Praying with the Psalms

Homily for Tuesday of the First Week in Lent

The words that link the two readings together today are “God’s will.” The prophet Isaiah delivers an oracle to the exiles of the Babylonian captivity which captures the power of the Word of God as it goes forth from the mouth of God and does not return until it has accomplished God’s will. When Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray, part of that prayer includes the phrase “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

However, while I was praying with the readings for today, I could not escape my own fascination with Psalm 34 which, I have to admit, is probably my favorite psalm from the Book of Psalms. There was a time in my life when I prayed these words every day. When I was first diagnosed with Ménière’s Disease which threatened to rob me of my hearing, I admit that I was fearful. Around that time, the group of friars that was about to make solemn profession asked me to be the soloist for the responsorial psalm. They gave me the music and the text so that I would be able to practice before the big day. Although the entire psalm offers much wisdom, the line that captivated me was this: “I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.” At the time, my spiritual director was Father Nicholas Lohkamp, OFM, a Franciscan friar from the St. John the Baptist Province. The next time I visited him, I shared with him my experience of singing this psalm. It was a very fruitful session.

Fear, like every human emotion, is not easily controlled. In fact, the only really effective way to deal with fear is to openly admit that one is fearful. Once one has admitted to God that he or she is fearful, God can respond by walking with you through the fear. “I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.” I found myself using that line as a mantra as I went through my day, constantly reminding myself that God was with me in my fear. Gradually, my fear diminished to the point that I could easily deal with it whenever it reared its ugly face.

This is the wisdom of the psalms. A wise woman once described the psalms as a spiritual clothesline like the ones that are found in the backyard upon which the housewife would hang the clothes to dry. Because the psalms deal with almost every human emotion, we can simply hang our emotions on the psalm clothesline and with God’s help wait for them to dry and lose their power.