We are in Lent's 5th week, known in days of yore as Passion Week, featuring on Monday drama in its opening lines . . .

Have pity on me, O Lord, for men trample upon me; all the day long they press their attack against me.

This be the 55th Psalm, in which heartfelt yearnings have their day,

My enemies trample upon me all the day long; they are many indeed who war against me. Have pity on me, O Lord . . .

Some of us are brutally aware of these enemies. God help these, ripped out of their homes and churches in Nigeria and Nicaragua, others have the luxury of enemies which are impulses and habits that get in the way of what works toward our salvation.

What Jonas had in mind when at God’s command he high-tailed it to “Ninive, the great city,” was to warn them of divine devastation coming to them if they did not repent and do penance.

They got the message and took it to heart, we read, imposing a lockdown to beat all, even in this our Covid era. Even the king did it.

And the men of Ninive believed in God: and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least.

And the word came to the king of Ninive: and he rose up out of his throne, and cast away his robe from him, and was clothed in sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

And he caused it to be proclaimed and published in Ninive, from the mouth of the king and of his princes, saying: "Let neither men nor beasts, oxen, nor sheep taste anything: let them not feed, nor drink water. And let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and cry to the Lord with all their strength, and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the iniquity that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn, and forgive: and will turn away from his fierce anger, and we shall not perish?"

It worked:

God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said that he would do to them, and he did it not.

As a former longtime Jesuit, I have to catch myself asking if it really happened. Even to ask it here is a sign of what I imbibed in Scripture class at West Baden (Ind.) College in the early ‘60’s.

Suffice it to say that this is God’s word or isn’t it? It’s His church’s chosen vehicle. Chip away at that concept and where are you? Out on an agnostic limb, that’s where. Centuries of tradition out the window.

Some of us have been deeply fortunate, blessed as we say, to have inherited that tradition from faithful parents, grandparents and the like. And of us much is expected. Not always realized, needless to say, and enough about that.

What then, following the inevitable introspective pause, does this old-time liturgy offer us? Something called the gradual — don’t ask.

O God, hear my prayer; hearken to the words of my mouth. O Lord, by Your name save me, and by Your might deliver me. (Ps. 53: 4, 3)

None too soon that. An on-time plea for help, for amazing grace to rescue a wretch like me.

And then more of the same, in something called the tract — don’t ask:

O Lord, repay us not according to the sins we have committed, nor according to our iniquities. O Lord, remember not our iniquities of the past; let Your mercy come quickly to us, for we are being brought very low.

Help us, O God our Savior, and for the glory of Your name, O Lord, deliver us; and pardon us our sins for Your name's sake. (Ps. 102: 10; 78: 8-9)

An impassioned plea, yes? Nothing matter-of-fact about it. Gut-wrenching, you might say. Or possibly so.

Meanwhile, it’s Passion Week, remember, Jesus gives hints of what’s on the horizon. His friend the apostle John has it, John 7:32-39:

The “rulers” and Pharisees, the ultimate heavies in this story, sent their myrmidons to arrest Him. He talked them out of it.

"Yet a little while I am with you: and then I go to him that sent me. You shall seek me and shall not find me: and where I am, thither you cannot come."

This put the myrmidons off their game.

"Whither will he go, that we shall not find him? Will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles and teach the Gentiles?

Uh-oh. The ultimate others.

What is this saying that he hath said: You shall seek me and shall not find me? And: Where I am, you cannot come?"

Much to ponder, they having not the slightest idea.

The Anouncement:

And on the last, and great day of the festivity, Jesus stood and cried, saying: "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith: Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

Now this he said of the Spirit which they should receive who believed in him.

Then more psalmistry, via the Offertory Antiphon:

Turn to me, O Lord, and save my life; in Your mercy rescue me. (Ps. 6: 5 )

See how much of this old-time mass is prayer of petition sprinkled throughout. The whole liturgy is one long prayer, a concentration on the sacred. No laundry list of the world’s troubles, for instance, after the gospel, no hand-wave of peace later, like lilies of the field fluttering in the breeze.

More more more to come as the days trickle down, to a precious few . . . of the year’s Lenten season . . .