Awake! Why do you sleep, O Lord?
Rise up! Do not reject us forever!
Why do you hide your face;
why forget our pain and misery?
For our soul has been humiliated in the dust;
our belly is pressed to the earth.
Rise up, help us!
Redeem us in your mercy. (Psalm 44:24-27 NABRE)
Sometimes it seems God abandons us to tragedy, loss, or suffering.
In Psalm 44, God has abandoned Israel to defeat and humiliation. They struggle with being God’s special people amid divine silence; yet they continue to pray.*
And the words of Jesus on the cross betray the same sense that the Father left him alone. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) Even this was a prayer.
We will always struggle when real pain overwhelms us. Yet the Spirit of God remains with us, within us, at all times, even in the confusion and emptiness of our moments of deepest misery. And we continue to pray.
Today, I will pray that I never experience suffering so great that I forget the real presence of God's Spirit within me.
Saint Gregory Nazianzen, who knew that holiness is always the way of the cross, pray for us.
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