22.6.05 General Audience

In the second part of our song of thanksgiving we move from the marine image to a hunting scene, typical of many Psalms of supplication (see Psalm 123[124]:6-8). It evokes a beast which has its prey between its teeth, or a snare of fowlers that captures a bird. But the blessing expressed by the psalm leads us to understand that the fate of the faithful, which was a fate of death, has changed radically thanks to a saving intervention: "Blessed be the Lord, who did not leave us to be torn by their fangs. We escaped with our lives like a bird from the fowler's snare; the snare was broken and we escaped" (verses 6-7).

At this point the prayer becomes a sigh of relief that rises from the depth of the soul: Even when all human hopes are destroyed, the divine liberating power can appear. The psalm ends with a profession of faith, which centuries ago entered the Christian liturgy as an ideal premise of all prayer: "Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini, qui fecit caelum et terram -- Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth" (verse 8). The Almighty places himself in particular on the side of the victims and the persecuted "who cry to him day and night" and "will vindicate them speedily" (see Luke 18:7-8).

4. St. Augustine offers an articulated commentary to the psalm. In the first place, he observes that this psalm is properly sung by the "members of Christ, who have reached blessedness." In particular, "it has been sung by the holy martyrs, who having left this world, are with Christ in happiness, ready to take up incorrupt again those same bodies that before were corruptible. In life, they suffered torments in the body, but in eternity these torments will be transformed into adornments of justice."

However, in a second instance the bishop of Hippo tells us that we can also sing this psalm with hope. He states: We, too, animated by a sure hope, will sing exulting. The singers of this psalm are not strangers to us. Therefore, let us all sing with only one heart: both the saints who already possess the crown as well as ourselves, who with affection unite ourselves to their crown. Together we desire that life which we do not have down here, but which we will never be able to have if we have not first desired it."