This Easter, one way we can encounter the Lord is to take up the Book of Psalms. The “great prayer book of sacred Scripture” (Pope Benedict XVI), the Book of Psalms, is a collection of 150 sacred hymns from the Old Testament. Many of the Psalms were composed by King David; others were written during periods of exile. Jesus himself prayed the Psalms and the Church adopted them for her worship.

Pope Benedict XVI, in a 2011 General Audience, compared praying the Psalms to learning to speak. With increasing facility, a child expresses his own experience in the language of his parents. Over time, “the words received from his parents become his words and through these words he also learns a way of thinking and feeling … and relates to reality, to people and to God.”

In a similar way, the pope explained, God gives us the Psalms to teach us a language with which we can encounter him.

The 150 Psalms articulate the whole range of human experience and implicitly point to the figure of the Messiah. This makes sense; Jesus, the God-Man, shared in everything we experience but sin: joy, delight, anger, suffering, distress, grief, sorrow. As we will see, when we pray a Psalm, we join our prayer with Jesus’ and we enter his mind and heart, so to speak, while also sharing our own hearts with him.

In this column, we will take up the first few verses of Psalm 40 and meditate on them as an expression of the Easter mysteries. As we consider each verse, we can have a heart-to-heart conversation with God in the “language” of the Psalms.

Confidence in God

I waited patiently for the Lord;  he inclined to me and heard my cry.  (Ps. 40:1)

As members of the body of Christ, we always pray in Christ and through him.

Read the first lines of the Psalm slowly as if Jesus were praying it on Easter morning.

Days before, crowds clamored for his death and, within a few hours, an earthquake announced the crucifixion of the Son of God. But now, everything is silent. Jesus opens his eyes for the first time and rejoices in God’s deliverance. “I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.” What confidence he had, trusting his Father to deliver him even after he had crossed the threshold of death!

Consider a seemingly “unsolvable” situation in your life.

1. Are you confident God can and will carry you through it?
2. Do you believe he will resolve it according to what he knows is best for you?
3. Are you willing to surrender it into his trustworthy hands, even if it means waiting for him to act on his time?

With Us in All Things

He drew me up from the desolate pit,  out of the miry bog, And set my feet upon a rock,  making my steps secure. (Ps. 40:2)

Although Jesus never sinned, he became like us “in every respect” (Heb. 4:15) by taking upon himself the effects of every sin ever committed. In becoming a human being, he willingly descended from the heights of heaven to experience the weariness, sorrow and sense of separation from God that sin causes us. Finally, by his Passion, he submitted himself to the universal punishment for sin: death.

With this in mind, consider Jesus’ joy as he prays these words on Easter Sunday: “He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog.” Out of love, the Father delivered his Son from the "desolate pit” and the “miry bog” of sin. We, too, can consider ourselves rescued from the bondage and disorder of our sin. With the grace Jesus won for us on the cross, we can follow him, “the way, and the truth and the life” (Jn. 14:6), with secure steps to heaven.

Recall a pivotal time of transformation – sudden or gradual – in your life when God was at work.

1. How did God lead you away from the “miry bog” and draw you to himself?
2. Was God present in unexpected ways?
3. What are some of the lasting effects of this transformation?

A New Song of Praise

He put a new song in my mouth, A song of praise to our God. (Ps. 40:3)

“We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song!” Pope St. John Paul II famously said in a 1986 address. The word “Alleluia” comes from two Hebrew words meaning “praise the Lord.” As the pope indicates, the song of praise which resounded in the heart of Christ on Easter Sunday is our song, too. We Christians look to the past not only to recall how God has delivered, guided and protected us, but also to bolster our hope in the promise of the life to come.

God’s loving care is always dynamic and new. Consequently, each of us has a “new song” of praise to sing to the Lord for the unique way in which he has loved us.

1. What are some of the recurring themes that would show up in your “song”?
2. How can you praise God by your words and actions in your daily life?