Psalms 22:24 Meaning For He Has Not Despised Nor Abhorred

Dukkha: Suffering Dukkha is the ache built into having a body and a life. Affliction gets called here by its own name, a body in the dust with its bones out of joint, no dressing of the wound before it is shown. Seeing it that plainly is what makes the rest possible; a sickness has to be admitted before anyone will tend it.

Parideva: Lamentation Parideva is grief that comes out as crying aloud. The cry going up has no polish on it, the sound people make at a graveside once pain has gone past words, the same voice that opened this psalm with the question of being forsaken. Wailing counts among the plain shapes suffering takes, so no shame falls on the one who wails.

Karuṇā: Compassion Karuṇā is the heart's trembling at another's pain. Despising and abhorring are what suffering usually draws out of onlookers, the instinct to step back from the sick bed and the beggar's sores. Here that recoil is missing; the affliction is looked at straight, and the looking is warm.

Appamaññā: The Boundless Heart Appamaññā is goodwill with no edge to it, nobody left outside its range. A hidden face is the ordinary way of shutting someone out, the way people cross the street rather than meet the eye of somebody they would rather not see. Keeping the face turned toward the worst-off one in the dust is what boundless amounts to in practice: no one is too far gone or too far down to be included.

Saddhā: Confidence Saddhā is trust that leans on what it cannot yet see. Crying out at all is already an act of it, since a person calls into the dark only if some part of them still expects an ear on the other side. The crying is met by hearing, and that is how trust gets confirmed: not by the affliction being lifted first, but by the afflicted one no longer being alone inside it.

In deep pain a person often decides God has turned away in disgust, that suffering is proof of being unwanted. That whispered verdict is its own wound, hardening the heart against the very help it needs.

But the face was never hidden. The cry that felt like it vanished into an empty sky was heard the moment it left the throat. The cure is to keep crying out rather than sealing the pain in silence. God does not stand back from the afflicted; He is nearest in the affliction, bent close over the one who feels most alone.