Psalms of Mercy

King Davidand Pope Franci—teach us how to acquire wisdom in my secret heart.

When Pope Francis sets out to explain God's mercy from the Bible in his 2015 bull Misericordiae Vultus (The Face of Mercy), he begins with the Psalms: In a special way the Psalms bring to the fore the grandeur of his merciful action. The Holy Father proceeds to highlight a few aspects of God's mercy as they are reflected in the Psalms.

He begins with God's merciful nature in Psalm 103. The Old Testament often describes God as patient and merciful, or as the Revised Standard Version puts it, God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (Ps 103:8). Throughout the history of salvation, the Holy Father tells us, God makes his goodness prevails over punishment and destruction. In the words of the psalmist, He forgives all your iniquity, he heals all your diseases, he redeems your life from the pit, he crowns you with steadfast love and mercy (Ps 103:3-4).

Next, Pope Francis points out that the expression of God's mercy in the lives of human beings is very concrete: He executes justice for the oppressed; he gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. . . . The Lord watches over the sojourners, he upholds the widow and the fatherless; but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin (Ps 146:7-9). The concrete ways God shows mercy can guide our practice of mercy, as well.

Mercy Is Masculine and Feminine

The pope probes the motives that impel God's mercy forward: God reveals his love as of that of a father or a mother, moved to the very depths out of love for their child. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that this is a visceral love. It gushes forth from the depths naturally, full of tenderness and compassion, indulgence and mercy. Here the Holy Father draws upon the teaching of St. John Paul II in Dives in Misericordia (Rich in Mercy) where he explains the Bible's rich vocabulary of mercy.

Two Hebrew words commonly translated as mercy are hesed and rahamim. Pope John Paul explains:

While hesed highlights the marks of fidelity to self and of responsibility for one's own love' (which are in a certain sense masculine characteristics), rahamim, in its very root, denotes the love of a mother (rehem = mother's womb). From the deep and original bondindeed the unitythat links a mother to her child there springs . . . a particular love . . . that it is completely gratuitous, not merited, and that . . . constitutes an interior necessity: an exigency of the heart. It is, as it were, a feminine' variation of the masculine fidelity to self, expressed by hesed. . . . Rahamim [expresses] a whole range of feelings, including goodness and tenderness, patience and understanding, that is, readiness to forgive.

The Old Testament often uses rahamim to speak of God (e.g., Deut 30:3; Is 14:1; 30:18). The Vulgate uses the expression viscera misericordiae to translate the emotional depth of this visceral mercy.

His Mercy Endures Forever

Returning to Misericordiae Vultus, Pope Francis turns next to Psalm 146, which repeats the refrain, For his mercy endures forever, in every verse. This phrase teaches the absolute constancy of God's mercy through all of human history and into eternity.

The psalm begins with God's mercy manifest first in creation, then in the deliverance from Egypt, and finally in bestowing on Israel the land of Canaan. Jewish tradition refers to this psalm as the Great Hallel, and it is likely that this is the hymn that Jesus sang with his disciples at the conclusion of his final Passover meal (Mt 26:30).

The pope writes, While he was instituting the Eucharist as an everlasting memorial of himself and his paschal sacrifice, he symbolically placed this supreme act of revelation in the light of his mercy. Within the very same context of mercy, Jesus entered upon his passion and death. . . . Knowing that Jesus himself prayed this psalm makes it even more important for us as Christians, challenging us to take up the refrain in our daily lives by praying these words of praise: for his mercy endures forever.'

The Holy Father then goes on to discuss mercy in the life of Christ, the parables, and the teaching of the prophets.

Many other psalms focus on God's mercy besides those mentioned by Pope Francis. The Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization has published a little book, The Psalms of Mercy (Our Sunday Visitor, 2015), that offers helpful commentary on ten psalms of mercy (25, 41, 42-43, 51, 57, 92, 103, 119:81-88, 136).

I will conclude this article with comments on the most famous of those, Psalm 51, whose Latin title is MiserereHave mercy! It is a psalm of repentance that is prayed in the Liturgy of the Hours every Friday morning. According to the ancient title at the beginning, this is the psalm David prayed after he was confronted by the prophet Nathan about his adultery with Bathsheba (2 Sam 11-12).

Sin = Missing the Mark

Despite the gravity of his wrongdoing, in Psalm 51 David appeals in confident hope to God's merciful love (hesed) and to his abundant mercy (rahamim), asking that his sin be blotted out, washed, and cleansed (Ps 51:1-2). The psalm employs three different words for sin to cover every kind and degree of wrongdoinga fact that helps everyone apply this psalm to his or her own life. The word translated as iniquity is a broad term that refers to any kind of evil act. Transgression, which means to cross the line, refers to acts that are contrary to any of God's commandments and is the most serious kind of sin.

Interestingly, the words translated sin from both Hebrew (hata't) and Greek (hamartia) are drawn from the vocabulary of archery, where they mean to miss the target. Now that is a broad term!

How many ways we miss the mark, in our speech, in our thoughts, in our use of time and money, in our treatment of others, in our prayer! Learning that sin means missing the target helps us prepare to receive mercy in confession. We begin by considering any commandments we may have broken, but then we go on to ask in what ways we have missed the mark, the bullseye, that the Lord intends us to hit, for instance, in loving our neighbor as ourselves.

I discovered I had a lot more to confess!

Becoming a Missionary of Mercy

In the rest of Psalm 51, David acknowledges his sinful condition and his absolute dependence on God to teach wisdom to his inner self or secret heart, to cleanse him, even to create a new heart in him, and to restore his joy. He prays that God will not cast him off or take away his Holy Spirit (Ps 51:6-12).

David promises to teach transgressors God's ways once he, himself, is restored. He asks for mercy so that he can become a messenger of mercy. He is confident he will praise and worship God again, since he knows that the sacrifice acceptable to God is . . . a broken and contrite heart (Ps 51:17).

What was true for David is true for us. We need God's mercy to cleanse, heal, and restore us. Only if we receive mercy, only if we experience it, can we become missionaries of mercy.