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.
