Psalm 63 is one of the most ardent prayers in the Psalter: a soul declaring its hunger for God and finding that God's love is "better than life." For a Catholic funeral, the psalm proclaims what the deceased is now receiving: the unmediated love of God, the satisfaction of the deepest hunger, life with the One whose presence the soul longed for.
The opening lines, "O God, you are my God; for you I long. For you my soul is thirsting; my body pines for you", describe a longing that the world cannot satisfy. Catholic tradition has long understood that no created good, however beautiful, finally satisfies the human heart; only God himself does. Many lives include long seasons of feeling that thirst keenly. For the deceased, the thirst is now answered. The psalm becomes their voice now in glory and the family's prayer in faith.
The image of being "in the shadow of your wings" is one of the gentlest in Scripture: the soul protected, sheltered, cherished as a parent shelters a child. For families who watched their loved one die slowly, who held their hand through the final days, who longed to give comfort that only God could finally give, this image lands directly. The deceased is now in the shelter that the family was, in their own way, trying to be.
This is a psalm for funerals that want to name love more than fear, longing more than dread.
