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Pope John Paul II met with 13,000 pilgrims in St. Peter's Square during his general audience June 2. He offered his reflections on Psalm 41, which Jesus quoted during the Last Supper when he was about to be betrayed.

Psalm 41, he said, is the prayer of a man who is lonely and sick. His enemies delight in his misfortune. “Their words are harsh and strike at the very heart of the psalmist, who experiences a malice that knows no mercy,” the Holy Father noted. “This is exactly what many poor and humble people experience, people who are condemned to being alone and feeling as though they are a burden to the members of their family.” Furthermore, even the psalmist's lifelong friend has betrayed him.

Despite the note of sadness in the psalm, there is an undercurrent of profound spiritual joy. “Suffering in itself can conceal a secret value and become a path of purification, interior freedom and enrichment for the soul,” the Pope said. “It is an invitation to overcome our superficiality, vanity, egoism and sin, and to entrust ourselves more deeply to God and to his saving will.”

St. Ambrose, John Paul pointed out, interpreted Psalm 41 as a prophetic ray of light and hope for us all, and as an invitation to meditate on the passion of Christ, who saves us from our sins and leads us to resurrection with him.

One reason that motivates us to understand and to love Psalm 41, which we have just heard, is the fact that Jesus himself quoted it: “I am not speaking of all of you. I know those whom I have chosen. But so that the Scripture might be fulfilled, ‘The one who ate my food has raised his heel against me’” (John 13:18).

It is the last night of his life on earth, and Jesus, the host, is in the upper room, about to offer a choice morsel of food to Judas, the traitor. He recalls these words from the psalm, which is actually the plea of a man who is sick and whose friends have abandoned him. It is in this ancient prayer that Christ finds the words and the sentiments to express his profound sadness.

We will now try to follow and cast some light on the overall theme of this psalm, which flows from the lips of a person who, undoubtedly, is suffering because of his illness, but who is suffering above all because of the cruel irony of his “enemies” (see Psalm 41:6-9) and because he has been betrayed by a “friend” (see verse 10).

The Plea of the Lonely

Psalm 41 opens with a blessing. The recipients of this blessing are those who are truly friends, who are “concerned for the lowly and the poor.” The Lord will reward them in their day of suffering, when they find themselves “on their sickbed” (see verses 2-4).

However, the heart of this plea is contained in the following passage, where the ailing man speaks (see verses 5-10). He begins his prayer by asking God for forgiveness, according to a concept that is traditional in the Old Testament in which every pain was the result of a corresponding sin: “Lord, have mercy on me; heal me, I have sinned against you” (verse 5; see Psalm 38). For the ancient Jew, sickness was an appeal to his conscience in order to guide him to conversion.

Although Christ, the definitive source of revelation, has dismissed this idea (see John 9:1-3), suffering in itself can conceal a secret value and become a path of purification, interior freedom and enrichment for the soul. It is an invitation to overcome our superficiality, vanity, egoism and sin, and to entrust ourselves more deeply to God and to his saving will.

Malice of the Wicked

At this point, the wicked enter the picture — those who come and visit the sick man not to comfort him but to attack him (see verses 6-9). Their words are harsh and strike at the very heart of the psalmist, who experiences a malice that knows no mercy. This is exactly what many poor and humble people experience, people who are condemned to being alone and feeling as though they are a burden to the members of their family. If, at times, they receive a word of consolation, they immediately perceive a false and hypocritical tone.

As we have said, the psalmist experiences harshness and indifference, even from his friends (see verse 10), who are transformed into hostile and hateful figures. The psalmist attributes to them a gesture of scorn, that of “lifting the heel,” the threatening act of someone who is about to trample upon his vanquished enemy or the instinctive impulse of the horseman to provoke his horse with his heel in order to trample down his adversary.

When the one who strikes him is “the friend” whom he trusted, who in Hebrew is literally called “the man of peace,” the bitterness is deep. We recall Job's friends, who were transformed from lifelong companions into hostile and indifferent people (see Job 19:1-6). The voice of the multitude of people who have been forgotten and humiliated in their infirmity and weakness, especially by those who should have supported them, resounds in the voice of the psalmist.

God Is in Control

However, the prayer of Psalm 41 does not end on a gloomy note.

The psalmist is certain that God will appear on the horizon, revealing his love once again (see verses 11-14). He will offer him support and take the sick man into his arms so that he will once again “stand in the presence” of his Lord (verse 13), which in biblical language means reliving the experience of a liturgical celebration in the Temple.

Thus, this psalm, which is marked by pain, finishes on a ray of light and hope. From this perspective, one can understand why St. Ambrose, in his commentary on the opening blessing (see verse 2), saw it as a prophetic invitation to meditate on Christ's saving passion that leads to the resurrection. It is with the following words that this Father of the Church suggests we begin our reading of the psalm: “Blessed is the one who thinks of the misery and poverty of Christ who, even though he was rich, made himself poor for us. Rich in his Kingdom yet poor in the flesh, because he has taken on himself this flesh of the poor … He did not suffer, therefore, in his richness but in our poverty. It is for this reason that it was not the fullness of the divinity that suffered … but the flesh. Try therefore to penetrate the meaning of Christ's poverty, if you wish to be rich! Try to penetrate the meaning of his weakness, if you wish to obtain salvation! Try to penetrate the meaning of his cross, if you do not want to be ashamed of it; the meaning of his wound, if you wish to heal yours; the meaning of his death, if you wish to attain eternal life; the meaning of his burial, if you wish to find resurrection” (Commento a Dodici Salmi: Saemo, VIII, Milan-Rome, 1980, p. 39-41).

(Register translation)