Wednesday, April 8

Manresa Moment: Wednesday of Holy Week, April 8

Layla Karst, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Theological Studies, invites us to reflect on the voice of lament and to give expression to our own suffering and hope.

Before you begin, gather some simple materials with which to write: a journal or notebook, or even plain paper and pencil. Take a few moments to clear your mind and still your body before continuing below.

I. Reflection

Holy Week begins each year with waving palm branches and the proclamation of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, a precursor to our Easter celebration seven days later in a liturgy marked by holy fire and holy water, by singing and storytelling, by a eucharistic feast and the proclamation of Christ’s triumph over death. But during Holy Week, these liturgical bookends of praise are suffused with the suffering, the anguish, the lament that occupies the space between them. The gospel readings of the daily mass tell a story of progressive abandonment and isolation—Jesus is abandoned by the political and religious leaders of his community, by the crowds who followed him and welcomed him into Jerusalem, by his friends who had promised never to desert him, and even by God. As Jesus’ lifeless body was laid in the tomb and the stone rolled across, even the women who had been faithful to the end, abandoned him to the grave. If the gospels provide a narrative of lament, the psalms of this week’s liturgies provide the human voice of lament, flung in outrage and grief at God until they escape even the very lips of Jesus on the cross.

The voice of lament in holy week seems especially poignant this year when our liturgies are disrupted by quarantines and social distancing. Instead of gathering to wave our palm branches, many simply affixed them to their doors. In doing so, this symbol of praise also marked our grief at not being together. The shutdown of schools and business has revealed the economic precariousness in which so many people live all the time. Our efforts to save lives by staying at home have threatened the livelihoods of so many who were struggling before the illness hit and many more who may have imagined themselves secure.  Meanwhile, the virus itself does not distinguish between rich and poor, young and old. Our hospitals fill with the sick, people are dying alone, and we don’t have places to put the bodies. A stunning photo from a church in Italy revealed coffins lining the aisles between empty pews. Even mourning and burying the dead has become a challenge.

The ancient prayer of lament is at the heart of holy week. It gives voice to those who are sick, those deprived of dignity, those who have died, and it places them in our midst. Theologian Elizabeth Johnson writes that lament “cries to heaven for justice, for relief, at least for explanation, which is never forthcoming.”[1] The voice of lament is curiously absent from our liturgical prayer most of the year, but enters in a powerful way during this most holy of weeks to infuse our praise. At the center of the Paschal mystery, praise and lament go hand in hand. Johnson again writes,

In the face of this suffering, the church needs to lament, ringing out complaint to God’s face, wrestling with the holy name, dethroning traditional pat answers, and looking anew amid the defeated for God…When the tragically dead are remembered in the context of Christian faith, the cross of Jesus introduces a hope that transforms these raw depths of unreason and suffering into doxology, only now the praise is forever imbued with the knowledge of unimaginable pain and the darkness of hope against hope. That which is remembered in grief can be redeemed, made whole, through the promise of the Spirit’s new creation.[2]

[1] Elizabeth Johnson. Friends of God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints (New York: Continuum, 2005), 248.

[2] Elizabeth Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 249.

II. Spiritual practice: Writing a Psalm of Lament

The psalmists not only give voice to lament, they teach us how to pray.
Read today’s psalm (left column) and then write your own psalm of lament to lift in prayer to God. 

(On mobile? Click here to view the table in a new window.) 

If you feel moved, pray with your psalm of lament this Holy Week. If you want us to pray it with you, share it with us through our Prayer Submissions form.

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