Man Oh Man

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, March 24, 2024:
Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

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Psalm 22

R: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; “Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver; let him rescue the one in whom he delights!”

R: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

For dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me. My hands and feet have shrivelled; I can count all my bones.

R: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

They divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots. But you, O Lord, do not be far away! O my help, come quickly to my aid!

R: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

​I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you: You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!

R: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Poetry captures a moment. A literary polaroid.

Psalm 22 beautifully foreshadows and even, in a mysterious way, writes an icon of the moment that Christ, crucified, took on all of humanity’s sins, even as He released us from them.

There are two parties of the psalm’s drama: the sinners and the Saviour. Our psalmist identifies the sinners by their actions, while simultaneously stripping them of individualities. Line by line, he strips the figures of their human likenesses; they are no-one, and therefore, everyone.

We sinners become animals: dogs in these verses; lions, bulls, and oxen elsewhere. Pope Benedict XVI said, “these images used in the Psalm… serve to describe that when man becomes brutal… he seems to lose any human likeness.”

Likewise, the suffering “I” of the psalm gets slowly disfigured. “Under the jeering blows of irony and contempt, it almost seems as though the persecuted man loses his own human features,” says Pope Benedict. He’s even stripped of his clothes. By the end, there’s nothing, not even superficially, to identify him.

In using this language, our psalmist takes us out of the realm of individuals and gives us a glimpse into an eternal reality. This is no longer about a guy being tormented by some guys, but “The Man” (ecce homo) of Jesus Christ, accepting the persecution of all of sinful mankind. 

As the nails are driven into Jesus’ hands and feet, the “old man” of unredeemed humanity is at its absolute worst. And Christ takes it all on himself. On the Cross, Jesus is “sustaining the person of the old man, whose mortality He bare,” says St. Augustine. “For our old man was nailed together with Him to the Cross.” So it is the old man, our own fallen human nature, whom Jesus is sustaining within Himself, who cries "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" from the Cross. “Uttering the words of the Psalm,” says Pope Benedict, “Jesus prays at the moment of His ultimate rejection by men, at the moment of abandonment.”

It is (literally) the crucial time. And the Father sees. As he looks at his beloved Son, He looks upon every person’s failures (mine, yours) as one, in One. 

And in that moment, the Father doesn’t speak — like someone silenced by a breath-taking painting. “Instead, at the approach of the death of the Crucified One, silence falls, no voice is heard,” Pope Benedict says, “but the Father’s loving gaze is fixed on His Son’s gift of love.”

And then the final verse — whew! — we are praising God in His Church for all time. For after The Man took on the old man (perhaps I should say “me-Man”), we become St. Paul’s "any man" and "new man" when Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature,” (2 Cor 5:17), “one new man… both in one body to God through the cross,” (Eph 2:14-16). Hooray!

This psalm acts as a verbal icon of that eternal, unfathomable moment of transformation. Sitting with it and praying through it, like an icon, can transport us to great joy!




Kate Mosher

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