March 18 / Second Monday of Lent

Do not remember against us the iniquities of our ancestors…. Let the groans of the prisoners come before you; according to your great power preserve those doomed to die. Then we your people, the flock of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise. ~Psalm 79:8, 11, 13

As much as we are advised to live in the present moment — sound advice, and rightly to be praised — we know, too, that our lives exist on a historical continuum. We scour genealogy websites or family papers to learn more about those who went before us. We celebrate the arrival of the next generation and try to serve as good stewards of the new lives in our midst. We carry this generation-spanning orientation into our prayers, as we petition God to heal a sick grandmother or propel a young student to success in the school play, aware of God’s watchful care over all those who were, and are, and are to come. The psalmist, steeped in a deeply familial, kinship-oriented culture, similarly embraces time past, present and future in his song. And as with all the psalms, we are invited to pray with him. “Do not hold us accountable for the wrongs of those who precede us,” we ask first, with a nod to the forebears who undoubtedly made the culturally-sanctioned mistakes that seem abhorrent to us today. Next, we acknowledge that we are fettered here and now by our own sins; only by the power of God’s mighty arm (the literal translation of “your great power”) can we be freed. And finally, a promise: Although we cannot change the past, we can confess the errors of the present. And we intend, newly saved and indebted beyond measure to the one who has saved us, to pass on this legacy, these songs of thankfulness and praise, from our generation to the next, in an unbroken chain of gratitude to God.

O God who frees prisoners from the bondage of their sins, accept my thanks today and always for your saving help. Amen.

For today’s readings, click here.

To hear the Guildford Cathedral choir sing Psalm 119, click here. 

Betsy Cahill is a writer, biblical scholar, and historic preservationist. Co-author (with Joseph Papp) of Shakespeare Alive! (Bantam Books, 1988), she contributed a chapter to Empty Churches (Oxford, 2018), and has written for both Commonweal and America. She chaired the board of the Preservation Society of Charleston for 8 years, and is now deeply involved as a board member in starting a Cristo Rey High School in Charleston.