Abstract / DOI
«You See the Trouble We Are in …» (Neh 2,17): Places of Lament in the Liturgy. Sorrow alienates from other people and, if it may not be lamented to him, from God. The liturgical assembly is a protected and at the same time public place where mourning and lament can take place: in ritual or spontaneous ways, in traditional or innovative words, conducted personally, together with others, or borne by others; in guilt and failure, unjust and misunderstood suffering, misfortune and loss. The richest repertoire is provided by the penitential, lament and enemy psalms of the biblical tradition, but new contemporary verbal and non-verbal forms of expression must also be found. It can be theologically productive, but humanly insufficient, to «tame» the great literary lament texts in a Christological reinterpretation, without wanting to hear the sufferings and fears of today’s people in them, and instead to offer them cheap consolation, because it is rash and all too certain of salvation.