Abandonment of God

          The Scripture readings for Palm Sunday set the tone for the Journey through Holy Week each year.  They are so powerful.   But the Word that struck me this year was the Psalm that was cantered so well by our Sr. Stella Gough. It was Tim Manion’s Ps. 22, “My God, My God,” 1984, OCP edition. 

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

                                           (repeated after each verse)

All who see me laugh at me.

They shake their heads,

they shake their heads.

You trusted in God;

let God deliver you,

deliver you, if God loves you.

Closely, now they press me ‘round,

and pierce me through,

they pierce me through.

You trusted in God;

let God deliver you,

deliver you, if God loves you.

All is taken, all is lost.

Be near, my help.

I trusted in God,

May God deliver me;

O deliver me as you love me.

I long to stand in the midst of your people,

and sing your name.

Give God your laud,

Cry out your praises,

and hold fast,

hold fast to your Lord.

        This is surely a Psalm that Jesus had prayed and sweated with as the time grew closer to his suffering and death. He knew Abba’s presence always. And after realizing his mission following his baptism and trials in the desert, the words of the Prophets and the Psalmists spoke to him more and more directly of what was in store for him.  How did Jesus cope with the feeling of “Abandonment by Abba,” expressed in this Psalm?  It could only be through his great love and trust in Abba, and knowing of Abba’s great love for him.  “May God deliver me, O deliver me as you love me.”  And because of that great love between Father and Son, in the Psalmist’s words, he calls us to “Give God our praises, and hold fast to our God.” 

        When the hard times come, this psalm can be my prayer to put myself in the hands of the one who loves me, loves everyone through the most difficult times - on to the Glory time.

Sr. Mary Tewes, OSB