Psalms — Chapter 21

DEUS DEUS MEUS RESPICE IN ME. Lapide: This is the great Passion Psalm, cited from the Cross by Christ Himself (Mt. 27:46; Mk. 15:34). The literal sense in Lapide's approach has a dual subject: David in his tribulations prefigures Christ in His Passion, but the PROPER and principal subject is Christ Himself. The unanimous voice of the Fathers confirms this. The doubling "Deus Deus meus" expresses the intensity of Christ's desolation and simultaneously His unshaken faith: He does not say "my God was" but "my God IS" — the dereliction is real but not ultimate. Lapide: the cry from the Cross was Christ's human soul experiencing the withdrawal of the beatific overflow upon His lower powers, so that He might truly suffer for our sins — not a loss of the beatific vision itself, but of its consoling effects.