"The Lord Has Done Great Things for Us!

As I look forward to the fifth Sunday of Lent, with its transition from ordinary Lent into the sacred sub-season of “Passiontide,” I’ve starting thinking about the day’s responsorial psalm (126): “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.”

I’d love to sing it for Mass, but we’ll see what happens.

It’s really a beautiful psalm, if you think about it.

I imagine the Israelite exiles in 538 BC, as they returned to their ancestral homeland…

What joy and emotion must have filled their hearts as they left the land of captivity!

No wonder the psalm is filled with such poignant gratitude and exaltation.

The phrase we repeat after each stanza is, indeed, fitting as we remember the joy they experienced through the great things the Lord did for their nation.

Our thoughts need not stay there, however, as we think of our own lives.

In the wondrous Paschal Mystery, which we are preparing to celebrate, and in the events of your ordinary life, and mine, the Lord truly has done great things for us.

I pray that my heart, and yours, may increasingly turn to Him with joy-filled gratitude for His countless gifts and kindnesses.

---