Thursday, March 27: Jesus, Lover of My Soul

Written by Anna Petrin, Associate Professor of Liturgical and Sacramental Theology, Mount Angel Seminary, St. Benedict, OR

When and with what words can a person pray with honesty and faith “out of the depths”? And why should we practice speaking to God in such a time?

Since many of our shared cultural markers for expressing ideas about faith have to do with comfort, safety, and security, usually with an overtone of cheerfulness, it can be difficult to know how to pray when everything is hopelessly and irrevocably falling apart.

For some of us, we might even have the thought that perhaps we really shouldn’t “bother” God with this or that because maybe God is somehow too busy or it’s not really “that bad.” Worse yet, maybe there is the sneaking thought that we should keep God from our depths altogether untidy and sinful as they are.

And yet, the model of faithful prayers that we find in the Psalms includes not only an echo of the distant triumph song that steals upon our ears from the saints in heaven, but also the lamentations and supplications with which we cry aloud to God from the fierce strife of the day-to-day living while we wait with hope for all things to be made new.

The Psalms don’t hold back their depths from God. They help us to realize the fullness of God’s entry into the depths of despair, and they show us how to sow with tears while awaiting a harvest of gladness.

By his incarnation, Christ demonstrates for us in both word and action what it means to allow the God of creation to enter the depths of our own humanity. Christ weeps when he arrives at the tomb of Lazarus. Christ sweats great drops of blood in Gethsemani. And on the Cross, Christ cries out to the creator of heaven and earth in desperation: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Where does Christ learn to talk like this? From the prayers that the people of Israel had already been praying for hundreds of years. Jesus’ cry here echoes Psalm 22:1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from the words of my groaning?” And the psalmist doesn’t stop there; the lament goes on: “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night but find no rest.”

And this isn’t the only psalm that speaks so forthrightly to God about distress and disturbance. The people of Israel had long practiced honest lamentation! Psalm 130, among others, also echoes this theme: “Out of the depths I cry to you. Lord, hear my prayer! O let your ears attend to my plea!”

But there is a “flip side” of the Psalter, even the psalms of lamentation: an expression of trust and hope in the Lord. The situation of the Psalmist doesn’t always seem to change, but there isa hope in the God who saves that is woven into and out from the word of lament, surrounding the cry of desolation with a cry of trust.

Psalm 22, for example, makes a turn to trust: “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them.” Psalm 130 makes a similar turn, ending: “O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem.”

Lament is enfolded in trust. The depths of lamentation can be faced because of the heights of God’s loving provision and mercy. The Psalter offers to us a tradition of lamentation with trust, a tradition that was honored, honed, and handed on by God’s people Israel. And in Christ, our head, we learn to cry out to God by relying on that very tradition.