Naar U levende - Beurtzang naar psalm 25 = For You, The Living One - Antiphonal song from Psalm 25, 1978 - 1981

Oosterhuis' text, from Psalm 25, reflects on a God who appears to be absent, but whose presence not only lingers but is ubiquitous. The One Who is so far from us is One who enters Covenant with us, and now lives not embedded on tablets of stone but deep within our DNA, in living hearts of flesh and blood (Jeremiah 312:31-34). In its cultic history, the psalm may have been identified with the feast of the renewal of covenant, when it would have been reasonable to assume that both God and Israel had expectations of one another. This is the hope, the desire, of one who would otherwise be left desolate. We all harbor basic instincts, the highest of which is survival. Only by clinging to promises made on our behalf can we reach out to the One who fulfills them. In verse 3, we sing Anxious am I, give me space. The Dutch geef mij ruimte implies room to breathe, the opportunity to eventually come round to finding You.

Huijbers' melody is Omnis Spiritus, from Gregorian Psalm tone 7, in the Hypodorian mode. An antiphon for the liturgy of the Hours, it is sung at Lauds for the Dead, leading to Psalm 150, in praise of all that lives now praising God, all that has life and breath in one great song act of Al-El - lu - Yah. For Huijbers, this antiphon was reminiscent of that particular time when the soul may have left the body, but the aura still remains. In that mystical moment, a new stage of the journey begins. It is the transition beyond time. He chose it at appropriately matching Oosterhuis' text, fragmentary as the body which remains. The literary form of the psalm is divided into three sections. A series of petitions for God's guidance and forgiveness (vv. 1-7), leads to remarks about God's nature and attributes (vv. 8-14), and concludes with further expressions of reassurance and petitions for deliverance from unspecified trouble (vv. 15-22).

Juup van Beeck, fellow Amsterdam Jesuit of Huijbers and Oosterhuis, sketched all the original English translations of Oosterhuis’ Fifty Psalms in 1967, from which this text has been taken. Writing commentaries on each of them, he observed that these fragments are from an alphabetic psalm in the Wisdom Tradition, fusing together the major Old Testament themes into a unified spirituality. - Tony Barr