Ps 102 Lent 3C Commentary by Dr Noel Donnelly
Psalm 102 Commentary.
When we sing Psalm 102 in the liturgy this weekend, we are selecting 7 verses from the 22 of the whole psalm
That complete psalm is a song of praise for the compassion of God, for the blessings received, perhaps through a recent crisis in the life of the poet.
The singer is affirming enthusiastically that the most important thing to know about God is God’s constant merciful love. “The Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy”, says verse 8; “a compassionate father”, as verse 13 puts it. Those two words “father” and “compassion” are even more amazing today when we consider this father to be the creator of the enormous universe with its twenty or thirty trillion galaxies!
The God of this psalm is not remote and impersonal.
Psalm 102 declares four times that this compassionate God is someone who acts out of the enormous universe and into the particular circumstances of the psalmist: this God “forgives all our guilt” and “heals every one of your ills”, (verse 3); “restores life from the grave” and “crowns youwith love and compassion”, (verse 4). Just imagine that personal crowning scene for a moment! The crowning of a king was accompanied with a very personal anointing with holy oil. A commissioning with royal dignity is formally and very personally established in this crowning!
In our weekend liturgy, our psalm of compassion recalls the compassion of God who reveals to Moses that God will deliver the people from slavery to a land of milk and honey. The psalm reaches forward to the compassionate owner of the vineyard who gives the fruitless vine another year to prove itself. Compassion runs as a pervading theme in our reading this weekend.
In the context of our psalm, Pope Francis often reminds us of this compassion: he says, “Compassion is the language spoken by God and the lens through which God looks at us”. Psalm 102 should surely cheers us up during the dark days of winter and beyond!
Psalm 102 words: (c) The Grail, England; music (c) Gerry Fitzpatrick; recorded by Sally Mulholland.
