Lenten Meditation #3: The Penitential Psalms in the Pilgrimage of Lent
This is the third in a series of four Lenten meditations. The first is posted here and the second here.
The Penitential Psalms in the Pilgrimage of Lent
Christ Church, Lent 2021
Lenten Meditation # 3: “Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven” (Ps. 32. 1)
Snakes, shamrocks and shillelaghs don’t make much of an appearance in the Psalms even on the Eve of St. Patrick’s Day. And no green beer. Yet something of the poetic quality and sensibility of the voices of the Psalms is captured in the rich lyricism of Irish spirituality, especially in St. Patrick’s Breastplate with its Trinitarian and Christocentric intensity as wedded both to Scripture and to God’s creation. “I bind unto myself today, the strong name of the Trinity,” it begins, and proceeds to rehearse the creedal essentials of redemption:
by power of faith, Christ’s incarnation,
his baptism in the Jordan river,
his death on cross for my salvation,
his bursting from the spiced tomb,
his riding up the heavenly way,
his coming at the day of doom.
Then it turns to creation:
bind[ing] unto myself today,
the virtues of the starlit heaven,
the glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lightning free,
the whirling winds tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth, the deep salt sea
around the eternal rocks.
In all of the events of our world and day, prayer seeks God’s embracing love:
the power of God to hold and lead,
God’s eye to watch, God’s might to stay,
God’s ear to hearken to my need,
the wisdom of my God to teach,
God’s hand to guide, God’s shield to ward,
the word of God to give me speech,
God’s heavenly host to be my guard.
These wonderful words sound the depths of the praying soul to God in ways which echo and draw upon the Psalms.
The voices of the Penitential Psalms are the voices of our hearts in prayer. Our Lenten project is to pray these Psalms in our hearts on the Way of the Cross. We began with Psalm 51 as sounding in a symphony all the heart-notes of repentance, harmonizing into one heart-song all the voices of penitence. Psalm 6 was then considered as the entrance Psalm into the Penitential Psalms precisely as a Psalm of Confession in the moment of the soul’s deep sense of its own opposition to God’s righteousness, known and experienced as the wrath of God.