Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - April 26, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
The funeral of a young woman murdered by an intruder in her apartment prompts many questions and frustrations along with great sadness among her friends. Two of Sandy's passions were music and children; she taught in a local school and loved her guitar. Friends and preachers both know how inadequate words are at such times. In Peter De Vries' novel, The Blood of the Lamb, the father of a young girl who has died of leukemia says that in the end all we can do is sit side-by-side on “the mourners' bench” holding each other in silence, linked by grief and compassion. No matter how poorly, how inadequately, we must express ourselves even in unspeakable sadness.
Another clue about what we can do comes from Sandy's passion for music. In it, whether performing or listening, we often find an outlet for thoughts and feelings too deep for words. The disaffected often pooh-pooh religious services, but the shared experience of music, as well as our poor words, is, I suspect, for most people some help and a necessity. Aldous Huxley writes: “After silence, what comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
You might say that even God felt the inadequacy of words when he resorted to the fleshly and palpable. God's word, God's son, became flesh (John 1:14). Rather than attempting to give us some verbal explanation for suffering and tragedy, God has shown solidarity with us in suffering by the cross and death of Jesus. There is God's answer to the age-old human question, “Why me? Why did this happen?” -- “My Son wasn't spared; you should not be too surprised.”
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
