---
title: 3 September 2020 «
description: 3 September 2020 Thursday of the Twenty-second week in Ordinary Time  We do not often reflect on the Psalm response, but today’s response certainly deserve
---

[Ignatian Reflections ](https://www.magiscenter.com/ignatian)

# [3 September 2020 «](https://www.magiscenter.com/ignatian/ignatian_reflection/20-09-03)

 Written by [Michael Maher S.J.](https://www.magiscenter.com/ignatian/author/michael-maher-s-j-) | Sep 3, 2020, 4:00:00 AM

## 3 September 2020

**Thursday of the Twenty-second week in Ordinary Time **

We do not often reflect on the Psalm response, but today’s response certainly deserves some reflection: “To the Lord belongs the earth and all that is in it.” We will pass over in silence the fact that the construction of the sentence would not pass contemporary editors. Strunk and White would vastly prefer a more precise sentence by avoiding the prepositional construction and excessive verb usage:  “All that the earth contains belongs to the Lord.”  The previous  style of speaking places an emphasis on the Lord by placing God at the very beginning of the sentence, which of course is the whole idea. Although awkward by contemporary standards, the psalm response expresses a fundamental concept in Ignatian spirituality found in the First Principle and Foundation. This brief paragraph which begins the *Spiritual Exercises* of St. Ignatius can be  understand  as the lens by which the entire *Exercises* are viewed and practiced. In the introductory paragraph of the *Exercises* and the psalm response we find what Ignatius would say was the identification of the correct ordering of the created world.  Historians have noted that the mark of modernity can be recognized when persons no longer concern themselves with the supernatural order, an order identified in today’s psalm. Instead, persons and their societies see order as subjective and under the jurisdiction of personal and communal jurisdiction. In short, right is achieved by power, persuasion, and politics  leaving little room for a discussion of an objective reality. The recognition of God’s order and prior truths sets our project as one that is  not to change that truth but to increase our understanding of that truth.

By [Michael Maher, S.J.](https://www.magisspirituality.org/writer/michael-maher/)

  September 3rd, 2020 

[View full post](https://www.magiscenter.com/ignatian/ignatian_reflection/20-09-03)

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