Spring Rain and Buckets of Tears

All this snow the country is experiencing, soon it will turn to spring rains: swollen streams, filled reservoirs, rain barrels, buckets and wells. "April showers bring May flowers" the saying goes. The photo here is of a plastic garden bucket filled to the brim with spring rain. And in Psalm 39:12 the psalmist prays: 

O Lord, hear my prayer,

O Lord, turn your ear to my cry;

do not be deaf to my tears.

Life on this planet is a complicated often painful affair. The psalmist knows, and in three short bursts he calls out to God: Hear my prayer; turn your ear to my cry; don't be deaf to my tears. We're not strangers to God; our lives matter. The psalmist seems to understand that we're in a partnership with God, and so he's confident in calling out with his three requests, as if to say: "Hey, I'm over here; don't forget me." We all know that place.

But how deep the psalmist's pain must be - he calls his prayer a cry. We heard this before in Psalm 5:3: Attend to the sound of my cries, my King and my God.

Don't be deaf to my tears! These are loud, sobbing tears. God doesn't need the reminder to pay attention of course, but we feel the need to express the grief and pain with the attendant questions: Am I alone in this? Is there a remedy? Will I feel this way forever?

Some people hold in tears, even for a life time. "You need a good cry" someone might say, or, "You've got buckets of tears inside."  An old wound, abuse, rejection, self-hatred, betrayal, loneliness, sickness, exploitation, loss, failure. We might put a bucket out in the yard where it will fill with rain these next spring weeks - a Lenten invitation to acknowledge the tears, (they are actually a healing gift) and to bring them to this psalm verse.

Archbishop Anthony Bloom wrote: "Don't pray until you feel something." Well, there you have it.

"Let the priests weep between the porch and the altar." Joel 2:17

IT'S SAID THAT WOMEN cry on average fifty times a year while men cry ten times annually. So maybe the Prophet Joel was on to something here when he said, "Let the priests weep between the porch and the altar of the temple." Pope Francis recently suggested that priests pray for the gift of tears and that a priest who can no longer cry has failed. 

But weep about what? There are three kinds of tears: the tears that keep our eyes lubricated, the tears that wash our eyes from irritants like onion and dirt, and the tears that express deep emotion. 

It took 600 years to build the cathedral at Cologne, Germany which was hit by allied bombs during the later part of the Second World War. Here is a photo of some American soldiers attending Mass inside that bombed cathedral. The priest is bending low at the Consecration. Perhaps he is whispering the sacred words of Jesus over the bread the moment the picture was taken:"This is my Body." Maybe he spoke those words through tears. And priests today...

Tears

for the immolated and beheaded,

the sufferers of domestic violence,

for the sins that are rationalized and justified.

Weeping

over evil un-acknowledged,

 hidden, brushed under the carpet,

quickly forgotten,

un-reported.

Sorrowing

for scenes too awful for words,

abortion, infanticide, genocide, 

over the evil of sexual exploitation,

the enslavement of children,

nationalized sin

and our insatiable thirst for drugs.

Grieving

over policies that victimize the weakest and the littlest,

 profits made off the backs of the poor and desperate,

for our raped planet ~ the destruction of air, water, plants and animals,

 for the sins of war

 and the huge money made in war preparations,

Mourning

racist, prejudicial, spit-cursing hatred,

cruel neglect and torture,

the brutalizing evil that occurs in prisons,

human indifference, greed and lies,

cheap excuses and

the eagerness to blame victims.

Lamenting

the crimes of religion,

righteousness and piety masking scorn,

institutionalized secrets,

the love of money and power.

and penthos ~ the gift of tears for my personal error,

weakness and waste,

pride and ignorance,

the sins of my youth.

But the Prophet Joel lived many centuries before Jesus. For the Christian then, there is more ~ so much more! Here is a painting by Geralamo de Romano, titled Christ Helping Adam to Rise. 

Look, the doors which keep us locked in the lowest place are smashed and off their hinges. In his dying Jesus has gone down into the experience of our deepest un-doing and decay, our so very wrong choices and rebellion, our awful ignorance, indifference and loss. And grasping us by our chained hands, he lifts us up in great courtesy to all that is new and of God in the fullness of our humanity. 

So I would suggest the verse, "Let the priests weep..." suggests also weeping for joy in the Death-Resurrection of Christ. A bright-sadness. We might arrive a little early for our next Lenten Mass to enter this inner place before we even catch sight of the priest approaching the altar.