The Responsorial Psalm today contains words, which according to Luke's Gospel (23:46), were the last words which Jesus spoke before he died: "Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit". This prayer of Jesus is an indication of how he entrusted himself to his Father up to the last moment of his life. These were also the last words of St Stephen when he was being martyred (Acts 7:59-60).

St Luke's account of St Stephen's death follows closely his account of Jesus' death, an indication that all Christians should die as Jesus died, entrusting one's soul into the hands of God the Father, and therefore, of course, should also live as Jesus lived. These words of the Psalm can be used regularly as a short prayer entrusting one's whole life into God's hands, just as Jesus in the Eucharist entrusts himself into our hands as "God's bread which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world".

Jesus entrusted his soul, his spirit, his whole life into the hands of the Father and was rewarded with the grace of the Resurrection, a grace in which we share through Baptism and the Eucharist.