Psalm 88

[aquohn]

As the particularly pious of you might know, the Psalm in Friday’s Compline is always Psalm 88:

Lord my God, I call for help by day;
I cry at night before you.
Let my prayer come into your presence.
O turn your ear to my cry.

For my soul is filled with evils;
my life is on the brink of the grave.
I am reckoned as one in the tomb;
I have reached the end of my strength,

Like one alone among the dead,
like the slain lying in their graves,
like those you remember no more,
cut off, as they are, from your hand.

You have laid me in the depths of the tomb,
in places that are dark, in the depths.
Your anger weighs down upon me;
I am drowned beneath your waves.

You have taken away my friends
and made me hateful in their sight.
Imprisoned, I cannot escape;
my eyes are sunken with grief.

I call to you, Lord, all the day long;
to you I stretch out my hands.
Will you work your wonders for the dead?
Will the shades stand and praise you?

Will your love be told in the grave
or your faithfulness among the dead?
Will your wonders be known in the dark
or your justice in the land of oblivion?

As for me, Lord, I call to you for help;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face?

Wretched, close to death from my youth,
I have borne your trials; I am numb.
Your fury has swept down upon me;
your terrors have utterly destroyed me.

They surround me all the day like a flood,
they assail me all together.
Friend and neighbor you have taken away:
my one companion is darkness.

Well, I’d prayed this psalm dozens of times before, but it was only last night that it struck me as particularly sublime and beautiful. The Psalm is a prayer of despair. The Psalmist is on his last legs; God has abandoned him, he is desperately praying for God to “turn [his] ear to [his] cry.” I mean, " Friend and neighbor you have taken away: my one companion is darkness." It doesn’t get more depressing than that.

And yet you still conclude with the Glory Be. Even when you feel like crying “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?”, you still proclaim, “Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto!” No matter how bad a state you’re in, no matter how much it feels like God isn’t there for you, you still give glory to God.

Isn’t there something so very beautiful about this sort of loyal sentiment, of obedience and reverence, no matter what? It brings to mind what someone once said: “Verumtamen non mea voluntas, sed tua fiat.” (Yet truly, let not my will, but yours, be done.)

Just sharing my thoughts