3 My tears have been my food day and night,
while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One[a]
with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.

5 Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42:3-50)

I was in conversation with a Roman Catholic friend one day and she told me of this ritual that I had never heard of. She said that on Ash Wednesday, in the little church she grew up in, the priest would take the hymnbook they used, place it in a silver box, and they would process out to the cemetery that adjoined the church property, and bury it. I asked, “Why?

Well, it seems that during the Lenten season that church would not allow itself to use the word “Alleluia” which means, “Praise the Lord“. This was to stress the very solemn observance of the season, where humility and penitence hold the greater focus. Praises and Alleluias would not return to worship until Easter Sunday, where in the light of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, new life springs forth from the tomb and the defeat of death is celebrated. I asked a Catholic priest about this and he said he had never heard of such a thing… that it must have been a tradition of that particular parish.

Either way, I find it worth thinking about, because life is full of troubles and challenges that seem to stifle the joy that we associate with celebration, and the last thing we want to do is praise and sing Alleluia. But, then again, in faith, perhaps the very song we need to hear and sing is “alleluia“.

“It’s not a cry you hear at night”

 It’s not somebody who’s seen the light

It’s a cold and it’s a broken Alleluia.

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.”

When we find ourselves in the “Dark Night of the Soul” [St. John of the Cross], this is when we hear, (perhaps struggling to get out of the silver box in the church cemetery) the cold and broken alleluia, needing to be heard… needing to be sung. Our hearts may be broken by sin, or by sadness, but it is in this realization that we raise our voices and sing “Alleluia” anyway.

Prayer:

Lord, sometimes we don’t feel like singing, and the evidence that surrounds us says that there isn’t much to sing about. Speak to us in these confusing times and remind us of the harmony that returns with the presence of Jesus. For this season of penitence, we dare to lift up our “Alleluias” and praise your name! Amen.