Ps 106 with Commentary by Dr Noel Donnelly
the 12th Sunday in Year B
Psalm 106 is rather long psalm. It has 43 verses and is therefore difficult to digest at one sitting. In general it is hymn of thanksgiving, after experiencing the delivering hand of God through desperate situations.
The psalm refers to four examples of distressing experiences in the story of the chosen people: firstly, the experience of being lost in the desert. We can think of traders or travellers lost in a fierce unmapped wasteland, hungry and thirsty and praying as never before. Then the psalmist moves on to a second example, that of being shackled in the darkness of a prison, chained in a slave gang to harsh unremitting labour. A third experience is one of life-sapping sickness, self-inflicted through sin. The fourth scene is that of sailors tossed around in a cockleshell boat at the mercy of the giant waves. It is so vivid: verse 27 says, “They staggered and reeled like drunken men, for all their skill was gone and their soul melted in their distress!” God had sent the gale says verse 25, “tossing the waves up to heaven and back into the deep! But they cried to the Lord in their need and he rescued them from all their distress”.
It is this last scene that is selected from our long psalm for our liturgical celebrations for the 12th Sunday in Year B. It is a response to the first reading where Job finds God in the heart of the tempest, and it prepares us for the Gospel where Jesus challenges the faith of his disciples in their storm at sea. He asks, “Where is your faith?”
We might seriously ask ourselves that question when faced with one or more of those 4 scenes: the deserts of bureaucracy amidst struggles of unemployment or ill health, or being imprisoned in poverty or an empty aching sickness, or being caught up in stormy domestic situations, where we feel helpless. Psalm 106 strongly encourages us to hang in in there with a faith and a hope that the presently unseen God can still the storms to a whisper as he has done in the past.
While the liturgy selects a few digestible verses from this psalm for a Sunday worship situation, you may like to reflect on the bigger picture by reading the whole psalm. I found it quite relevant to my own life experience and you may too.
