Psalm 122 is a pilgrim's song: the song the Israelites sang as they approached Jerusalem for one of the great festivals. "I rejoiced when I heard them say: 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.' And now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem." For a Catholic funeral, the psalm becomes a song of arrival. The deceased's long pilgrimage is over. They are at the gates. They have come into the city.
The Catholic tradition reads the earthly Jerusalem of the psalm as a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem: the city of God that the Book of Revelation will describe in fullness. Every Christian life is a pilgrimage toward that city. Every Mass is a small participation in its eternal liturgy. At the funeral, the Church declares that the deceased has now reached the destination toward which their whole life was a journey.
For families who think of the deceased's life as a journey (through stages, through difficulties, through different cities and seasons) this psalm gives voice to the moment of arrival. It is one of the most quietly joyful psalms in the funeral lectionary. The grief is not denied; the family is not yet at the gates with their loved one. But the journey has been completed; the pilgrim has arrived.
This is also a psalm of peace. The closing line, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem... peace within your walls", gives the funeral a horizon: peace is what the city is, peace is what the deceased now knows, peace is what we ask the Lord to send back to those who remain.
