De Profundis (Psalm 129)

The De Profundis — "Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord" — is Psalm 129 in the numbering of the Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims (Psalm 130 in the Hebrew reckoning). It is the sixth of the seven Penitential Psalms, and above every other psalm it has become the Church's cry for her departed children. From the very abyss of misery and sin the soul calls to God — not presuming on its own righteousness, for "if thou, O Lord, wilt mark iniquities: Lord, who shall stand it?" — but throwing itself wholly upon the merciful forgiveness and plentiful redemption that are found with Him alone.

The psalm belongs to the Songs of Ascents, the pilgrim-songs sung by Israel going up to Jerusalem; the sacred text names no author. The Church has always heard in it the voice of a soul climbing out of the depths toward God — and so, from ancient times, she has placed it on the lips of the living as they pray for the dead, adding to it the antiphon Requiem æternam, "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord."

Its use for the departed is woven through the Church's worship. It is sung at Vespers in the Office of the Dead, prayed in the burial rites, and recited by the faithful for the souls in Purgatory — those who can no longer help themselves and who rely on our supplications. The living offer this psalm confident of the doctrine set down in the Second Book of Machabees: that "it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins" (12:46).

Tradition attaches the De Profundis in a special way to the Holy Souls: it is prayed on passing a cemetery, on All Souls' Day, and throughout November, the month the Church dedicates to the departed. Few prayers so perfectly join sorrow for sin with unshaken hope in mercy — which is why the De Profundis has been the psalm of Christian mourning for well over a thousand years.