Psalm 141: Overview

Psalm 141 opens Friday Vespers in the Benedictine Office, and the placement is not random: it is also used at Vespers during the Triduum due to its clear allusions to the events of the Passion, and Christ's descent into hell (the prison of the last verse).

Psalm 141 and the Passion

Pope John Paul II commented, for example, that:

Christian tradition has applied Psalm 142[141] to the persecuted and suffering Christ. In this perspective, the luminous goal of the Psalm's plea is transfigured into a paschal sign on the basis of the glorious outcome of the life of Christ and of our destiny of resurrection with him. This is also what St Hilary of Poitiers, a famous fourth-century Doctor of the Church, says in his Treatise on the Psalms. 

The original historical context is suggested by the title "The understanding of David: a prayer when he was in the cave", as Cassiodorus explained:

David, the son of Jesse, fled from the prince Saul, and when he lay hidden in a cave he uttered a prayer which he revealed that the Lord Christ would make in the flesh before His passion. When understanding prefaces this prayer, the comparison is shown to refer to Him who avoided His persecutors as He prayed and hid himself by moving to various places. This was so that the Son of God could fulfil the promise which He had made about Himself through the prophets, and reveal the truth of the incarnation which He had assumed; for this psalm includes the words of the Lord Saviour when He sought to avoid the most wicked madness of the Jews. So the flight of David was rightly placed in the heading to point to the persecution by the Jews, for David, as we have often said, denotes both that earthly king and the King of heaven....

 In the first section, the Lord Christ cries to the Father, recounting the wicked tricks of the persecution by the Jews. In the second, He prays to be delivered from the prison of hell, for the trust of all the faithful hung on His resurrection. 

Verse 5 is generally seen as a reference to the denial by St Peter and the Apostles who fled; verse 8 as a plea to be freed from the prison of flesh so that he might come to the Resurrection.

A treatise on prayer

St Augustine, in his commentary on it, also treated this psalm as a treatise on prayer, and the key points of his exposition were nicely summarised and amplified by Cassiodorus, who, drawing also on Cassian, provides a commentary that echoes St Benedict's own instructions on prayer:

This marks the conclusion of the line of psalms prefaced with the heading: A prayer, so now at the end of them we must make some summary observations so that through the Lord's help we may obtain a salutary stimulus to hasten to the remedy appointed to us. 

We must especially follow the commandments, and signing our lips with the seal of the cross we must pray to the Lord that He may cleanse our mouths which are disfigured with human foulness; in Isaiah's words: I have unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of people that have unclean lips. 

Next we must pray in words not such as human longings prompt, but those which the Godhead Himself has granted as a remedy for our wickedness. Prayer itself must come from a humble, meek, pure heart; it must confess its sins without making excuses, and in the course of bitter tears show trust in the most sweet pity of the Lord. It must not seek earthly aims, but desire heavenly ones. It must be sequestered from desires of the body, and attach itself solely to the divine. In short, it must be wholly spiritual, bestowing nothing but tears on the flesh. 

In so far as it is lawful, seek to behold in mental contemplation Him whom you entreat, and then you realise what sort of person you should be in offering yourself prostrate before Him. He is, as Paul says: the Blessed and only Mighty, King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and inhabits light inaccessible, whom no man has seen nor can see.  So such is the mighty Lord whom we should approach with all fear or love, directing our mental sight on Him in such a way as to realise that such splendour, brightness, brilliance and majesty as is conceivable to the human mind is all inferior to God, who with goodness beyond compare controls all His creatures. 

We must not with false presumption within ourselves form some mental picture of Him, for the hidden substance of God who made all things cannot be grasped in its essence by the knowledge which creatures possess. God has no shape, no outline; His nature cannot be assessed, nor His power grasped, and His devotion is unique. As has been most aptly remarked of Him, we can say what God is not, but we cannot grasp what He is. So we are to pray to Him who is almighty and without beginning or end, who traverses and fills all parts of the universe and every creature, but in such a way that He is wholly within Himself everywhere. 

He forsakes evil men not by His presence but by the power of His grace. Father Augustine when writing to Dardanus explained this at greater length. The words of the prophet warn us in salutary fashion to make haste: Come, let us adore and fall down before the Lord: let us lament before God (then he added, so that we should not be left wholly floundering and trembling) who made us; so that once we recognise that we have been created by Him, we may pray with confidence to our Maker. 

Then the humble plea which we are to utter in divine praise we virtually realise as we pray, for we gain a merciful hearing from the Lord, provided that what we ask for is in our interest. No-one is rebuffed coldly from heaven's generosity if grace is lent him to entreat with a simple and a committed heart, for a person feels that he has gained pardon to the degree that he knows that he has shed devoted tears. 

There is this further mark of our progress: the more a person realises that he loves and fears God, the more necessary he finds it to crawl near to divine help. Thus by the Lord's kindness all the devil's guile is defeated, and by His pity our sins are overcome.  

We have said as much about prayer as our mean intelligence and the nature of the occasion have demanded.  If anyone desires to gain the fullest abundance of satisfaction on this subject, he must read the most eloquent Cassian, who in his ninth and tenth conference has discussed the types of prayer with such power and quality that the holy spirit seems clearly to have spoken through his mouth.

The text of the psalm

Psalm 141 (142): Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi 

Vulgate	Douay-Rheims
Intellectus David, cum esset in spelunca, oratio	Of understanding for David, A prayer when he was in the cave.
1 Voce mea ad Dóminum clamávi: * voce mea ad dóminum deprecátus sum.	2 I cried to the Lord with my voice: with my voice I made supplication to the Lord.
2. Effúndo in conspéctu ejus oratiónem meam, * et tribulatiónem meam ante ipsum pronúntio	3 In his sight I pour out my prayer, and before him I declare my trouble:
3. In deficiéndo ex me spíritum meum: * et tu cognovísti sémitas meas.	4 When my spirit failed me, then you knew my paths.
4  In via hac, qua ambulábam, * abscondérunt láqueum mihi.	In this way wherein I walked, they have hidden a snare for me.
5 Considerábam ad déxteram, et vidébam: * et non erat qui cognósceret me.	5 I looked on my right hand, and beheld, and there was no one that would know me.
6. Périit fuga a me: * et non est qui requírat ánimam meam.	Flight has failed me: and there is no one that has regard to my soul.
7. Clamávi ad te, Dómine, * dixi: Tu es spes mea, pórtio mea in terra vivéntium.	6 I cried to you, O Lord: I said: You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living.
8.  Inténde ad deprecatiónem meam: * quia humiliátus sum nimis.	7 Attend to my supplication: for I am brought very low.
9.  Líbera me a persequéntibus me: * quia confortáti sunt super me.	Deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.
10 Educ de custódia ánimam meam ad confiténdum nómini tuo: me exspéctant justi, donec retríbuas mihi.	8 Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise your name: the just wait for me, until you reward me.

Liturgical and Scriptural uses of the psalm

NT references	-
RB cursus	Friday Vespers+AN 4316 (6)
Monastic feasts etc	Triduum Vespers AN 1891 (5), 3724 (8)
Roman pre 1911	Friday Vespers
Responsories	6622 (5, 8)
Roman post 1911	1911-62: Friday Vespers  . 1970:
Mass propers (EF)	-