Holy Saturday

Read over these words of Psalm 88:

"LORD, my God, I call out by day; at night I cry aloud in your presence.

Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry.

For my soul is filled with troubles; my life draws near to Sheol.

I am reckoned with those who go down to the pit; I am weak, without strength.

My couch is among the dead, with the slain who lie in the grave. You remember them no more; they are cut off from your care.

You plunged me into the bottom of the pit, into the darkness of the abyss.

Your wrath lies heavy upon me; all your waves crash over me. Selah

Because of you my friends shun me; you make me loathsome to them; Caged in, I cannot escape;

my eyes grow dim from trouble. All day I call on you, LORD; I stretch out my hands to you.

Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades arise and praise you? Selah

Is your love proclaimed in the grave, your fidelity in the tomb?

Are your marvels declared in the darkness, your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

But I cry out to you, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you.

Why do you reject me, LORD? Why hide your face from me?

I am mortally afflicted since youth; lifeless, I suffer your terrible blows.

Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have reduced me to silence.

All the day they surge round like a flood; from every side they close in on me.

Because of you companions shun me; my only friend is darkness.

Catholics have the reputation for weakness in biblical literacy, but in all of my years as a Protestant I had never heard of this psalm as being prophetic of Christ's life and passion, until I read it as part of today's morning readings in the Magnificat.

When I read it this morning I was overwhelmed with the sense that as St. Augustine says, the New Testament lies in the Old Testament concealed, while the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed (or something to that effect)