When a public figure we admire, such as Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, faces the prospect of an untimely death, ominous and ultimate questions penetrate the canopy that usually protects us from thoughts of our own mortality and the mortality of those close to us.
What if it were you? How would you handle it? What if it were a friend, lover, spouse, parent, sibling, child? What would you do? What would you say? How could you help?
Maybe you’ve already been seared by sorrow, have already watched someone die whom you loved. Maybe you are going through it now.
Those who have-and pastors who minister regularly to the gravely ill-learn what matters most.
It isn’t feigned cheerfulness or trying to talk away sadness and hurt. “People want you to join them in their anxiety and pain,” says Bishop Frank Griswold of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. “People know you can’t give answers. They want your presence, to know you’re with them, sharing their burden.”
Forget therapy or theology. “What I wanted was prayer and a simple reading of Scriptures,” says Bishop Herbert Chilstrom, a cancer survivor who heads the Chicago area of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
He gained consolation in the Psalms: “Some of the most comforting were those we use the least in worship-some of the `lament’ psalms-because, frankly, they seem so rash. The 88th, for example. The psalmist speaks honestly with God about despair, hopelessness, anger.”
Acceptance for Chilstrom came by blending laments with psalms of confidence and joy, such as the familiar 23rd (“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”) and the 103rd (“Bless the Lord . . . who heals all your diseases . . . who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live”).
The Psalms of the Hebrew Bible-and Christianity’s Old Testament-are, with the Koran, perhaps the greatest poetry in human history.
Rev. Ralph Klein, an authority on the Psalms and dean of the city’s Lutheran School of Theology, supplies the basics:
Total psalms: 150. Types: hymns; individual and community laments; individual and community songs of confidence or thanksgiving; royal; wisdom and historical; ethical lessons; exhortations; and liturgies.
Age: 2,000 to 3,000 years. Like early Negro spirituals, most psalms were probably oral literature written long after they were composed. While many say: “Psalm of David,” scholars believe this was a tribute, that most were written after his death, and that most psalmists are unknown. They’re designed to be sung; the Hebrew word for psalms means praises.
The five parts: 1. Address to God. 2. The complaint. 3. Reasons for God to act. (“The psalmist may remind God of prior benefits: You took our fathers out of slavery from Egypt. You protected and blessed past generations. What about this one?”) 4. The petition. (“They’re concrete: Heal me. Save me from my enemies. Strengthen me.”) 5. And often, not always, a vow. (“If you help me, I will praise your name forever, change my life.”)
Modern audiences have trouble with the curses against enemies-for instance, Psalm 137’s call for vengeance against Babylon, in which the heads of its “little ones” would be dashed “against the rock!”
More Top Picks Heaters Boat
Klein says: “Some hymnals omit these problematic psalms. But remember that the worshipers then had experienced many oppressions, and a purpose of worship is the public processing of pain.
“If you trust someone, you can let that person see you without the masks you generally wear. The same with God. If you can’t share your anger with God, then your trust isn’t very deep.
“The Psalms may have dangerous parts, but they also say things that are profoundly true. And people need to articulate their pain.”
Rabbi Peter Knobel, president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis, says: “I often give seriously ill people the Book of Psalms, which helps them express their anger and pain as well as their joy and gratitude.”
Two recommendations:
– “Healing of Soul, Healing of Body,” (Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, Vt.; 1-800-962-4544) which has commentaries by rabbis of the four Jewish traditions on Psalms 16, 32, 41, 42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137 and 150.
– A magnificent new Psalter-“A faithful and inclusive rendering from the Hebrew into contemporary English poetry”-produced by a 16-year project of the Catholic Church (Liturgy Training Publications, 1-800-933-1800).
Describing the Psalms as a “river of prayer,” Gabe Huck writes in the foreword: “Through the generations, the thanking, praising, cursing and lamenting of the Psalms have shaped the vocabulary of synagogue and church.”
And provided solace and strength for countless numbers.