I cry aloud to the Lord, and He answers from his holy hill.
In general, in the Book of Psalms, whenever prayer is described there is a sense of urgency built into the expression. King David does not merely pray, he "crys out" to the Lord. Naturally, the reason for the urgency in the matter of prayer is the immanent threat to his soul's salvation that presented by "the multitude," who, in a moral sense, we identify with the demon-controlled passions and their masters, the demons themselves. In the same way, we should cry out to the Lord. There should be a sense of urgency in our prayers as well. After all, the Enemy is within our gates, since the passions, like a fifth column, are parts of our soul that are so disordered that they actually work for our destruction. So, we cry aloud to the Lord. The Father of the Church St. John Cassian was in the habit of meditating constantly on one single verse from the the Psalter, "O God, come to my assistance, O Lord, make haste to help me." His meditation (like all ancient meditation, consisted in repeating this verse over and over again, replacing his thoughts with the prayer, replacing his thoughts with the Word of God. In this way, "he cried aloud to the Lord." No matter our method or technique of meditation, we too must learn to cry out to the Lord with urgency from the depths of a soul and mind that is filled with the evils of this world.
When we learn to cry aloud to the Lord, the answer is immediate. This is exactly what King David says when he states, "I cry aloud to the Lord, and He answers..." I cry and He answers. There is no delay, no hesitation. If there seems to be delay or hesitation, it is because we do not yet understand the ways of the Lord. We do not understand as yet what is truly for our good, because His compassion "makes all things work together unto good for those who love Him." It should be a great relief to our anxious and worrisome minds that "I cry, and He answers." If we accept that this is the case, it can be a source of great peace for us.
What do we mean when we say that "he answers." We mean that He conforms everything to His perfect Will. All that is disordered, He reorders according to His intention. His wrath (which, remember, according to St. Ephrem the Syrian, is the same as His mercy) burns against His creation, and it is reformed and renewed; "Send forth Your Spirit and they shall be created, and You shall renew the face of the earth." If we have sinned (and we most assuredly have) then we are deserving of this wrath, that is, we are deserving to be renewed by the Holy Spirit of God. His work of renewal will perhaps be unpleasant, but it will accomplish that for which it was intended.
The verse ends, "He answers from His holy hill." Here again, King David is referring to the abode of the presence of God, Mt. Zion. The moral sense of this expression is to remind us that the source of our help in times of distress, when we "cry aloud to the Lord," is the Holy Church. It is through the ministry of the Church that the Lord answers our urgent prayers for renewal and restoration, and for freedom from the passions and their masters. He answers from the Church, to whom He gave the forgiveness of sins and the graces of the Sacraments. The absolution prayer in the Roman Rite is a good summation of this: "God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, has reconciled the world to Himself, and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the remission of sins. Through the ministry of the Church, may God grant you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."
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