April 11/Fifth Friday of Lent
The breakers of death surged round about me, the destroying floods overwhelmed me;
The cords of the nether world enmeshed me, the snares of death overtook me.
In my distress I called upon the LORD and cried out to my God;
From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears. ~ Ps 18.4-6
It’s an old saying: “Whoever cannot pray should go to sea.” I can second this: the one time I actually experienced maritime peril was many years ago when, on a solo outing off the beach in our family’s doughty Sunfish, my young family watching from the shore, I capsized in the swells. As the sail filled with water and the waves billowed around me, I tried desperately – and failed repeatedly – to lever the boat upright. (As any Sunfish veteran knows, this is an arduous maneuver at best, even harder in billowy waves). In those moments I experienced panic, adrenaline, fear, and desperation — not unlike the feelings that our psalmist describes as he thrashes about in the breakers of death, the destroying floods. But one need not have been physically engulfed by the waves to know what it feels like to be drowning. We may struggle to keep our heads above the whitecaps of our lives: the unceasing demands of work, the sudden loss of a job or a home, seemingly intractable relationship difficulties, or just generalized anxiety about the future. As we feel ourselves going under — and because of our human pride, often not until we are about to go under — we cry out for the strong hand of God, acknowledging that he alone can save us. As the early twentieth-century French mystic Elisabeth Leseur observed, “I know that no cry, no desire, no call proceeding from the depths of our soul is lost, but all go to God and through Him to show who moved us to pray.” Perhaps the gift of rough seas is that they force us to cry out from those depths, trusting that God will indeed hear our prayer and lift us up out of our troubles with his loving mercy.
Lord God, creator of the earth and master of the deep, Accompany and protect me as I sail forth upon the uncertain seas of my life. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041125.cfm
To hear “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79oJWx3lxlU
