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Meditating on Psalm 22 during his audience on September 14, 2011, Benedict XVI considers prayer from the perspective of the silence of God felt by the psalmist. His imploring anguish seems to collide with a heaven deaf to his supplication. This lament is reinforced by the psalmist’s recollection of the never-disappointed trust his fathers placed in God, and of his own experience as a fulfilled believer in the past. The psalm ends, however, as a song of praise.
God’s prayer and silence
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” So begins Psalm 21. We recognize in this question the cry of Jesus on the Cross (Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34). Jesus, abandoned by everyone, expresses the desolation of the Messiah facing the reality of death.
However, Benedict XVI points out that this cry is not one of despair, since the psalmist — and Christ in his footsteps — calls the Lord “my” God three times, in an act of extreme trust and faith.
On another level, the Pope notes that anguish alters the psalmist’s perception of danger, magnifying it. This is why his adversaries appear invincible and take on the appearance of ferocious beasts. Isn’t this how we feel when we’re attacked in one way or another? Thus, we can recognize ourselves in all the feelings that assail the psalmist in this critical hour.
This shows that Jesus, by taking up this prayer of Israel, has borne our sorrows and taken them upon himself, so that we can pass through our anguish in confidence.
Remembering the past
On the other hand, Benedict XVI emphasizes that the psalmist’s pain is aggravated by the memory of the Lord’s deeds in the past. “Yet it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast” (v. 9). The psalmist also evokes the hope of his forefathers. But now, all that past seems far away!
However, this painful evocation of former days is not in vain, for it prompts the man who prays to redouble his appeal to God, to his mercy. For the Lord cannot contradict himself.
Here again, in the psalmist’s taking God to task lies a lesson for us today. Indeed, the moments of joy we have spent in the Lord’s company can become the fuel of our prayerful impulse when we find ourselves in the midst of spiritual dereliction. Why is this? Because God cannot be so contradictory as to let us down, when He has been by our side on the most important occasions of our lives!
Praise follows lament
In its final section, the psalm celebrates the Lord’s response in coming to the psalmist’s aid. “The Lord went to the rescue, he saved the poor man and showed his merciful face,” says Benedict XVI. The Pope notes that in this prayer, “Death and life are interwoven in an inseparable mystery and life triumphs.”
Psalm 21 is the paschal psalm par excellence, with strong Christological implications, because it recurs again and again in the Passion narratives. But this alternation of humiliation and glory doesn’t just apply to Jesus. Does it not depict the fluctuations of our lives? Psalm 21 is indeed a school of trust and hope in times of trial: prayer is never in vain. God always answers in the end.
Easter, the day when the Father raises Jesus from the dead, the day we celebrate every Sunday, is the most striking manifestation of this. That’s why Sunday is the day par excellence when we the baptized pray together in remembrance of our salvation.
And today we celebrate...