For Postulants and Aspirants in Local Formation

 

Psalm 84 gives us a vocabulary for faith that is often neglected in theological training: desire. Not duty. Not mastery. Not even conviction. Desire.

“My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.” The psalmist does not separate interior faith from bodily life. Heart and flesh move together. Longing is not an embarrassment to be disciplined away; it is the very engine of pilgrimage. Faith here begins not with certainty but with ache—with a pull toward the presence of God that the psalmist knows is life-giving.

That matters for seminarians, who are often trained to inhabit ideas about God more fluently than spaces where God is encountered. Psalm 84 refuses such disembodiment. God is not approached only through thought but through movement, practice, and shared ritual. The psalm imagines faith as a journey taken with others toward a real place, shaped by real rhythms—walking, resting, praying, singing. Even the birds find a home near the altar. Belonging is concrete.

The psalm is also honest about the terrain. The pilgrims pass through the dry valley. The path is not easy, but it is formative. Trust does not eliminate difficulty; it transforms it. The valley becomes a place of springs not because circumstances change, but because desire oriented toward God reshapes perception and endurance. Strength is renewed along the way.

For those preparing for ministry, Psalm 84 quietly resists the temptation to turn formation into mere interior refinement or professional competence. It insists that sacred spaces matter, that communal worship forms us, that repeated practices—returning again and again to prayer, table, font, and Word—shape the heart over time. Faith is sustained not by intensity alone but by rhythm.

The psalm does not rush to arrival. Zion is named, but longing and movement are honored as part of the life of faith. This is good news for seminarians whose journeys are still unfolding. Desire need not be resolved in order to be faithful. Joy arises not only at the destination, but in the walking.

Psalm 84 teaches us that to belong to God is to be on the way—together, bodily, prayerfully—trusting that the One we seek is already meeting us along the road.

____________________

*As a theological companion to Psalm 84, you may find James K. A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom an especially fruitful resource. Smith argues that human beings are shaped less by what we think than by what we love, and that desire is formed through embodied practices rather than abstract ideas. That insight resonates deeply with the psalm’s vision of faith as longing oriented toward God’s presence and sustained through pilgrimage, ritual, and place. Like the pilgrims who are shaped by repeated journeys to Zion, Smith suggests that Christian formation happens through habits—shared worship, physical movement, communal prayer—that train our loves over time. Desiring the Kingdom helps seminarians see that Psalm 84 is not merely expressive poetry but a serious theological claim: the church forms faith by shaping desire, and it does so through concrete, bodily practices that carry us, again and again, into the life of God.

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