Psalm 122 - I Will Seek Your Good
I Will Seek Your Good
“I will seek your good.” Ps 122:9
Yesterday, the pilgrim was still on the road, walking to Jerusalem. The journey was sustained by God’s loving protection. In today’s psalm, the pilgrim has arrived at the city of God. The anxiety of dangerous travel has now been replaced by joy: “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’”
The word that carries this psalm is peace. Peace is not just the absence of conflict, but fullness. Security. Prosperity. Harmony. Unity. It is a life rightly ordered under God. Jerusalem is described as a city “bound firmly together” (v. 3). The idea here is that when the heart is ordered to God and to one another, the result is unity; the result is peace.
The Catechism reminds us that peace is the “tranquility of order” (CCC 2304). This is not a kind of passivity, but rather the right relationship one has with God and neighbor. This idea is made concrete when the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Christ the King. On that day, Psalm 122 is used as the responsorial psalm to proclaim that Christ does not reign through domination, but from the Cross, establishing a kingdom of peace.
Have you ever noticed the deep sense of calm when entering a church? There is a particular stillness that settles in the heart. I often find myself looking for the sanctuary lamp—the lighted candle near the tabernacle. It is a reminder that He is here, that He is present in the Blessed Sacrament. The King of Peace dwells here in the city.
The Catechism tells us that “the Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being.” Where Christ is present, there is peace. This peace is not sentimental. It does not deny suffering, but flows from the certainty that God dwells among us.
I love the ending of this psalm: “For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.” Peace is not only something to receive. Peace is something to build. To give. Saint Thomas Aquinas defines love as to will the good of the other (ST I–II, q. 26, a. 4). That is exactly what this verse expresses. Perhaps this is what Christ is calling us to today. With all the factions, grievances, and cliques that we experience each day, may our outward movement be one in which we seek the good of the other.
Saint Charles de Foucauld once desired to convert the whole Sahara. Yet before he could become a missionary to others, he underwent his own interior conversion. God transformed his heart. He no longer sought visible success; he desired to become a “universal brother.” In the hiddenness of the desert, he fulfilled this psalm. He sought the good of those before him. May we do the same for the sake of the house of the Lord our God.
© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.
Great message, Lawain..thanks so much!