April 5/Wednesday of Holy Week
Insult has broken my heart, and I am weak, I looked for sympathy, but there was none;
for consolers, not one could I find.
But I am lowly and in pain; let your salvation, O God, protect me.
I will praise the name of God in song, and I will glorify him with thanksgiving. ~ Ps 69.21, 29, 31
Sometimes, life just gets to be too much, doesn’t it? A dear friend dies unexpectedly. A hoped-for job fails to come through. A troubled relationship falls definitively apart. And we are alone in our misfortune. As we skirt the edge of isolation and hopelessness, a good cry can work wonders. That is what the psalmist does in today’s verses. Weak, alone, “lowly and in pain,” he neither “sucks it up” nor blames others. He simply voices his lament in the equivalent of a good cry. And as he utters his pain and isolation aloud, he is able to make what some Psalms scholars call a “saving turn,” the mood swing that often occurs in psalms of lament. In the midst of his suffering, our ancient singer holds onto the hope that God is with him and will ultimately wipe away his tears, bind up his wounds. The nineteenth-century British Jesuit and poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, knew the bleakness that can afflict human lives. His “terrible sonnets” give voice to its depths: “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,/More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring./ Comforter, where, where is your comforting?” But comfort is at hand: as lamentation echoes through the verses of the psalm, the LORD hears, and answers, and the psalmist’s wailing is transmuted into a song of praise. If we, too, can place our pangs and forepangs in the wide and merciful embrace of God, and put our sufferings before the One who loves us unwaveringly, then we, too, will find consolation. For as we cry out from the bleakness of our lives and the anguish of our souls, we will come to know that he is with us, comforting us, even in our darkest hours.
O God of the Paschal mystery, Touch me with your grace and lift me out of my suffering into the joy of your salvation. Amen.
To hear the Choir of Gloucester Cathedral chant Psalm 69, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPwcmsRzPlk
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040523.cfm
