By Sr. Doreen, SSJD
Snoopy Cartoon – Screen Rant images
God of all our fear and sorrow, God who lives beyond our death
Hold us close through each tomorrow, love as near as every breath, love as near as every breath.
As we move into Lent this year, I have been pondering one of Marty Haugen’s hymns called “Tree of Life”. Each week in Lent I thought I would share a meditation on one of the 5 Sunday Lenten final stanzas that can be added to his hymn.
I thought perhaps it would be helpful to put these stanzas into context by sharing Marty’s whole hymn and so I have printed it below:
Tree of Life and awesome mystery, in your death we are reborn; though you die in all of history, still you rise with every morn, still your rise with every morn.
Seed that dies to rise in glory, may we see ourselves in you; if we learn to live your story we may die to rise anew, we may die to rise anew.
We remember truth once spoken, love passed on through act and word; every person lost and broken wears the body of our Lord, wears the body of our Lord.
Gentle Jesus, mighty Spirit, come inflame our hearts anew. We may all your joy inherit if we bear the cross with you, if we bear the cross with you.
Christ, you lead and we shall follow, stumbling though our steps may be; one with you in joy and sorrow, we the river you the sea, we the river you the sea
Light of life beyond conceiving mighty Spirit of our Lord; give new strength to our believing, give us faith to live your word, give us faith to live your word.
So today, the stanza added to the hymn for the fifth Sunday in Lent:
God of all our fear and sorrow, God who lives beyond our death
Hold us close through each tomorrow, love as near as every breath, love as near as every breath.
As I pondered this fifth stanza knowing the we were approaching holy week I found myself drawn to psalm 102, a psalm / prayer of someone in the midst of suffering, and how there is a stark honesty in the psalm. It made me remembered times in my own life when it was this psalm that helped me call out, from the deep pain, to God, asking, pleading for a return of God’s promised joy. In the message translation of this psalm, it is introduced as a prayer of one whose life is falling to pieces, and who lets God know just how bad it is. “God, listen! Listen to my prayer, listen to the pain in my cries. Don’t turn your back on me just when I need you so desperately. Pay attention! This is a cry for help! And hurry – this can’t wait!”
It is a psalm that perhaps could have been in the mind and heart of Jesus during the crucifixion – the suffering and the desolation mirrored in his words ‘why have you forsaken me’ and yet there is also that great sigh of relief and love when he also says ‘into your hands” … you have me held in your loving hands. Joy and sorrow mingle – they are not separate. There is much to ponder in this mingling. It resonates with so many scripture passages that tell us ‘To rejoice always’. I live in sorrow and yet I am always, even in sorrow, rejoicing. Pondering Jesus words from the Cross – forgiveness, you will be with me, mutual care, abandonment, thirst, triumph, and loving surrender – these are deep words leading us to riches beyond our imaging as we offer as a prayer to God this fifth stanza, God of all our fear and sorrow, God who lives beyond our death hold us close through each tomorrow, love as near as every breath, love as near as every breath.
It was the Venerable Catherine McAuley, Founder of the Sisters of Mercy who wrote: “This is your life, joys and sorrows mingled, one succeeding the other.” Pondering the psalm and these words I thought how true it is that no one avoids suffering in some way, it is part of being human. And yet in the midst of this, over and over again, we cry “O Lord here my prayer” in psalm 102. It is a play-by-play interchange of our longing and faith and God’s unwavering fidelity, God’s faithfulness and unconditional love and acceptance. Everything that comes to us from God is grace, freely given, everlasting … I have great plans for you, plans for your goodness.
One of the most poignant gifts as we come to and enter holy week is this mutual faithfulness – our undaunted faith and faithfulness, and God’s promises and undaunted faithfulness. It seems to me that this is where we all must stand in sorrow so that we may come, with Jesus, to the fullness of Resurrection grace, Resurrection Joy. And we will weep – weep tears of sadness and tears of joy.
Joan Chittister wrote in her book “For Everything a Season”: “There is a spirituality of weeping, however, that stretches life to its outside edges and give us a capacity for all its crannies, all its treasures. Those who live in holy anger know what it is to look at a wounded world and cry. Those who have cultivated humility and self-criticism know the pain of failing themselves and so can rise to even greater heights because their tears have made them whole. Those who live committed to honesty face the pain in life and do not flinch from it. … life becomes a place of honest assessment and humble achievements, of keen love and desperate losses. Life matters to those who weep. Life goes on from moment to moment with an eye to loss, a heart for change, and a soul that craves justice and joy with the passion of desert land for water.
As we come close to the profound mysteries of Holy Week, and enter with Jesus that final unfolding of life, seeing Jesus’s suffering being held close within God’s love, we know the we too are held within the love and heart of God, that the God of all our fears and sorrow takes and holds us near, holds us close through all our tomorrow.
William Blakes Poem: On Another’s Sorrow
Can I see another’s woe, and not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief, and not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear, and not feel my sorrow’s share?
Can a father weep his child weep, nor be with sorrow filled?
Can a mother sit and hear an infant groan, an infant fear?
No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!
And can God who smiles on all, hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird’s grief and care, hear the woes that infants bear …
And not sit beside the nest, pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near, weep tear on infant’s tear?
Oh no! never can it be! Never, can it be~
God doth joy to all: God becomes an infant small,
Think not that you can sigh a sigh, and your Maker is not by:
Think not you can weep a tear, and your Maker is not near.
Oh God give to us joy, that our grief may be destroyed:
Till our grief is fled and gone God sits by us and moans.
