Tuesday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 14, 2022

Psalm 51, 3-4, 5-6, 11 and 16

Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness; in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense. Thoroughly wash me from my guilt and of my sin cleanse me.

For I acknowledge my offense, and my sin is before me always: Against you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.”

Turn away your face from my sins, and blot out all my guilt. Free me from blood guilt, O God, my saving God; then my tongue shall revel in your justice. 

The Responsorial Psalm for today’s Mass consists of six of the twenty-one verses of Psalm 51 (Psalm 50 in the Douay Rheims translation).  This Psalm is attributed to David after Nathan accused him of committing adultery with Bathsheba and then killing her husband.  In his prayer, David accepts full responsibility for what he has done and begs forgiveness.  We might ask what forgiveness meant for David, a thousand years before the Lord Jesus taught the necessity of the forgiveness of sins for salvation.  David could only hope for mercy during his life on earth, or for his children.  In fact, the child conceived by Bathsheba died after birth, which David saw as God’s punishment.  But David did not lose his life on account of his sin, and Bathsheba later conceived and bore Solomon.  In the time of grace, we who belong to Jesus Christ pray this Psalm and plead for the forgiveness of our sins so that God might restore his friendship with us, fill us with grace, and continue to lead us to heaven.

“Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness; in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense. Thoroughly wash me from my guilt and of my sin cleanse me.”  We recognize the goodness of God and entreat his favor.  The Hebrew word translated here as “mercy”really means “to show favor” or “to be gracious”.  Favor may indeed include mercy, but it looks beyond mere forgiveness to showing a sign of restored friendship.  We beg the Lord to “wipe out” or “obliterate” our “rebellion”, which is what the Hebrew word means rather than the weaker “offense”.  Indeed, David’s adultery and then murder constituted an act of rebellion, of betrayal, which was seen as the gravest of sins.  He started to see himself as God, like the kings of the neighboring nations did, so that he did not have to answer to anyone for his actions.  He forgot his humble origins and all that God had done for him.  He forgot how easily God can take the kingdom from a man he has anointed and given to another, as in the case of Saul.  We do worse when we sin because we know that our Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died for us: that he has raised us up from our state as mere creatures of God to becoming his adopted son and daughters, destined an inheritance in heaven.  “Thoroughly wash me from my guilt and of my sin cleanse me.”  The sense here is to wash as a fuller would — to bleach — in order to remove the slightest traces of a stain.  It does not suffice for those truly repentant to be cleansed; they yearn to be purified.  

“For I acknowledge my offense, and my sin is before me always.”  I know my sin: that the action is sinful and that I committed it freely and knowingly.  Consequently, it is continuously before my face, in my conscience.  It is before my eyes instead of you, O God, and I cannot rest until every speck of it is gone.  “Against you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.”  My sin has harmed other people, but it was against the laws you made that I sinned, and I performed this evil act in your full view, adding arrogance to the sin.

“Turn away your face from my sins, and blot out all my guilt.”  we beseech God to blot out our sins and not even to look at where they had been by turning away from them.  But also, the turning away of God means the end and disappearance of a thing: “But if you turn away thy face, they shall vanish: if you shall take away their breath, they shall fail, and shall return to their dust” (Psalm 104, 29).  “Free me from blood guilt, O God, my saving God.”  Literally, “Free me from blood”, and in the context this means “from the spilling of blood that I committed”.  This has two aspects: murder and ritual impurity, since exposed blood was regarded as causing impurity.  We “murder” in the harm we do to ourselves and others, and we contract impurity and inability to receive the Sacraments because of this. God alone can save us from punishment and restore us to grace.  “Then my tongue shall revel in your justice.”  More literally, My tongue shall ring out with joy for your righteousness.  The sense is that the tongue of one who is forgiven acts as a bell whose ringing announces the righteousness of God and draws others to it.  And so the one who is crushed by the realization of what he has done in breaking God’s commandment still looks forward to return to God’s friendship and his grace.  The Christian can do this most certainly simply by looking a crucifix and reminding himself of how the Lord Jesus did not spare himself in order to obtain this forgiveness for us.