Lent is the season of penitence, a time to repent from personal and corporate sin. Ash Wednesday began Lent with the Miserere, as it does every year—Psalm 51, the first of the seven penitential psalms, so designated in the seventh century as a special source of prayer and reflection. Psalm 130, De Clamavi or Out of the Depths, is the sixth penitential psalm.

In the context of liturgy, though, those who select the psalm setting should be careful to look at the whole psalm—because not all of its parts have the same emotional resonance. Even though Psalm 130 is fairly short, the first half dwells on the psalmist’s sense of calling from “the depths”—far from God, afraid of being abandoned, or worse. “If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, Lord, who can stand?” According to Mitchell Dahood, SJ., in The Anchor Bible:Psalms III, the word translated as “mark” means “not only to observe iniquities carefully, but to record them strictly along with their well-deserved punishment.”

But God’s forgiveness leads to worship. The psalmist cries out to God for mercy and waits, trusting, through all the dark nights and dark times.

The antiphon the church assigns at the beginning of the psalm also ends it: “With the Lord, there is mercy and fullness of redemption.” Though the psalmist expresses faith and trust in God’s goodness, to choose a jaunty or merry setting would probably be a mistake, one that negates the first part of the psalm. Yet it’s not a dirge, either.