Read: Hebrews 1:5-9

God . . . has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. (v. 9)

In previous lines Herbert has written about “joy” and “bliss”; now he adds another word, similar in meaning though with its own distinctive flavor, namely, “gladness.” But of all his metaphors I find this phrase “gladness of the best” among the most intriguing. What might have suggested it to him?

One “gladness” text that links Old Testament and New is Psalm 45:7, quoted in today’s reading from Hebrews 1. The psalm is a song composed for a royal marriage, and what it says about the king, the royal bridegroom, is in Hebrews applied to Christ. We can take what you might call a stereoscopic view of the two texts, superimposing one image on the other, and before our eyes there stands out three-dimensionally the picture of God the Son anointed by God the Father in a ceremony that is suffused with gladness.

And what makes this the best kind of gladness? What qualifies Jesus to receive this anointing from his Father?

It is that he has “loved righteousness and hated wickedness” (Heb. 1:9). It’s as simple as that. Except that he has come into our lives with a total commitment to the one and a pitiless enmity to the other, on a scale that we cannot comprehend. And we can readily see the bearing this has on our prayer lives. It will be with unbounded confidence that I shall bring my prayers to such a king.

 

Here is the poem in its entirety:

Prayer (I)

BY GEORGE HERBERT

Prayer the Church’s banquet, Angels’ age,

God’s breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;

Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tower,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days-world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood.

The land of spices; something understood.

Prayer:

With what gladness do I bow before you, Lord Christ, my King and my God.

Author: Michael Wilcock

 

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