Christ in the Psalms by Patrick Henry Reardon

Author:Patrick Henry Reardon [Reardon, Patrick Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781888212211
Publisher: Conciliar Press / Ancient Faith Publishing
Published: 2012-03-28T23:00:00+00:00

PSALM 76 (77)

With my voice I cried to the Lord

Some commentators treat Psalm 76 (Hebrew 77) as the meditation of an insomniac, the prayer offered by a man so afflicted with grief that he is unable to sleep. The case seems, however, quite the opposite. This is the deliberate vigil of a man who is fighting sleep precisely so that he can pray and meditate: “In the day of my trouble I sought God, my hands raised up to Him during the night. . . . My eyes stood sentinel through the watches. . . . I meditated in the night and communed with my heart and stirred up my spirit.” This is the prayer of a man struggling to stay awake, not someone unable to fall asleep.

The psalm deals with a problem: “In the day of my trouble I sought God . . . My soul refused to take comfort . . . Will the Lord reject us forever, and never again be gracious? Or will He cut off His mercy forever? Has His everlasting promise come to an end?”

Burdened with such thoughts, a man may well be tempted to seek refuge in sleep, as we see in the case of Peter, James, and John. These three men the Lord took with Him to keep a prayerful vigil during the hours preceding His arrest, but the task proved too much, the flesh being weaker than the spirit was willing. So in their sadness they gave themselves over to slumber while the Lord Himself continued steadfast in prayer.

The keeping of prayerful vigil in the time of trial was also exemplified by the earliest believers in those days when “Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. . . . Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church” (Acts 12:1, 5). Even as “Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers” (12:6), the Church maintained her prayerful vigil through the night.

And on what was the Church meditating as she prayed for Peter that night of trouble? We are not obliged to guess here. She was meditating on the Exodus. This we know for certain, because it was the night of Pascha, the night of salvation, the night that heralds the very dawn of deliverance (cf. Acts 12:3, 4). As she prayed for Peter chained in prison by Herod, the afflicted and saddened Church spent that night remembering the God who brought forth His people from the oppression and bondage of Pharaoh, and thus inspired she prayed for the renewal of God’s wonders.

The situation and the prayer of the troubled Church that night were very much those of our psalm, which also seeks strength by turning to meditate on the mystery of the Exodus: “With Your arm You redeemed Your people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph. The waters saw You, O God, the waters saw You and whirled back in fear, and the depths stirred with trembling.

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