Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Christ is Risen!

Congratulations with the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord!

Last Sunday we briefly discussed the 103rd (104th) psalm with which vespers begins. Today let’s consider psalm 140 (141), ‘Lord I have cried.’ Like the 103rd psalm, ‘Lord I have cried’ is a psalm that is intended for evening prayer, for it contains the following words: “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” It is therefore always sung in Orthodox churches at vespers. The Holy Hierarch John Chrysostom, in his homily on the 140th (141st) psalm, notes that the Christians of his own time sang this psalm daily, that is, they used it as an evening prayer in their homes. In our parish, as in many others, only the first two verses of this psalm are sung at vespers, while the rest are omitted, although we do read this psalm in full during Great Lent.

Even though much of this psalm is clear and understandable, there are also quite a few difficult places to understand. The Church Slavonic translation, which is done from Greek, differs from the Russian and English translations, which use the Jewish version of the psalms. Various Holy Fathers and exegetes of Holy Scripture also use different translations and therefore provide differing explanations of individual verses.

In this psalm the Holy Prophet and Psalmist David lifts up a prayer to the Lord in the moment he is being persecuted by his son Abesolom (15th chapter of the 2nd Book of Samuel). He prays to God to hear his fervent prayer and to protect him from judgemental and sinful utterances. David remembers his sinfulness and notes that it is good when a righteous man corrects our mistakes. He notes not only the danger in which he found himself, but also the fact that his opponents were unsuccessful. At the end of the psalm, David once again turns to the Lord with prayer that he be saved from his enemies. Isn’t there much here that is marvelous and instructive, that any person could apply to oneself?

Blessed Augustine, in his explanation of the 140th (141) psalm, notes its prophetic aspects. Although daily sacrifices were offered to God in the Old Testament Tabernacle and later, in the Temple, they did not save the Jews from their sins, nor did they facilitate their entrance into the eternal and heavenly Kingdom of God, but were only a foreshadowing of that most genuine evening sacrifice, that is, the death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. Christ was crucified, (that is, he stretched out His hands, as if raising them in prayer) onto the Cross at noon and died just before evening. In such a way, the second verse of this psalm, “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice,” sung by us weekly at vespers, prefigures the death of our Lord and is especially powerful, for we not only raise up our prayers to the Lord, but at the same time remember the incarnate and crucified Saviour, who is the only one capable of fulfilling all our petitions and granting us salvation not only from our physical enemies and problems, but also from our eternal ones.

priest Alexis