I am on my knees as I begin this psalm. It is your psalm, Lord. You said it on the cross, at the height of your agony, when the suffering of your soul climaxed the suffering of your body in utter dereliction.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Those are your words. How can I make them mine? How can I equate my sufferings to yours? How can I climb your cross and utter your cry, forever consecrated by the uniqueness of your passion? I feel that this psalm is yours, and to you it should be left as memorial of your passion, as wounded expression of your personal anguish, as piercing witness of our encounter with death in your body and in your soul. These words belong to Good Friday, to your passion, to you.

And yet I feel that this psalm is also mine, that there are also moments in my life when I too have a right and a need to utter those words in humble echo to your own words. I also encounter death, once in my body at the end of my life, and many times in the desolation of my soul as I wander through the shadows of this world. I am not comparing myself to you, Lord, but I also know anguish and despair, I also feel loneliness and abandonment. I also have felt let down by the Father, and the words have formed in my parched lips: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

When depression strikes, it makes all men and women equal. Life loses its meaning, nothing makes sense, every taste is bitter and every colour back. There is no point in living. The eye sees no way, and the feet are heavy with inertia. Why to eat, why to breathe, why to live? The bottom of the pit is the same for all men and women, and those who have reached it, know it. I know my depressions, and I know that they are death in a living body. Utter dereliction. Limit of endurance. Boundary of despair. Suffering makes all men and women equal, and suffering of the mind in its abjection is the worse suffering. I know its blackness.

Where are you then? Where are you when the black night descends upon my soul? “I cry in the day-time, but you do not answer; in the night I cry, but get no respite.” Indeed, it is your absence that makes up my suffering. If you were by my side, I could bear any hardship, brave any storm. But you have abandoned me, and that is my plight. The loneliness of the cross on Good Friday.

People speak to me then about you. They mean well, but they only sharpen my agony. If you are there, why do you not help me? If you have rescued my fathers in the past, why do you not rescue me now?

“You are he whose praises Israel sings.
In you our fathers put their trust;
they trusted in you, and you rescued them.
Unto you they cried and were delivered;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame. But I…”.

I seem to count for nothing before you. “I am a worm, not a man”, or so I feel just now.

“My strength drains away like water,
and all my bones are loose.
My heart has turned to wax and melts within me.
My mouth is dry as a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaw.
I am laid low in the dust of death.”

I had to reach the end of my misery in order to realise that my salvation is only in you. My complaint to you was in itself a hidden act of faith in you. I complained to you that you had abandoned me precisely because I knew you were there. Show now yourself, Lord. Extend your arm and dispel the darkness that envelops me. Bring back hope to my soul and strength to my body. Put an end to my depression and let me be a man with joy and faith and zest for life. Let me be myself again and feel your presence and sing your praise. This is passing from death to life, and I want to bear witness to your power to raise my soul from despair as a token of your power to raise me into eternal life. You have given me new life, Lord, and I will gladly proclaim your might before my brothers and sisters.

“This shall be told of the Lord to future generations;
and they shall justify him,
declaring to a people yet unborn
that this was his doing.”