March 1/Second Monday of Lent
Let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low.
Let the groaning of the prisoners come before you;
with your great power preserve those doomed to die. ~ Ps 79.8, 11
The other day the local news featured a story about a man in a nearby town who sank into the mud up to his waist while trying to cross a median. The Fire Department raced to the rescue, deploying ropes and ladders to haul him to safety. The unexpected quagmire this man stumbled onto while doing something as ordinary as crossing a street seems an apt metaphor for our experience with the global pandemic over these past twelve months. We are brought very low, aren’t we? A year ago, there were flitting shadows of concern about a spreading virus. But most of us went about our lives as usual — lives that had peaks and valleys, to be sure, but lives that we were living out in a world that more or less made sense. Today, we are still struggling to adapt to a strangely muted existence, in which social interaction is attenuated, movement is circumscribed, and suffering is widely, if not always equitably, shared. We may feel ourselves sinking into a quagmire of worry, perhaps even despair. It is tempting at such times, when we are physically isolated and confined, when our lives are stilled by forces beyond our control, to let our hearts become isolated, our spirits locked down, and the voice of our prayer silenced. But in today’s psalm, groans of sorrow billow forth like clouds of incense as the entire community cries out for God’s compassion — the compassion that ancient Israel believed, as our beleaguered community today must believe, to be boundless and transcendent. Let us unmute ourselves and send forth our call for help, trusting that God will hear us and shower his abundant mercy upon our sorrowing world.
Lift our sinking spirits, O Lord of mercy, through your powerful love, and restore us to a place of wholeness and peace. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030121.cfm
To hear the Tallis Scholars sing “Remember not, O Lord God,” by Thomas Tallis (Ps 79) click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jVJLISh4TA
