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On the cross we hear Jesus cry out in the words of Psalm 22, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
What seemingly shocking words from the lips of Jesus. How can this be so? What is happening here? We never could have imagined that it would be this way. Jesus the God man crying out in desolation and abandonment. Bewilderment and confusion invades us as we hear His painful cry ringing in our ears. How absurd, how senseless, is this the end for us too are we now doomed? Throughout His life there were peak moments when he revealed His unique and extraordinary relationship with the God, He called His Father, using the word Abba (Mk.14:36) that expressed the depth of intimacy. “No one knows the Son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son (Matt. 11:27),” “I and the Father are one” (Jn.10:30), “to have seen me is to have seen the Father” (Jn.14:9) – no one ever dared to claim such intimacy with God before. And now we hear Him cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Could it be possible? Is it true? Is everything He said about his relationship with His God, His Abba, all mere words, fantasy, the language of poetry and wishful thinking now crossed out as he feels the full blast of our human weakness, reduced to human rubble and annihilation. All we can say to him is, now you know, now you know what it is like, now you cry as we cry, why God, why have you left me? What have I done to deserve this? Am I being punished for my sins? Why did you let it happen? That desolate cry that echoes down the corridors of human existence since its beginning. But is it not at this moment more than any other moment in the life of Jesus that we can really identify with Him and He with us? Is it not here that he is most like us, that we are really one with him? We have reached a very profound moment in the life of Jesus and in the life of humankind, a moment when “the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:25). When is it that we receive real comfort and consolation? Is it when someone tells us everything will be alright, we’ll get over it? No, not really. Is it when someone tells us what we should do, what course of action to take or gives us words of advice or encouragement? Maybe. But far more important than anything anybody can do or say is simply, very simply the presence of one who cares. Someone whose attitude is, ‘I don’t know what to say or do but I’ll stay here with you, I won’t run away because I can’t stomach what is happening to you”, they may never put it into words, but silently remain present to and with us. The person who in a very real sense shares our burden, our pain, that’s the kind of presence that somehow give us new life, new vitality, new hope to pick up the pieces and go on. It is reflected in the kind of things we say when we look back at a time of crisis, ‘I’ll never forget so and so they stood by me and listened to me through thick and thin when I had no one to turn to. This is but a pale reflection of what God does for us in Jesus. Our God is not a vague, distant god with a weird sense of humour who delights in our distress and demands his pound of flesh for our sins. He is not a God of revenge, but a God who is so moved, so touched by our sorry plight, even our resistance to His Love that he comes close so close that in Jesus He experiences our experience of desolation and abandonment. The mystery of His Love is not that He takes away all our questions or our pain right now, but that first and foremost His desire is to be with us and to fill us with his presence. Jesus experiences our ultimate and most terrifying fear, the fear of being totally abandoned; a fear that reaches its greatest intensity when we feel broken, helpless and useless. Jesus as He cries out from the cross feels abandoned but the reality of this sacred moment is that the Father’s Love is truly present, though hidden, in the depth of his suffering planting seeds of new life that will burst forth into Resurrection. Even though we may feel forgotten by God even as we try to follow Him and live by His ways, we can never be alone or abandoned because of the Crucified and Risen Jesus. In our darkest moments, in the midst of our deepest questions, Jesus cries out with us and God enters our desolation and begins to do in us what he has done in Jesus. Psalm 22 begins with that cry of abandonment and distress but it becomes a Psalm of faith and trust in God – “In you our fathers put their trust….In you they trusted and never in vain….Do not leave me alone in my distress; come close there is no one to help….my strength, make haste to help me!.... those who seek the Lord will praise him….may your hearts live for ever!…..All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord.”
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Every Wednesday in Lent, a member of the Tobar Mhuire Team will offer a reflection on the week's Psalm. For the latest entry visit this page onWednesday or register to have the weekly reflection emailed
to you. Registration at this link: http://eepurl.com/vbvH1. “When the Lord delivered Zion from bondage, it seemed like a dream.” - Psalm 126:1 Have you ever been in a high stress situation? An emergency? A time where everything seems to slow down, and you have to focus? Where everything is crashing down around you, but somehow you make it? You survive. You figure it out. You are delivered. Then you look back on the impossibility of the situation, and feels like a dream. You wake up, and you’re okay, and you laugh because it felt so intense and high pressure at the time, but now you are free. The Gospel reading from John 8:1-11 is a prime example of one of these dream-like situations. A woman who was caught in adultery is thrown before Jesus. Jesus is then asked by the Pharisees to condemn her as the Law commands, and this is where the dream begins: Jesus simply begins writing in the dirt. We don’t know what he wrote, but we know he took a break in his writing to say, “If there is one of you who has not sinned let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Then he kept on writing until everyone left. The woman was left behind with no one to condemn her, and neither did Jesus. What I find so “dreamy” is how the details of the story are left out. There is no way to know what Jesus wrote. I imagine the story was used in early Christianity the same way it is now. We ask ourselves the question, “What do you think Jesus wrote?” Instead, a more important question might be, “What would Jesus write for you?” What would Jesus have to write on the ground to transform your condemning heart? Even if you are condemning yourself. Like this woman, we’ve all experienced a time where we were in trouble, and we thought salvation, freedom, peace, forgiveness, healing, insert-your-desire-here, etc. etc. was impossible, but then there was a miracle, and we look back with joy, humor, love, grace, and mercy. This is the picture that Psalm 126 brings to my mind. It’s a foreshadowing of what’s to come at the end of Holy Week. A message to keep it up. Now is the time to remember when you resurrected from an impossible situation, because another impossible situation is about to come--and just like the psalmist asserts, as loved children of God, we will all make it. “They go out they go out, full of tears, carrying seeds for the sowing: they come back, they come back, full of song, carrying their sheaves.” - Psalm 126:6 Every Wednesday in Lent, a member of the Tobar Mhuire Team will offer a reflection on the week's Psalm. For the latest entry visit this page onWednesday or register to have the weekly reflection emailed
to you. Registration at this link: http://eepurl.com/vbvH1. Psalm 32 A psalm of thanksgiving, rejoicing for the God who forgives sin once we quit playing around and denying we sin. Everything is restored in our relationship to God as soon as we get out of the trap of denial. I remember a priest saying some years ago that he had no problem with people who came to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and said they had no sins to confess. He used to say to them "Okay that will do for now. You've definitely told a lie and that is a sin to confess!"All we have to do is come clean with God. Long before Freud, the writer of Psalm 32 knew about the reality of guilt. In fact he saw more deeply than Sigmund the contours of the human heart, and the reality of sin which for him was a real and present danger. Sin for this psalmist is an objective fact that not only affects our relationship to God, but has a very negative effect on the human person, with real psychological and physical manifestations; loss of sleep, worry, anxiety, restlessness etc. He has insight into the vicousness of sin and its denial in robbing the human heart and human relationships of joy and peace. This is perfect psalm for our Lenten journey, learning the joy of being forgiven and being restored by our loving, merciful God. The God who not only is compassionate, but a real source of strength in trials and difficulties, including the sins that cling so easily. Neither is this mercy a one off event, as Paul of the Cross says, "Our sins are a drop in the ocean of God's love." Fr. Tom Scanlon, CP Every Wednesday in Lent, a member of the Tobar Mhuire Team will offer a reflection on the week's Psalm. For the latest entry visit this page on Wednesday or register to have the weekly reflection emailed to you. Registration at this link: http://eepurl.com/vbvH1.
Find the complete Psalm 103 here. Lent is traditionally the season in which our focus is on the need for repentance within our lives. It is a time when people are more open to acknowledge the need for reconciliation than at other times during the year, and of recognizing that the Lord indeed “forgives all our sins and heals all our illness.” Above the entrance to Dublin Castle can be seen the doomed roof of the Clock Tower and the Statue of Justice. The statue of Justice faces towards the Castle, prompting Dubliners to say that Justice had turned her back on the people and was more concerned with protecting the State. There have been times when as a Church and as a society we find ourselves more invested in protecting the “institution” than in addressing the injustice that was visited upon people, and particularly children. The scales represent the weight of the arguments for the prosecution and for the defence. I assume this is where the phrase "weighting up the evidence" comes from. In the centre of each of the scales of Justice in Dublin Castle, a hole has been drilled. Apparently at one time, rainwater built up within the scales and tilted them. Strangely the scales tilted towards the tax office in the Castle Square rather than towards the people in the city. Some may view this as symbolic of how society seems unequally tilted in favour of the status quo and institutions rather than on the side of the people, and particularly those people most in need. Holes had to drilled into the scales to keep the balance and to ensure that the scales don't physically tilt upsetting the equilibrium. Where would we be if the equilibrium of society or the Church was unbalanced by the needs of the people! The picture of God’s love and forgiveness presented in the Psalm is a far cry from the oft quoted line “call sin a sin.” This psalm presents a more compassionate understanding of the weakness within all our lives. The “forgiveness of sins and the healing of illnesses” recognizes that sin is not just the things we do or fail to do; sin is not just about breaking laws; it is a fundamental assertion that sin hurts; that sin is about hearts being broken more than it is about laws being broken. Maybe a more compassionate understanding of the hurts and weaknesses we all have would serve us better than rushing to label people as “sinners.” We are reminded that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is a sacrament of “forgiveness and healing” – forgiveness for the wrongs we have done, and healing for the hearts that have been broken. The God within this psalm is not standing with a set of scales to weigh up our sins against our good deeds. This is a God who both “knows how we are formed” and who “remembers we are dust.” This is a God who knows us in the sacred space of out innermost being. He does not judge nor “treat us as our sins deserve”, but He takes the initiative in rushing towards us with his compassion and tenderness. No wonder the psalmist is inspired to shout out the praises of God! Brian McKee, Retreat Director |
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