Chapter 17 (Friday of the Second Week of Lent)

My spirit is broken, my days are extinct,
   the grave is ready for me. 
Surely there are mockers around me,
   and my eye dwells on their provocation. 

‘Lay down a pledge for me with yourself;
   who is there that will give surety for me? 
Since you have closed their minds to understanding,
   therefore you will not let them triumph. 
Those who denounce friends for reward—
   the eyes of their children will fail. 

‘He has made me a byword of the peoples,
   and I am one before whom people spit. 
My eye has grown dim from grief,
   and all my members are like a shadow. 
The upright are appalled at this,
   and the innocent stir themselves up against the godless. 
Yet the righteous hold to their way,
   and they that have clean hands grow stronger and stronger. 
But you, come back now, all of you,
   and I shall not find a sensible person among you. 
My days are past, my plans are broken off,
   the desires of my heart. 
They make night into day;
   “The light”, they say, “is near to the darkness.” 
If I look for Sheol as my house,
   if I spread my couch in darkness, 
if I say to the Pit, “You are my father”,
   and to the worm, “My mother”, or “My sister”, 
where then is my hope?
   Who will see my hope? 
Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?
   Shall we descend together into the dust?’ 

Commentary

Here is another consolation. St. Paul says that God chastens all whom He accepts and receives as sons (cf. Heb. 1 2: 6 ) . Sonship involves suffering. Because God's Son could not suffer in the Godhead and in eternity, the heavenly Father sent him into time, to become man and suffer. So, if you want to be God's son and yet do not want to suffer, you are wrong. In the Book of Wisdom it says that God proves and tests to find out who is righteous, as we prove and test gold by fire in a furnace (Wisd. 3 : 5-6). It is a sign that a king or a prince trusts a knight when he sends him into battle. I have seen one lord who sometimes, when he had taken a man into his retinue, would send him out by night and then attack him and fight with him. And once it happened that he was nearly killed by a man he wanted to test in this way; and he was much fonder of that retainer afterward than before. (Meister Eckhart; The Book of Divine Comfort)

Musical Selection (Thomas Tallis and William Byrd)

Deliver me, O Lord, and place me at thy side,
and let anyone’s hand contend against me.
My days have passed away,
my thoughts are dissipated,
tormenting my heart.
They have turned night into day,
and after darkness I hope again for light.

Collect