March 5/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. ~ Ps. 86.1-2
It isn’t easy to come right out and call ourselves poor and needy, is it? From an early age, we have been schooled by our culture to present ourselves as strong and capable, independent and autonomous. Yet in the face of a persistent pandemic, we have been forced to reckon with real limitations on our ability to control events. Schools close and open and close again, masks go on and off and on again, and my goodness, politics at every level of government absolutely rides off the rails. Our sense of agency and our confidence that we can manage our lives — indeed, that our lives are even manageable — are under pressure; no wonder we are anxious and uncertain. “It is very difficult,” observes Sister Ruth Burrows, an English Carmelite nun, “for us humans to accept our basic condition of poverty and yet it presses upon us from all sides. We cannot control our world; we are at the mercy of others and of what often seems a blind fate.” From the depths of such poverty and need rises the cry to God: “incline your ear, O Lord.” This humble, heart-worn plea is an acknowledgment that we need him, that we cannot make our way through the world on our own. The past two years have imposed hardship and suffering for all of us — unevenly, for sure, but none of us has escaped COVID’s impacts. Perhaps when the crisis is truly over, when the disease changes its prefix from pan- to en-demic, when we can look back and make sense of it , we will find an unexpected gift coming out of this time: an acknowledgment of our dependence on God, and a deep realization that trusting in him is the only way through.
Gracious God, May we who are poor and needy offer our prayers to you, trusting not in our own righteousness but in your boundless mercy. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030522.cfm
To hear the Choir of Norwich Cathedral sing “Bow Down Thine Ear O Lord and Hear Me,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbjmH7i97vI
