March 8/Saturday after Ash Wednesday
Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.
Preserve my life, for I am devoted to you; save your servant who trusts in you.
be gracious to me, O LORD, for to you do I cry all day long.
Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. ~ Ps. 86.1-4
Today, as we round out the first four days of this long penitential season — 10% of the way, for those who are counting — the psalmist offers an instruction manual for the six weeks ahead. If we are to commit ourselves to walking the way of the Lord, what are we to do? First, acknowledge our spiritual poverty and our neediness. We ask for God’s grace, beseeching the One who loves us with an abundant and unshakable love to hear our prayers. We place ourselves trustingly in God’s hands, surrendering (as much as we can) our human-born inclination to be the gods of our own lives. We strive to be faithful in prayer — if not crying to the LORD “all day long,” at least setting time aside to be in God’s presence at each day’s beginning and end, and in the moments of anxiety or sadness, joy or thanksgiving that we encounter during our waking hours. We praise, we confess, we thank, we ask. In all these modes of praying, as we lift our souls to God, we are expressing our hope and our trust in the Giver of all that is good. As twentieth-century priest, theologian, and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen observed, “If you pray in hope, all [your] concrete requests are mere ways of expressing your unlimited trust in him who fulfills all his promises, who holds out for you nothing but good, and who wants for himself nothing more than to share his goodness with you.” The road map for Lent, and for life, is before us: will we follow the route to the kingdom?
Lord of life and hope, Sanctify my neediness and hear me when I pray for perseverance and faithfulness on the road to you. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030825.cfm
To hear the Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, sing “Bow Down Thine Ear,” by Charles Wood, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVm3y246Tdc
