February 26/Second Monday of Lent
May your compassion quickly come to us, for we are brought very low.
Let the prisoners’ sighing come before you;
with your great power free those doomed to death. ~ Ps 79.8, 13
“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,” begins the well-known African-American spiritual. It would be an apt title for Psalm 79, which is deeply imbued with sadness and remorse. Who among us has not felt stuck in such a low place of pain or anxiety? Sometimes we find ourselves sinking so far down that we can barely muster the energy to ask for help. “May your compassion quickly come to us,” the psalmist cries, “for we are brought very low.” (The adverb “quickly” underscores the desperation of the downcast speaker, whose whispered “very low” is unbearably poignant). Then, as sometimes happens when we are brought very low, we sink lower still. Shackled in our sadness, we groan aloud (the English “sighing” is far too gentle a word here), and convince ourselves that there is no way out, that we are “doomed to death.” Everyone at some point is brought down in life, sometimes precipitously, sometimes in a long slow slide. When we cry out our pain and troubles to God and ask for his mercy (that same maternal compassion that we met with in Psalm 51), then lament can yield to thanksgiving, and sorrow turn into joy. In the spiritual, the baleful expressions of suffering resolve themselves in a phrase of praise, and the stanza concludes, “Glory, hallelujah!” For us, too, the somber notes of lamentation are modulated into the joy of everlasting praise for God’s transformational forgiveness. That’s something to sing about.
O God who unbinds prisoners and lifts the downtrodden, Dispatch your help to me when I cry to you from the low places. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/022618.cfm
To hear Paul Robeson sing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, click here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EJSkJlh_fg
