Lectio on the Psalm 50(51)

Have mercy on me, O God, in your faithful love,
in your great tenderness wipe away my offences;
wash me clean from my guilt,
purify me from my sins.
For I am well aware of my offences,
my sin is constantly in mind.
Against you, you alone, I have sinned,
I have done what you see to be wrong,
that you may show your saving justice when you pass sentence,
and your victory may appear when you give judgement.
Remember I was born guilty,
a sinner from the moment of conception.
But you delight in sincerity of heart
and in secret you teach me wisdom.
Purify me with hyssop till I am clean,
wash me till I am whiter than snow.
Let me hear the sound of joy and gladness,
and the bones you have crushed will dance.
Turn away your face from my sin,
and wipe away all my guilt.
God, create in me a clean heart,
renew within me a resolute spirit,
do not thrust me away from your presence
do not take away from me your spirit of holiness.
Give me back the joy of your salvation,
sustain in me a generous spirit.
I shall teach the wicked your paths,
and sinners will return to you.
Deliver me from bloodshed, God, God of my salvation,
and my tongue will acclaim your saving justice.
Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will speak out your praise.
Sacrifice gives you no pleasure,
burnt offering you do not desire.
Sacrifice to God is a broken spirit,
a broken, contrite heart you never scorn.
In your graciousness do good to Zion,
rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
Then you will delight in upright sacrifices,
burnt offerings and whole oblations-
and young bulls will be offered on your altar.

 

The beauty and the vital importance of this psalm, just at the discovery of a journey of prayer, is expressed by Charles de Foucauld like this, " It is a compendium of adoration, love, offering, thanksgiving, repentance, petition. Starting from the consideration of ourselves and from the sight of our sins, this psalm reaches the contemplation of God passing through the neighbours and praying for the conversion of all men".

This psalm goes throughout the whole history of spirituality. It makes up the internal scheme of the Confessions by St. Augustine; it has been meditated and commented by men like St. Gregory the Great, Savonarola, Luther and Dostoeskij. Musicians like Bach, Donizetti and others have put it in music. Great painters, like G. Rouault, have been inspired by it. "By meditating and by praying it, we enter the heart of man and his history" (C.M. Martini).

Who is the author of Psalm 50(51)?

It has long been thought, according to vv. 1-2, that David is the author of the Psalm. It is thought that the Psalm flowed from his heart after his adultery with Betsabea, the killing of her husband Uriah and the listening to the provoking parable of the prophet Nathan (cfr 2Sam 11-12).

Today, the exegetes, instead, are inclined to catch from the psalm typical theological elements of the prophets, especially of Jeremiah. It would, therefore, be written around the IV century B.C., after the Babylonian exile. It must, anyhow, be underlined that the existential charge, come from the prophets, has caused the re-elaboration of the psalm in the form of a personal prayer, fit for all times, an authentic experience of sin and conversion, in the most trustful recourse to God.

Structure

The structure is such as to let us catch a very important thing in the relation between the conscience of sin and our prayer: at the centre - light, liberation and salvation- there is the saving justice of God, which is one with his mercy.

He is greater than any sin of ours. On the scales: sin-God, the heavier plate is that in which God is present and is present as Mercy.

The structure comes out of a big harmony in its various parts, which we are going to examine.

Introduction: the Psalm is attributed to David who has committed a grave sin.

An acute and painful awareness of sin emerges as an enormous evil. The verbs are all in the indicative mood and express facts, errors committed, substantially, against God.

The supplication is expressed: The perception of God here is the certainty that He is the absolute source of forgiveness, of grace, of regeneration and of joy. The verbs are in the imperative mood: purify me, wash me, let me hear the sound of joy, etc.

It is spoken about the future:  what the psalmist foresees as project of God. Here the verbs are in the future tense: I shall teach, my tongue will acclaim…

The psalm closes with a liturgical appendix, which was added later.

Deepening of the text

Have mercy on me, God, in your faithful love.
in your great tenderness,
wipe away my offences.

This is a very important beginning! The accent falls on God, though the sense of sin is very strong. It comes to mind what the exegete A. Gelin has called the "Visiting card of God in the Old Testament": Yahweh, the merciful and compassionate God,  slow to anger, rich in grace and faithfulness, who keeps his favour for thousands of generations, who forgives the fault, the transgressions and the sin, but does not leave us without punishment (Ex 34, 6-7).

Fetching from the image of God the Father revealed to us by Jesus, how not to think of Lk 15 and of what can be said to be the description of the psychology of the merciful Father, in the parable of Him who welcomes and forgives?  It is interesting to notice that the psalmist says:  "according to your mercy"  and not  "in your mercy" or  "because you are merciful". The accent is on the intuition (even without succeeding to understand) of the enormous disproportion between the man's way of being and this mercy, which is God's way of being.

The Hebrew words translated into mercy are "hesed" and "rehamin".  Hesed expresses the attitude of God: loyalty, trust, faithfulness, bounty, tenderness, constancy in attention and in love.

God is He whom I do not presume to know: yet I can be sure that I am important to Him, He cares for me so very much, as "even the hair of my head he counts", Jesus says (cfr Mt 10, 30; Lk 12, 7).

Hesed  is one of the fundamental terms in the theology of the psalms as well as in that of the Covenant (it recurs 245 times in the Old Testament, out of which 127 times  in the Psalms).

But the term rahamin (plural of rehem)  is also important. It evokes the maternal bowels, archetype symbol of a gratuitous love, wholly donated love. "Can a woman forget her baby at the breast? Even if this were to forget, I shall not forget you (Cfr Is 49, 16 and 30, 18).

In the Talmud, "Merciful" is almost the surname of God, who is thus defined in His most intimate reality.

 "Wash me clean from my guilt, purify me from my sin. For I am well aware of my offences, my sin is constantly in mind: Against you, you alone I have sinned" (vv. 2-4).

With a hammering repetition, now the psalmist brings sin to the fore, sin discovered in all its iniquity. Three heavy words are used in Hebrew: Ht' = sin; pèsa= guilt; awon= transgression and rebellion.

The idea, which the psalmist communicates to us, is that sin is the fundamental evil, in substance, it is the unique and true evil of man. In fact, it breaks the nuptial Covenant with God; it is disorientation, a failure in the game of life; it is the rebellion against God, source of life and of joy. From Exodus 21, 8; Jeremiah 3, 20; Is. 1, 20; 50, 5 a precise idea of the absolute destructive effect of sin emerges. In fact, God builds up peace and harmony in us and in history through our free adhesion to his Law, sin ruins and destroys man and whatever is correlated to him because he proposes himself as will and alternative project of God, the unique source of good.

"You delight in sincerity of heart, and in secret you teach me wisdom" (v. 6).

This is a verse, which, somehow, lets the first part of the psalm slip into the second part. It is said that a clear and strong awareness of what sin is, does not find a solution through a magic ritual, but through the sincere humility of the heart which is aware of having done a huge "damage"; a heart which, at the same time,  trust in the forgiveness of God and in the possibility of starting once again to choose, with Him, "the way of life".

It is the "void" of a contrite and humble heart, which allows the breaking of wisdom into us as the capacity of seeing and of deciding according to what pleases God.

"Purify me … wash me. Turn away your face from my sins, and wipe away my guilt" (7-9)

Here the psalm becomes a supplication whose strength is expressed by the verbs in the imperative mood. Through their symbolic expression, the images intensify the yearning for purification. The hyssop is an aromatic herb linked to the rite of the paschal lamb (Ex. 12,22), while snow speaks of a renewed, candid splendour of the heart that is forgiven by God (cfr Is 1,18).

The anthropomorphic image of the "face" of God also (cfr v- 9 ) deepens this speaking with God, because the face sometimes the expression of the disdain and of the punishment of God, who cannot bear sin (cfr Si 38, 2; 90, 8), as well as the expression,  above all, of the source of grace and reconciliation. "I shall exult with joy for your grace, because you have looked at my misery" (51 30, 8). Because of this persuasion, the psalmist now has arrived to pray: "Let me hear the sound of joy and gladness, and the bones you have crushed will dance" (V. 8). In fact, forgiveness provokes a joy, which seizes the whole human being, also in his physical reality (the bones).

We hear the resounding words of Isaiah, "You will see him and your heart will rejoice, and your bones will flourish like fresh grass" (?)

           "God, create in me a clean heart, renew within me a resolute spirit" (V. 10).

The supplication becomes the cry of the one who knows God more and more and, in prayer, knows himself in his light, asking the strength of his Spirit. It is interesting the fact that in the Hebrew text we find three intense invocations to the holy Spirit. The translation says, "Sustain in me a generous spirit", but the original text says, "Strengthen me with your generous Spirit". The sense is much more consoling!

We are now at the peak moment of the psalm: it is a penitential epiclesis, similar to the epiclesis at the Consecration, the vertex moment of the Eucharistic celebration.

The term "create" is also very important. It is the first verb of the Bible; "In the beginning God created heaven and earth" (Genesis 1, 1). The Bible reserves this word only for God who causes the being to flow as an absolute newness from nothing.

God alone creates! Man can receive the being, but cannot give it. The other supplication is correlated to this request of new creation: "Give me back the joy" , which in the original text is, "let joy be risen in me again".

The sense of this correlation is deep:  intense joy is there where there is a true knowledge of God and of his forgiveness!

"I shall teach the wicked your paths (…) my tongue will acclaim your saving justice (…) a broken, contrite heart, God, you never scorn" (vv. 13-17).

It is a final verse drenched with hope! He who has experienced the overwhelming strength of mercy and knows of having been "re-created" by God, becomes a witness, one who feels the urgency of the proclamation. However, always, even this missionary action, is supported by God, who is its propeller. The God who finds no pleasure in sacrifices and holocausts which are formal and without love, but rather joins intimately to himself the spirit, better, the humble and contrite heart.

"In your graciousness do good to Zion (…) Then you will delight in upright sacrifices (vv.18-19). The exegetes have read in this a liturgical appendix of secondary value. It not only the sinner who repents and asks forgiveness, but all the members of the people of God who ask God to forget their rebellions and to take delight once again in the holocausts, in the rites of Israel.

Let us meditate while actualising

If I want to learn how to pray, it's good for me to learn first how to know God in his identity of love-mercy, and also to know myself in my identity of a person who has sinned.

Often we pray with a very vague knowledge of God and of ourselves. We have the idea of a "paparone" (too good a father) almost grandfather or kindly person, or the idea of an angry judge; a god supported by various acts of devotion, whose image depends on the obscure fears of the psyche  or is dirtied by many banalities of catechesis and mean homilies, by spiritualistic books;  or the idea of an abstract God of a too much rationalised theology. A God … not a living God, a "stopgaps" god, not a God Love, infinite Mercy!

We often pray also with a bad self-awareness, without a sufficient capacity of judgement on self. Even in the sacrament of confession, sometimes the believer, instead of accusing himself, seeks justifications, attenuation, accusing others. Carlo Maria Martini writes: "The capacity of self judgement is not yet the contrition of sins; however, it is its premise. In fact, I can repent of something wrong which is only mine, which I have committed and disapprove.

Therefore, we are supposed to be aware that, in our confessions and in the deep attitude of our being, we are always inclined to excuse ourselves and to accuse others, we are far from self knowledge and, even more, from the reality of Christian repentance.

To open ourselves fully to the richness of this psalm, we are supposed to grow in the awareness of our socio-cultural context. It is very beautiful that finally we speak of "social sin", of "structures of sin", in the awareness that sin touches the Church, dismembers the society and pollutes the political and economic aspects of the national and world communities.

This psalm, however, reminds us that behind every man's face, within every human  situation, God is the great Presence. When I abuse somebody, when I deceive him, when I refuse to help him, I actually offend and ill treat God himself! In fact the psalmist does not say, "I have sinned", but "I have sinned against You". It is throughout the whole psalm that our prayer, asking the forgiveness of God, far from making us plunge into the depressing sense of guilt, makes us to rebound in full trust. "My sin is constantly in mind … I have done what you see to be wrong". This is what I say in the full truth, but without lingering with a depressed gaze on my weaknesses and miseries; in fact, turning to God, I cry to Him trustfully: "Have mercy on me, in your faithful love, in your great tenderness".

My exercises and my prayer, on the Word

-         I seek the quiet of mind and body through awareness exercises of my breathing. By inhaling the air in the inspiration, I welcome the breath of God.

-         With my expiration I hand over my sin to the merciful God, "in whom we live, we breathe and we are".

-         If I am alone in my room, I wide-open my arms as a gesture of handing over, handing over, handing over. I immerse my heart into the word of the psalm, "Have mercy on me, O God, in your faithful love".

-         I try to breathe in faith this love-mercy-salvation. For a long time, up to the moment I perceive that the love-mercy of God enwraps me and is much bigger and deeper than my sin.

-         Slowly I repeat, " You delight in sincerity of heart, and in secret you teach me wisdom". In the light of the Holy Spirit I write something of my transgressions and omissions, but without torturing myself in my psyche. More than drafting  a dry list, in my dialogue with the divine "You", I expose my wandering during this period. I remain under the gaze of a Merciful-Father.

-         Now I move. I assume another position. I may also change the milieu. If there is the sun, I allow myself to be invested by its light-warmth.

-         With a living supplication, I repeat, "Create in me a clean heart" (…) "Give me back the joy of your salvation. Let me hear the sound of joy and gladness".

-         I shall visualise  Jesus near the adulteress. I feel as if that healing word were said to me, as if it pacified me and as if it put in me the dynamism of a new life, "Go in peace, and sin no more".

-         While waiting for the Sacrament of reconciliation, I taste in my heart the joy of salvation. I breathe trust. Nothing is impossible to the power of God's Love: neither my conversion, nor that of my sisters.

-         I can pray: Free me, O God, from every fear, which opposes violence to my journey. Open my lips and I shall proclaim your praise. Let me feel the joy of being reconciled with You and, consequently, with everybody. Let me radiate joy.

-         I pray slowly the psalm all over again, and I linger on those verses which, repeated, I feel more as my own, more apt to pacify me and to unite me to the Lord who is loving me.

Contemplative itineraries

But you, Lord,
looked at the abyss of my death and,
in the depth of my heart,
you destroyed the abyss of my corruption.
How soon it seemed suave to me
to be deprived of that false sweetness,
which I was afraid to lose
and now, instead, I feel glad to leave behind!
It was You that kept it far from me,
You, true and supreme sweetness;
You kept it far while taking its place yourself.
You, who are sweeter than any pleasure,
but not for the flesh and the blood;
You who are more luminous than every light,
but are intimate more than any secret.
You, more sublime than any greatness,
but not for those who are self-conceited.
My spirit was finally free
from the painful worries of ambition and earning,
from the leprosy of restless and impure passions.
I stammered my first words to You, my light,
my richness and salvation.
O Lord, my God.                                               
(From the Confessions, IX, 1)