In place of New Year’s resolutions (which usually fail!) some have the custom of choosing a word, just one word, to accompany and inspire them through the year.
On January 1, 2025, I felt moved to choose praise as my word for the year. I had no idea where it would lead me. I just knew I felt deficient in the art of praise, and I wanted to learn more. Not just about praise, I wanted to learn to do it. This was my prayer.
Praise is different from worship. To worship is to bow down, while to praise is to lift up or exalt. Scripture commands us to do both. I know how to worship God, but when it comes to praise—not just paying compliments, but extravagant, full-on, utterly abandoned celebration of my Lord—somehow I have felt blocked.
For one thing, I’ve had unresolved questions. For instance, why does God want to be praised? If I were God, would I want it? Wouldn’t I just want to be friends with my creatures? And so on. Stupid stuff.
Worship, yes. Love, yes. Obdience, yes. But somehow praise had remained a mystery to me.
Until I went to Assisi, home of St. Francis. There my questions were answered. At least, there I learned that praise cannot be rationally explained or figured out. The only way to understand praise is to praise. It’s like drinking champagne. First you have to take out the cork.
Two olive wood Tau crosses I brought from Assisi. Tau, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is associated with St Francis because it’s how he typically signed his name.
I went to Italy in May with a tour called “Martyrs, Monks, and Mystics,” sponsored by PilgrimWay and my old school Regent College. A few weeks before the trip, after being signed up for months, I suddenly got cold feet and cancelled. Then, the very next day, something happened.
While reading my morning devotional book, 2000 Years of Prayer, it so happened I came to a prayer of St. Francis, “The Praises of the Most High” (Laudi di Dio Altissimo). As I read these words, suddenly the top of my head came off and I felt something of what Francis himself might have felt when he wrote them. The cork came out of my bottle and I was extravagantly praising God! (and this, I might add, without the aid of either music or tongues, which are not my gifts) Wow, God had answered my prayer and given me a gift of praise!
Francis’s great hymn, it turns out, is one of only two documents that still exist in the saint’s own handwriting. On the strength of this experience, with all my heart I wanted to go to Assisi to see this piece of parchment. And so I rushed to the phone and signed up again for the tour.
The parchment in Assisi bearing, on one side, St Francis’s hymn of praise, and on the other (showing) a blessing for his secretary Brother Leo. Note the Tau cross signature.
As it happened, my gift of praise was short-lived. A day or two after my great experience, once again I felt blocked. But I went to Assisi (along with Rome, Siena, and Florence) and I saw the famous parchment. Looking at it, I didn’t feel much. Frankly, at that point I was tired and over-stimulated, and it was just one more thing.
Not until I was on the plane going home did my bottle of champagne erupt. Full of tender memories of all I had seen and experienced over two weeks in Italy, throughout the entire return trip of over nine hours I was close to tears and found myself freely praising God. The block, I realized, was gone! The cork was out, and in the coming weeks it would stay out and the wine of praise would flow.
Reflecting on my time in Italy, I realize now that it was full of lessons in praise. To cite just one more example, near the end of the tour we were in Florence at the Opera Duomo Museum. We were viewing “The Cantoria,” ten marble relief panels by Luca della Robbia, illustrating Psalm 150. At that point I was too sated with great art to take in anything else, when Carolyn Hindmarsh, one of our leaders, came up to me with wide eyes and said, “This is the Room of Praise!” Startled, suddenly I awoke and looked around with new eyes, and as I did, my heart filled with praise.
Two panels of Luca della Robia’s “Cantoria” series illustrating Psalm 150: “Drummers” and “Cymbalists.”
Praise, like fire, doesn’t just happen. It takes a spark to get it going. Francis’s hymn is a good spark, as are many of the Psalms (e.g. 100 and 150). Since returning from Italy, my main spark for praise has been Psalm 99:
The Lord reigns,
let the nations tremble;
He sits enthroned between the cherubim,
let the earth shake.
Great is the Lord in Zion;
He is exalted over all the nations.
Let them praise Your great and awesome name—
He is holy.
It’s worth noting that true praise is entirely directed to God Himself, not to the gifts He bestows (which is thanksgiving, an important but different sort of prayer) but to His own nature and character. That’s what is so marvelous about Francis’s hymn of praise: every line is purely concerned with who God is in Himself, this God whose very name is I Am. He is holy.
What has opening up to praise taught me? How has it changed me? Surprisingly, it’s been a further step in setting me free. Our whole problem with God is that we think that having to obey all His rules is going to limit our freedom, when the truth is just the opposite. What human being has ever been freer than St Francis while proclaiming his hymn of praise, or his even more famous Canticle of the Sun? This is precisely why we love Francis, because having given up absolutely everything, he is absolutely free. Barefoot, tatterdemalion, hugging lepers, preaching to birds, joyfully singing to sun and moon, stigmatized, he is utterly himself. And he invites us to join him.
He invites us to join him in being, not God ourselves (our usual self-centered mindset), but instead mere creatures of an awesome Creator. Having nothing, being nothing, except in Christ who is our all in all.
I’m still just halfway through my year of praise. I wonder what more I’ll discover? Last year, on January 1, 2024, the new word I adopted was not just one word but twelve, a kind of mantra. I found it in Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, and it goes, “I am nothing, I have nothing, and all I want is Jesus.” Ever since then I’ve repeated these words daily. At first I couldn’t say them wholeheartedly, but after a few months I could, and I think they became a stepping stone to praise.
To build a skyscraper requires a deep foundation. To build a heavenscraper, one must go deeper still, even into nothingness. Paradoxically, the further down we go, the higher we can ultimately be raised. For this is God’s purpose for us: As we praise Him, He will raise us, even to His own level, so as to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).
Italy is famous for its wines, but best of all is the champagne of Assisi. All praise to the Lord Almighty!
Thanks to Bronwyn Spilsbury for hosting our pilgrimage to Italy. Learn more about inspiring tours to Israel, Greece, Turkiye, and beyond at PilgrimWay.ca.
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