Hear my prayer, O Lord,

And let my crying come unto thee

Psalm 102.1

Who knows what lay behind the anguished plea which is today’s prayer? It’s the opening cry of Psalm 102 and leads into image after image of alienation and distress. The psalmist’s heart is ‘stricken and withered’ (v4) and his sleepless body ‘wasted with groaning’ (vs 4, 5). He is like ‘a little owl of the wilderness’ (v6). He eats ‘ashes like bread’ (v9)… No wonder this is one of the psalms set for Ash Wednesday.

Whatever specific circumstances gave rise to Psalm 102, we can all relate to its description of distressed alienation from time to time, and certainly today. For Ash Wednesday invites us to acknowledge our ‘sin’ – in other words, everything which separates us from each other, from our best selves and from God. And conscious of this separation, we share the psalmist’s longing to be heard, desperate for God in our darkness, for re-connection: ‘Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my crying come unto thee’.

In 1682, Henry Purcell set these words for eight voices. A solo alto sings the first hauntingly simple phrase and gradually the others join in as the texture builds and the anguish grows. We hear a sob each time the word ‘crying’ is sung and the intense dissonances ache for resolution. Purcell’s own longing to be heard by God is revealed, a 17th-century ‘little owl’ in his own wilderness - like us in ours.