but the Beloved and that which praises Him: “My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed” (Canticle 4:12), for all that is not beautiful is without beauty, and what is truly beautiful only possesses beauty insofar as it partakes in the Source of All Beauty. Therefore, it is only in what is divinely beautiful that the lover of God’s heart sings: “My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready: I will sing, and rehearse a psalm” (Psalm 56:8). From this overflowing fountain comes relation of God’s wonders: “Tell how great things God hath done to thee” (Luke 8:39), the most glorious of which is the resurrection of one’s soul from death to a life of love. The resurrection of Lazarus: “Jesus saith to her: ‘Thy brother shall rise again’” (John 11:23) is glorious, but of greater glory is the resurrection of the soul of St. Paul, for this was a complete reorienting of a human being from malice towards a beautiful life: “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus hath sent me, he that appeared to thee in the way as thou camest; that thou mayest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 9:17). When love pulls you out of your sins and into a life of love, sing praise and speak of God’s marvelous love that so restores your soul and adorns it with loveliness: “Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtledove’s, thy neck as jewels. We will make thee chains of gold, inlaid with silver” (Canticle 1:9-10). Now, in the primitive rule of St. Francis, he tells his friars to always appear agreeable and joyful, not sad and downtrodden, for no one wants to eat from a tree that brings sadness, but from a tree of delights that animates the soul: “I sat down under his shadow, whom I desired: and his fruit was sweet to my palate” (Canticle 2:3). Therefore, for your sake and for others that see you, feast on joy, on what makes your heart sing, not speaking on the things that you do for God: “I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess” (Luke 18:12); “He that speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory” (John 7:18), but rejoice in God and His goodness: “To thee, O God, I will sing a new canticle: on the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings I will sing praises to thee” (Psalm 143:9). How few, Theophila, are those that sing praises in their hearts to God alone! Many are the ones that rejoice in His gifts of family, knowledge, stability, honor, music, and other such things, but few are those that sing a hymn of love because He first loved them: “Let us therefore love God, because God first hath loved us” (1 John 4:19). Thus does the Bridegroom say: “There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and young maidens without number. One is my dove, my perfect one is but one” (Canticle 6:7-8), for many are those that are in the state of grace that have not entered with their whole heart into the love story that God offers: “You shall seek me, and shall find me: when you shall seek me with all your heart” (Jeremias 29:13). The Psalmist then says, “I will sing to your name,” which is the same sentiment, but from the place of sheer rejoicing takes on a musical aspect, that so great is the love of God that human praise seems insufficient, but requires the full harmony of music to give Him who “is all lovely” (Canticle 5:16) the beautiful praise He deserves. Thus does David seek a harp, a flute, anything to accompany him in his songs of love: “Praise him with the sound of trumpet: praise him with psaltery and harp. Praise him with timbrel and choir: praise him with strings and organs. Praise him on high sounding cymbals: praise him on cymbals of joy: let every spirit praise the Lord. Alleluia” (Psalm 150:3-5). God does not receive anything from your praise, but it is simply an inevitability, that love spills over into songs, with love songs that remind the lover of the beloved making the heart echo with affection: “He put a new canticle into my mouth, a song to our God” (Psalm 39:4).