Memorial of Saint Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr
For some reason I recently started listening again to the soundtrack from the musical Godspell. I hadn’t listened to it in years, but found it on my music app and have been moved once again by the songs. Today’s responsorial psalm (137:1-6) brings to mind one of the songs: “On the Willows,” which is based on that psalm of lament after the Babylonian exile.
Today’s first reading (2 Kings 25:1-12) is about the destruction of Jerusalem, including the temple, and exile of the people from their land. Today’s responsorial psalm that follows begins, “By the streams of Babylon we sat and wept ... .Though there our captors asked of us the lyrics of our songs, and our despoilers urged us to be joyous: ‘Sing for us the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land?”
In our current time there is so much to lament around the globe, including the countless number of people driven from their homes and homeland by war, violence and threats of violence, poverty, lack of adequate resources, the effects of climate change; the list goes on. Even if we haven’t yet personally been impacted by such events, there is much to lament and we may be tempted at times to “hang up our harps (or lyres).” There is certainly reason to grieve.
The music of Godspell reminds me, however, that there can be healing and beauty in music and singing that expresses our many emotions, including sadness and grief, even anger and lament. I do love that the gift of music and the psalms give us the opportunity to liturgically express the full range of human emotion.
This brings me to the words of St. Irenaeus, whose memorial the church celebrates today: “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.”
So let us ask for the grace to embrace our humanity fully, with all its emotions, for the glory of God this day, this week, this year. Amen.
~Eileen Miller