February 21/Saturday after Ash Wednesday
Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.
Preserve my life, for I am devoted to you;
save your servant who trusts in you. ~ Ps. 86.1-2
It isn’t easy to come right out and call ourselves poor and needy, is it? From an early age, we have been pressured by our culture to present ourselves as strong and capable, independent and autonomous. “I’ve got this,” we say proudly; no poor and needy are we! Yet every day we are forced to reckon with real limitations on our ability to control events. Unexpectedly intense weather events, violence in our cities, unprecedented levels of social-media-fueled outrage, and a political culture that sometimes feels as if it is riding off the rails. Our sense of agency and our confidence that we can manage our lives — indeed, that our lives are even manageable — are under pressure; no wonder we are anxious and uncertain. “It is very difficult,” observes Sister Ruth Burrows, an English Carmelite nun, “for us humans to accept our basic condition of poverty and yet it presses upon us from all sides. We cannot control our world; we are at the mercy of others and of what often seems a blind fate.” And yet we are not. From the depths of such existential need rises the cry to God: “incline your ear, O Lord.” This humble, heart-worn plea is an acknowledgment that we need God, that we cannot make our way through the world on our own. Over the past few years, I’ve been asked more than once how I approach the chaos and unpredictability of the world. My answer is almost always some variation of “I pray, a lot.” Being able to relinquish the illusion that we can control events bears with it the unexpected gifts of greater dependence on God and a deep realization that trusting in him is the only way through.
Gracious God, May we who are poor and needy offer our prayers to you, trusting not in our own righteousness but in your boundless mercy. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/022126.cfm
To hear the Choir of Gonville & Caius College (Cambridge) sing “Bow Down Thine Ear,” by Charles Wood, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVm3y246Tdc&list=RDTVm3y246Tdc&start_radio=1
