1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning? 2 My God, I cry in the daytime, but you don’t answer; in the night season, and am not silent. 3 But you are holy, you who inhabit the praises of Israel. 4 Our fathers trusted in you. They trusted, and you delivered them. 5 They cried to you, and were delivered. They trusted in you, and were not disappointed. 6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people. 7 All those who see me mock me. They insult me with their lips. They shake their heads, saying, 8 “He trusts in the LORD. Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him, since he delights in him.” 9 But you brought me out of the womb. You made me trust while at my mother’s breasts. 10 I was thrown on you from my mother’s womb. You are my God since my mother bore me. 11 Don’t be far from me, for trouble is near. For there is no one to help. 12 Many bulls have surrounded me. Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. 13 They open their mouths wide against me, lions tearing prey and roaring. 14 I am poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within me. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You have brought me into the dust of death. 16 For dogs have surrounded me. A company of evildoers have enclosed me. They have pierced my hands and feet. 17 I can count all of my bones. They look and stare at me. 18 They divide my garments among them. They cast lots for my clothing. 19 But don’t be far off, LORD. You are my help. Hurry to help me! 20 Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. 21 Save me from the lion’s mouth! Yes, you have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen. 22 I will declare your name to my brothers. Among the assembly, I will praise you. 23 You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him! Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel! 24 For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither has he hidden his face from him; but when he cried to him, he heard. 25 My praise of you comes in the great assembly. I will pay my vows before those who fear him. 26 The humble shall eat and be satisfied. They shall praise the LORD who seek after him. Let your hearts live forever. 27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD. All the relatives of the nations shall worship before you. 28 For the kingdom is the LORD’s. He is the ruler over the nations. 29 All the rich ones of the earth shall eat and worship. All those who go down to the dust shall bow before him, even he who can’t keep his soul alive. 30 Posterity shall serve him. Future generations shall be told about the Lord. 31 They shall come and shall declare his righteousness to a people that shall be born, for he has done it.
Psalm 22 — My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?
The psalm Christ prayed from the cross, and the reason his cry was not despair but a first line.
What Psalm 22 Means
Psalm 22 is the psalm Jesus prayed while dying, and knowing that changes how the opening line reads. He says the first verse aloud from the cross: my God, my God, why have you forsaken me. Heard on its own it sounds like the end of faith. But a Jewish listener in that crowd would have known what quoting a psalm's first line does. It names the whole psalm. He is not abandoning Scripture at the last moment; he is praying it, and the psalm he chose does not end where he stopped speaking. What comes between is uncomfortably specific. The psalm describes mockery from onlookers who wag their heads, a body poured out like water, bones out of joint, a mouth dried up, hands and feet marked, and clothing divided by lot. It was written centuries before crucifixion existed as a Roman practice. The Church has read it as prophecy from the beginning, and the Gospel writers quote it directly in their accounts of the crucifixion. Then, without warning, the psalm turns. From verse twenty-two it is praise, and it widens until it takes in all the families of the nations and generations not yet born. It ends with the declaration that he has done it. That is what Christ was pointing at. The cry was the opening of a psalm that finishes in victory.
Liturgical Use in the Catholic Church
Psalm 22 is the responsorial psalm of Good Friday and is read during the Passion. It appears in the Liturgy of the Hours and is one of the psalms most directly tied to the events of the Triduum.
Praying Psalm 22 — A Simple Practice
Read it in one sitting rather than stopping at the famous line, because stopping there reverses its meaning. If you are in a period where prayer feels like shouting at nothing, this is the psalm that gives that experience a place inside faith rather than outside it. Pray it on Good Friday if you pray no other psalm in the year.
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