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Psalm 22 and the Prayer of Christ from the Cross

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  Last Saturday, following a conference on the last seven words of Christ, a few retreatants asked about these words.  They wanted to know whether Jesus actually felt abandonned.  They had heard that the reason he recited the first words of Psalm 22 was not really to express his own personal feelings as much as to reassure his disciples that God would be victorious even in the face of the cross. 

To hold this, however, is to make a facade out of the whole passion of the Lord.  It is true that the words of Jesus are meant to reassure us.   Yet to hold that he did not actually feel what they suggest makes the cross far too abstact and intellectually acceptable.   For those who want to begin to pray like Jesus, we must realize that he never said anything he did not fully mean.  When he said these words, he was truly disclosing his own agony.  Only when we attend to the real anguish behind these words can we find the courage to pray when we too feel abandoned.  To understand the rest of this post, I recommend actually praying this psalm attending to the tension between the evil that is experienced and the faith which adheres to the truth.

Psalm 22 contains two movements of the heart that seem completely contrary to one another, an awareness of overwhelming wickedeness and of the faithfullness of God which seems impossible to sustain.   In the beginning of the psalm, a man ravished to death with holes torn in his hands and feet is complaining to God because God does not seem present or mindful of his plight.   He is not only abandoned by God but also surrounded by enemies who have frightened, overpowered and consumed him – dogs, bulls and lions.   His clothes have been stripped off and stolen, the object of a game.  He is completely vulnerable with no one to protect him.   This is what he experiences and this is what others see as his actual situation.   This experience is not the last word.   Though he feels completely forsaken, he chooses to praise the Lord and to believe in his goodness.  This second movement of heart seems completely discongruous with what has actually happened to him.   How is it possible to believe that God is mindful of “the affliction of the afflicted” when He seems so absent in the face of great suffering?

Those who do not believe that Jesus actually suffered this tension know very little about the mystery of the Cross or the power of the Christian faith.   It is the cross and only the all too dirty bloody mess of the cross that creates the spiritual space by which true friendship with God is established.   It is only because Jesus knows what the absence of God truly is that He is able to reveal the glory of the Father to those who also suffer this absence.  

What is most difficult about human suffering is not the physical or even psychological pain, but most of all the awareness that suffering renders life meaningless.  There are those moments when our hearts are completely gripped by the crushing discovery that there is no human or natural reason to hope, not only for oneself, but especially for all those one loves the most.  I cannot help but think that when Jesus began to pray Psalm 22, the anguish He felt included the knowledge that all those who would follow Him would have to undergo the same overwhelming sense he was drinking in at that moment:  like Him, as they struggled to cling to the Father, they would feel that their own prayers were rejected, that their own faith was without purpose.

Here is the reality.  The abyss of human misery, an abyss we will inevitably fall into as we approach the reality of our own death, involves a kind of rejection that the Lord suffers with us.   It is when we feel most abandoned by God in our efforts to love Him and those entrusted to us that we are most intimate with Him in this life.  Such suffering love is always redemptive, especially when it is rejected and despised.  The persecution of such faith opens up deep caverns in the human heart through which God’s love can flow into the world, if we remain faithful in believing in him.  The reality is, loving faith in the Lord does not take away suffering or the experience of abandonment.   Instead, it transforms it, endows it with meaning beyong what is natural, even beyond this life. 

The cross is a place of hope, the place of encountering God, not only because Jesus indicated that this was the case, but because He suffered the absence of the Father for us and with us, opening up a purpose and meaning for each of us which only faithfilled love can know.  The cross is the place where the absence of God and faith in Him collide so that God’s power might be revealed.   It is the divine power which discloses itself only in the midst of suffering that real hope can be invincibly based.   By this hope, the hope that flows from from the side of Christ, we find the courage to pick up our cross and follow the Lord.  Jesus knew, even in the face of his own experience, that God is mindful of the affliction of the afflicted.  By becoming completely one with him in his death, we, members of his Body, “proclaim His deliverance to a people yet unborn.”

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The Sign of the Cross

In an earlier post, I shared a little about the Sign of the Cross. (See http://beginningtopray.blogspot.com/2009/03/sign-of-cross.html)

Because it is so important and so overlooked, I would like to return to this theme again. From ancient times, Christians have blessed themselves with the Sign of the Cross. In the West, this is done by touching with the fingers of one’s open right hand the forehead, then just below the chest, then the left shoulder and finally the right shoulder before folding one’s hands in prayer. This action is accompanied with the words, “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Why does prayer start with this action in Roman Catholic spirituality? It is an action that can renew the grace given to us at baptism, if we make this action in faith. Let me explain.

When we are baptized, we are always baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is what Jesus commanded the disciples to do — and he never commanded them to do anything other than act in the authority and power of God. Whenever something is done in the Name of God one is claiming to something from God, by his authority and in his power. This is precisely what a minister of baptism claims to be doing when he baptizes in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He is not acting on his own human authority or giving something which is within the mere human ability. He is doing something in the power of the Holy Spirit, by the authority of Christ Jesus, for the glory and honor of the Father.

And what does Baptism do? Through this action we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit: He dwells in us as in a temple so that all the riches of Christ can be ours. This Gift is like a living waters constantly cleansing us and healing of our sins – not only those sins for which we ourselves are responsible, but also the original sin that we inherited from our forefathers. This Gift is like a pillar of cloud hiding us from those spiritual powers and principalities which had once captured us and robbed us of our true freedom. This Gift is a consuming fire which burns up the selfish, arrogant and prideful impulses which characterized our former way of life.

By faith and baptism, the Lord and Giver of Life always comes in unrepeatable ways giving more and more new divine life, moving us in ever new and unimaginable ways to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God. His living presence radically identifies us with Christ Jesus whenever we permit him to. At each moment, He is ever ready to join us to Christ’s death that we might rise with Him through his resurrection.

The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal or indifferent guest within our hearts. He never runs out of room because He constantly enlarges our hearts: purifying them, ordering them, and expanding them. His fire and light makes us burn to love God and our brothers and sisters with a love greater than any limited natural love. He deifies us, makes us partakers of the divine nature, so that we love with the love of God. He also respects us – and will only do what we permit Him to.

But He is never passive. He is ever alive, ever ready to increase whenever we say yes to Him in faith. The more we say yes, the more He is there to help us – even when all seems dark and lost this Divine Presence is with us in our hearts. If we are not to drown in our own weakness, the constant attacks of the Evil One, and in the anxieties and fears of the world, we must cling to the Spirit’s presence like the shipwrecked cling to life-preservers. We must cleave to His Presence, hold firm to it, believe in it, stand fast in it. Yet, our own frail humanity is always forgetting, always letting go to cling to things we think more firm. But they are an illusion. We can only cleave to the Presence of God in our hearts through the strength and the certitude that He alone provides.

This is where the Sign of the Cross comes in. When we make the Sign of the Cross, it is a sign that we are choosing to cling to the Living God who dwells in us through the Gift of the Holy Spirit. Making this sign can actually be a moment of actual grace in which the promises of faith made at our baptism are renewed and the Gift of God remembered. And with the renewal of our faith, the Lord grants us a new strength to hold fast, a certitude and confidence that ever comes from Him.

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The Sign of the Cross

No one knows how old this sign really is. It may well go back to the apostles. Jean Danielou discusses its origins in The Bible and the Liturgy. Suffice to say that for Catholics, prayer begins and ends with this sign of blessing. This sign is where one traces the cross from head to gut, from left shoulder to right shoulder while declaring that the blessing is given in the name of the revealed Trinity. This blessing is entrusted to us before our baptism and traced on our foreheads. As a blessing, it confers identity and mission – whenever we make this sign, we renew our awareness of who we are and the great purpose that God has for us.

The sign itself recalls what Christ has done for us: he died for us and gave his life for our sakes. The death of Christ for our sakes is a dynamic gift, a supreme value, evoking a response of total faith, of conversion to God. Conversion involves a certain kind of death, and a new kind of life: we must die to what naturally motivates us so that we may be moved by God alone.

In addition to the physical sign, we bind ourselves in the name of the Triune God by declaring Him the very source of the blessing. By this declaration, we recall that God has given himself to us, that his very presence lives in our hearts. At the same time, these words recall our baptismal promises. In these promises, we pledge our whole lives to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This pledge means that we live for the Trinity, that this communion of love has the ultimate call on our existence, that it is the final purpose of our life.

Some are a little squeamish over making such a sign – the sign in fact is an act of surrendering to God the whole of our lives. But for most Christians, especially the persecuted and those who are facing death, this sign is an occasion of hope and a source of strength. For them, there is no other sign which is worthy of Christian prayer. It is the sign of their forefathers – of countless men and women who courageously accepted every trial, persecution, rejection, imprisonment, torture and even death. When we make this sign, we also join ourselves to these holy men and women who went before us — we enjoy a certain solidarity with them in their sacrfice to God. Their complete trust in God all the way to the end helps us to see that God Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is worthy of the whole of our lives and the depths of our hearts. Thus, we too find the courage to accept this blessing and to stand firm in our faith.

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