The Psalms of Supplication and Trust

The other great movement of the Psalter is the cry. The psalms of supplication, the most numerous of all, are the prayer of distress: they cry to God from the depths of misfortune, of sickness, of injustice, of sin. But this cry is never sheer despair: almost always it turns toward trust, for the one who cries still believes that God hears. It is the prayer that teaches one to pass through the night without letting go of God’s hand.

The Psalms of Supplication

The supplications, that of a single man as well as that of a whole people, form the most numerous group in the Psalter. They often follow a single path: one calls on God, lays before him the trouble, asks for help, then, almost always, entrusts oneself to him in trust. They cry from the depths of trial, sickness, persecution, abandonment, death close at hand, and do not soften the pain: they name it, complain, ask "how long?" "Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;" Psalms 130:1 This cry from the depths becomes the very voice of the soul in trouble. The supplication is bold: it dares to argue with God, to remind him of his promises, to ask him why he hides. A few, like the darkest psalm of the collection, do not even find rest and end in the night, keeping for man the right to cry out his pain to the very end. But most of the time, the psalm turns before it ends toward trust: the cry is addressed, and to address God is already to believe that he hears. There are also supplications of a whole people: when the Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem burned, Israel cried to God, "why have you rejected us forever?", mingling the complaint with the memory of God’s past works to revive hope. And one of the most beautiful supplications compares the soul thirsting for God to the deer that pants toward the streams, that downcast soul to which the one praying says to himself, "Hope in God!" The psalms thus teach one to tell God the real pain, without disguising it, but without closing it upon itself.

The Penitential Psalms

Among the supplications, a group weeps not over an outward evil, but over sin. The Church has counted seven of them, which she calls the penitential psalms, and above all the Miserere. "Have mercy on me, O God, in your faithful love; in your great tenderness, blot out my transgressions." Psalms 51:3 Tradition ties this psalm to David’s repentance after his fault; it asks not only for forgiveness, but that God create a pure heart within and give back the joy of salvation, acknowledging that no sacrifice is worth the broken and humbled heart. Another of these psalms sings the happiness of the man whose fault is taken away, that happiness which Saint Paul will cite to speak of justification by grace. The Church has made the seven penitential psalms her school of repentance, and she prays the Miserere at the threshold of each day and in every act of penance, for it says in a single breath the truth of sin and the certainty of mercy.

The Psalms of Trust

Facing the cry stands its answer, within the Psalter itself: the psalms of pure trust, where the soul rests in God as in a refuge, even in danger. The best loved is the psalm of the shepherd. "The Lord is my shepherd: I lack nothing." Psalms 23:1 He leads to still waters and sets the table; he does not deny the darkness, he passes through it without fear, because of a presence. "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me." Psalms 23:4 Other psalms sing the same assurance under other images: the Lord my light and my salvation, my rock, my fortress, the shelter where one takes refuge under his wings, or again the soul stilled like a small child against its mother. The trust of the psalms is not the absence of danger, but the certainty of a presence in the midst of it; it does not remove the shadow, it removes the fear, and it is this trust the believer learns by praying the psalms even in his own nights.