Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s first reading (2 Kings 25:1-12) is about the destruction of Jerusalem (including the temple) and exile of the people from their land. The Responsorial Psalm that follows begins with the familiar verses, “By the streams of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. On the aspens of that land we hung up our harps….how could we sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land?” (137:1,2,4)
I am reminded of the song “On the Willows” from the musical Godspell based on that psalm of lament after the Babylonian exile. Maybe you’re familiar with it too. It evokes the grief and lament intended, expressed with its beautiful and haunting melody.
Sadly, there is so much to lament around the globe, including a sort of exile of countless numbers of people driven from their homes and homeland by war, violence and threats of violence, poverty, lack of adequate resources, the effects of climate change; the list goes on. Even if we haven’t yet personally been impacted by such events, there is much to lament and we may be tempted at times to “hang up our harps.”
Yet, I find there can be healing and beauty in music and singing that expresses our many emotions, including sadness and grief, even anger and lament as well as gratitude and joy. I so appreciate the gift of music and the psalms that give us the opportunity to liturgically express the full range of human emotion.
The full range of human emotion that reminds me of the words of St. Iranaeus (whose feast day is June 28): “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.”
Let us glorify God this day, this week, by fully embracing our humanity with all its emotions, through song, through prayer, through the grace of God.
—Eileen Miller