Friday, February 4, 2011

The Psalms - The Scaffolding of our Prayer



Following the example of the Jewish people and of Jesus himself, the early Christians kept using the Old Testament collection of Psalms as the basic scaffolding of prayer. That has continued in the catholic tradition of the Church right down to our day. In fact, Anglican clergy are supposed to pray their way through the book of Psalms every month.

Each of us has our favourite psalms. And - if the truth be known - there are the psalms most of us would avoid if left to our own devices. You now what I mean - the ones which seem full of depression, despondency and anger, where the Psalmist even seems to be shaking his fist at God. Yet, when we are honest, we must admit that sometimes those are the Psalms which reflect how we feel.

It is easy to have prayer lives that help us avoid coming to terms with what is going on inside us. We all fall into that trap, and it's not what God wants, because ultimately it will not help us. Using the psalms in the way we are supposed to is one means of bringing the whole of our lives with their uneven rhythms before God, including the upset, temperamental and sinful bits, so as to become increasingly open to his grace and the healing power of his love.

I have noticed that more and more lay people are seeing the benefit of this, and are using forms of Morning and/or Evening Prayer each day, with a systematic praying of the psalms.

There is a little book by that title. In my youth I feasted on Praying the Psalms by Thomas Merton (1915-1968). It was given to me by the late Father Austin Day, who even preached a series of sermons based on Merton's reflections.

Merton is not all that fashionable these days (and, I must admit, some of my friends think he is not always as orthodox as he could be), but recently I was glad to see that Praying the Psalms has been reprinted. I enthusiastically commend it to you, and guarantee that if you read it your appreciation of the psalms will grow. (You can find it at Amazon.com if your local Christian bookstore doesn't sell it.)

In one of his most memorable passages Merton says:

"When we bring our sorrows to the Psalter we find all our spiritual problems mirrored in the inspired words of the psalmist. But we do not necessarily find these problems analysed and solved.

"Few of the psalms offer us abstract principles capable of serving as a ready and sensible palliative for interior suffering. On the contrary, what we generally find is a suffering just as concrete as our own, and more profound.

"We encounter this suffering at one of its most intense and articulate moments. How many of the psalms are simply cries of desperate anguish: 'Save me, O God, for the waters have come up even to my throat. I sink in the deep mire where no footing is : I have come into deep waters and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with crying out, my throat is parched: my eyes fail with watching so long for my God.' (Psalm 69:1-3)

"What were the dispositions of the saints and the fathers in chanting such a psalm? They did not simply 'consider' the psalm as they passed over it, drawing from it some pious reflection, some nosegay. They entered into the 'action' of the psalm. They allowed themselves to be absorbed in the spiritual agony of the psalmist and of the one he represented. They allowed their sorrows to be swallowed up in the sorrows of this mysterious Personage, and then they found themselves swept away, on the strong tide of his hope, into the very depth of God. ''But to you, Lord, I make my prayer : at an acceptable time, answer me, O God, in your abundant goodness: and with your sure deliverance.' (vv13,14)

"So, in the end, all sorrow turns to triumph and to praise: 'And I will praise the name of God in a song: and glorify him with thanksgiving . . . for God will save Zion : he will rebuild the cities of Judah' (vv32-37)."

The above is part of a longer article I wrote for my web site.


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