Modern people often feel lost because they live in a world without a mountain. Everything is flat, relative, without a summit. The psalm restores the vertical dimension of life—not to weigh you down, but to show that there is something higher, and that it is worth going there. And the most beautiful thing is this: at the top, what awaits is not loneliness, but a Face—emphasizes Fr. Piotr Kwiatek OFMCap, Capuchin friar, psychologist, and initiator of psalm therapy, in his commentary for the Heschel Center at the Catholic University of Lublin on Psalm 24, sung on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 21.
As Fr. Kwiatek notes, the world sometimes “seems too small for our fears and too big for our dreams. The earth keeps turning, and we often feel like strangers on it—like guests who have forgotten that they are co-owners of the house.” Psalm 24, however, “shows us who we really are and where we are truly going. There is something therapeutic about it—not the kind of therapy that numbs pain, but the kind that leads through pain to the source of meaning.”
The World Belongs to the Lord
“Modern people are accustomed to thinking in terms of possession,” writes the author of psalm therapy. “Cognitive psychology calls this the illusion of control—the belief that we are the captains of a ship sailing through chaos without a map. Meanwhile, the psalmist speaks plainly: someone else is the captain.” “Placing God as the foundation of reality is not an act of escape, but of wisdom. When you accept that the world does not revolve around you, you stop fighting it as if your life depended on it,” he adds.
“The earth is the Lord’s not because God takes it away from humanity, but because He gives it,” rabbinic tradition comments. “When you stop pretending to be God, you can finally begin to be yourself. Fear of loss, anxiety about the inevitable end, obsession with security—all of this grows out of the feeling that we must hold the world upright by ourselves. Psalm 24 breaks this vicious circle. It says: " Let go,” the Capuchin friar notes in his commentary for the Heschel Center at KUL.
An Ethics of the Interior Life
“Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place? One who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift his soul to what is false” (Ps 24:3–4). “The mountain of the Lord is a metaphor,” Fr. Kwiatek explains. “The rabbis taught that it is not so much a physical location as a state of the soul—a space where one meets God face to face. But to enter it, certain conditions must be met. And these are not about ritual perfection, but about the integrity of one’s life.”
“Hands refer to action—what we do (a life without harm). The heart refers to intention—what we desire (an inner world that does not lie). A soul that does not cling to vanity is a person who does not fall into the illusion that money, power, or fame can fulfill them. A person who is inwardly integrated does not pretend to be someone else and does not wear masks that exhaust more than they protect,” the Capuchin friar emphasizes.
A Generation of Seekers – The Hope of Community
“Seeking God is not a solitary project. It is a shared journey. In Jewish tradition, the expression ‘to seek the face’ (Hebrew darash panim) meant far more than private devotion. It meant entering into a face-to-face relationship,” we read in Fr. Piotr Kwiatek’s commentary on Psalm 24.
As the author of Psalm Therapy points out, Jesus radically fulfilled the promises of Psalm 24. “He did not merely quote it; He created a new generation of seekers: the Twelve, the seventy-two, the crowds, and then the Church. And He left a promise: ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them’ (Mt 18:20),” Fr. Kwiatek writes.
The Capuchin friar notes that Christmas is not only “a commemoration of a Bethlehem night two thousand years ago. It is a continuous Incarnation. God has not stopped being born in the flesh. He is born in our bodies—fragile, tired, sometimes wounded. He is born in the Body we call the Church. He is born wherever two or three truly gather in His name—not merely alongside one another, but toward one another and toward Him.” “The Incarnation is the ultimate refusal to look away. God does not merely see—He enters our flesh, our time, our tears and our laughter,” he adds.
Not Ready-Made Answers, but Good Questions
“Psalm 24 does not offer ready-made answers; it asks good questions. Who shall ascend? Who shall stand? These are not rhetorical questions, but an invitation to self-examination. Is my life integrated or fragmented? Do I live in the illusion of control, or in the wisdom of gift?” asks Fr. Piotr Kwiatek. “The psalm frees us from the narcissistic burden of being the god of our own lives. But it does not leave us passive. It leads us upward—toward purity of heart, toward community, toward encounter. And this is where its therapeutic power lies: it unites transcendence with closeness, elevation with concreteness, demand with grace.”
In closing, Fr. Piotr writes that God does not have to be “sought alone. You do not have to climb by your own strength. He is already on the path, walking with you. And then the mountain ceases to be a sentence and becomes a promise.”
Piotr Kwiatek OFMCap – PhD in psychology, priest and religious of the Kraków Province of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. He completed a three-year Gestalt therapy program in Philadelphia (USA) and received training in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) at the Albert Ellis Institute in New York. He teaches positive interventions at SWPS University—studies recommended by the founder of positive psychology, Prof. Martin E. P. Seligman. Author of books from the Positive Psychology and Faith series, as well as Psalm Therapy and A Workbook for the Psalms. Creator of the free well-being app “Dobroteka 2.0.” More at: www.piotrkwiatek.com
Heschel Center, Catholic University of Lublin