Psalm 25 is a prayer of trust offered from a place of difficulty. The verses chosen for the funeral lectionary lift up the speaker's honest confession, "the troubles of my heart are enlarged", and the appeal that runs through them: "remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; in your kindness remember me." For a Catholic funeral, this psalm gives voice to a hope that includes mercy. The deceased is not being commended on the basis of a flawless life but on the basis of God's remembered kindness.
This is one of the great pastoral gifts of the psalm. Most lives include things the person regretted, choices they wished they had unmade, periods they would rather forget. The psalm does not pretend otherwise. It places the whole of the life, the good and the difficult, into the hands of the God whose compassion is older than the world. "Remember not the sins of my youth" is a prayer the Catholic Church prays over every soul at every funeral.
The closing verses ask for protection: "preserve my soul, and rescue me; let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you." Catholic tradition has long heard this as the prayer of the soul at the moment of death and at judgment. The funeral liturgy is the Church praying these words on behalf of the deceased, asking for the mercy that the soul may not, in its own voice, be able to ask for as confidently as we would wish.
