The Direction of Intention My God give me

The Direction of Intention My God, give me the grace to perform this action with you and through love for you. In advance, I offer to you all the good that I will do and accept all the difficulty I may meet therein. St. Ann, Pray for us. St. Francis de Sales, Pray for us.

Overview �June 5: Introduction to the Book of Psalms �June 12: Psalms of Praise �June 19: �June 26: �July 3: �July 10: �July 17: �July 24: Psalms of Lamentation No Session Psalms of Thanksgiving Theology of the Psalms Learning to Pray the Psalms – �Liturgy of the Hours

Lament: • • To express grief for or about; mourn: To regret deeply; deplore To grieve audibly; wail. To express sorrow or regret.

Psalms of Lamentation – Lament An Overview �The function of a Lament or Psalm of Petitionary Praise �To provide a structure for crisis, hurt, grief, or despair �To move a worshipper from hurt to joy, from darkness to light, from desperation to hope. �This movement from hurt to joy is first and foremost a spiritual movement �It may take the form of psychological or liturgical experience �It is not necessarily a physical deliverance from the crisis, although that is often anticipated. �The movement "out of the depths"

Psalm 13

Psalms of Lament • General format of a Psalm of Lament • An address to God; a complaint; a request • Usually an expression of trust. • Kinds of complaints include: • Concerns with the psalmists own thoughts and actions • Concerns with the actions of an enemy or prevailing attitude • Concerns with God's action or inaction

Types of Psalm of Lament • Types of laments: • Corporate Lament • • Expressing deep sorrow for the travails of a nation and as a group asking for God's blessing or intervention. Commonly found in printed form following major natural disasters, plague, or oppression by surrounding nations. • Psalm 58

Types of Psalm of Lament • Types of laments: • Personal Lament • • • Spoken in the first person Cries of despair, anger, protest and doubt directed toward God Not something the biblical writers or God himself were ashamed to put into Holy Scripture. • Psalm 77

Types of Psalm of Lament • Types of Laments: • Lament of Repentance • Express sorrow for personal sin • Repentance is where we start our relationship with God (message of John the Baptist and Jesus) • 7 Penitential Psalms - 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143 • The fifty-first Psalm (Miserere) was recited at the close of daily morning service in the primitive Church. • Psalm 51

Types of Psalm of Lament • Types of Laments: • Lament of Imprecation • An appeal to some supernatural power to inflict evil on someone or some group • If you really don't like someone you can shout an imprecation at them. • More than simply the use of bad language (although that can be involved, too) • An imprecation is a damning curse wishing them nothing but ill. • Psalms of Imprecation: 35, 69, 83, 88, 109, 137, 140 • Psalm 137 • Psalm 140 • Selah (Hebrew: סלה also transliterated as selāh) is a word used 74 times in the Hebrew Bible that means GOD HAS SPOKEN.

Psalms of Imprecation �What are we to make of curses? • There is constant tension in the Bible between love of people and hatred of evil. • Apathy about evil is worse thank ignorance of it. • So what must we do about evil? • We must uproot selfish vindictiveness (Gal. 5: 15, Ja. 4: 13 -16) • We must love the enemies of God (Isa. 48: 9; 2 Pet. 3: 9; Col. 1: 21; Rom. 5: 10) • We must hate & resist evil (1 Cor. 10: 3 -5 & Eph. 6: 12) but trust God to take care of any retribution • In none of the Psalms of Imprecation does the author hope to mete out retribution from his or her own hand.

Understanding the Psalms of Lament �Suffering, pain, grief, loss, doubt, guilt, are part of the human experience �The psalmist does not reject or ignore suffering, but faces it in faith and trust �Recognize the role of anger in dealing with suffering. � It is in these issues before God that true healing may begin. �Psalms of Lament are not meant to be politically correct but to express to God how life really is. �Placing pain, sorrow, grief and anger before God is the only place these things will ever make sense. � It is only God who can transform them. (see: The Cross)