Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Christ is Risen!

Congratulations with the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord!

During Vespers psalm 129 (130), ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord’ is attached to psalms 140 and 141(‘Lord I have cried,’ and ‘I cried unto the Lord with my voice’). Today let’s briefly discuss this psalm. In our parish, as in others, this psalm is sung in its entirety. Between the different verses, stikhira to the Resurrection, to another feastday, or to a saint are inserted.

This beautiful prayer is one of the fifteen psalms that in the Psalter are called Songs of Ascents (119 (120) - 133 (134)). There are various theories as to why they are called thus. Some suppose that the Levites (the temple choristers and acolytes) or pilgrims sang these psalms while they were ascending the fifteen very wide steps of the Jerusalem Temple. Others believe that pilgrims sang these spiritual hymns while traveling to Jerusalem. Still others hold the opinion that these psalms were sung by the Jews while they were in captivity or during their return to the Promised Land from Babylon.

In the 129th psalm we hear an unnamed psalmist beg, from the depths of his soul, that the Lord hear him. It seems that the author is weighed down with many sins which are pulling him into a feeling of helplessness. He is on the verge of despair, and notes that there is no person who could count himself worthy of salvation because of his own good deeds. The author of this psalm insists that the only hope for help is from God. In the middle section of this psalm, the author confesses a deep hope in God. At the end, he exhorts his fellow believers to trust and hope with the same firmness in the mercy and forgiveness of the Lord.

We can understand the words of the first verse of this psalm,“Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord” in different ways. It is plausible that these words were written by a Jew who was in captivity in Babylon. Naturally, he felt that there is nothing worse and more humiliating than to be enslaved by a foreign pagan nation. Such humiliation could occur only because the Lord had abandoned the Jews due to their sins. We can understand these words in the same way that Blessed Augustine understood them. The lowliest spiritual condition that we can fall into is despondency because of our sins. Most likely many of us have sinful habits that seem impossible to correct. We understand that we are sinning and are repulsed by our actions, but for some reason we continue to return to them. It is easy to fall into the depths of despair and doubt the possibility of salvation. At such moments, let us remember, as did the author of the 129th psalm, that it is not we who save ourselves, but that “there is forgiveness with (the Lord)…(and) mercy, and… plenteous redemption (is with Him) and He shall redeem (us) from all (our) iniquities,” if only we will hope in the Lord and wait “for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning,” as we read in the Russian and English translations of this psalm.

priest Alexis