Praying the Psalms

Praying the Psalms is stepping into a tradition that reaches back into the Hebrew faith.  From the beginning of the worship of Israel as a people with the Tabernacle came the use of Psalms in praising God and reaching out to Him with lamentations.  The heart groans and cries in the Psalms.  The soul clambers after the face of the living God.  With instruments and all creation the voice of the Psalmist rises up to heaven - as incense - beseeching the God that has made all things.  O God, come to my assistance.  O LORD, make hast to help me.

It does not matter where you begin in the Psalms, you can open a page an begin to pray.  David has always been considered first, last and central when it came to understanding worship in the history of the peoples of God.

Often the Psalms were read antiphonally in a choir of believers.  One side of the choir would sing one verse.  The other side of the choir would answer in response with the second verse.  The songs were sung in plain chant - mostly one note, with the end of the line going up one note.  The response was sung in plain chant with the end of the line descending one note.  They were also read back and forth - slowly.

When praying the Psalms it is critical that the words be prayed slowly.  Inserting our emotion into each word is what the spiritual masters referred to as praying from or in the heart.  This kind of prayer is powerful.  Pause between each Psalm and sit in silent stillness.

In the early church it was required that a candidate for bishop would have to show that he knew all of the Psalms by heart.  This would show he was a man given to prayer.

Psalm 95

 ¹ Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD;
       let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
 ² Let us come before him with thanksgiving
       and extol him with music and song.
 ³ For the LORD is the great God,
       the great King above all gods.
 ⁴ In his hand are the depths of the earth,
       and the mountain peaks belong to him.
 ⁵ The sea is his, for he made it,
       and his hands formed the dry land.
 ⁶ Come, let us bow down in worship,
       let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;
 ⁷ for he is our God
       and we are the people of his pasture,
       the flock under his care.
       Today, if you hear his voice,
 ⁸ do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
       as you did that day at Massah in the desert,
 ⁹ where your fathers tested and tried me,
       though they had seen what I did.
 ¹⁰ For forty years I was angry with that generation;
       I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray,
       and they have not known my ways."
 ¹¹ So I declared on oath in my anger,
       "They shall never enter my rest."

What becomes vital in the practice of liturgical prayer is to create some sort of space that helps you break from the every day.  Find an icon.  Get a candle.  Have a special chair or a special corner that sets the time apart, that says, "This time is different than all time.  This space is different from all space.  This act is special." Once you have a space created, then you must create the time.  Make a certain, specific and separate time each day.  The routine becomes enlivened by the practice daily, and will, at some point begin to habituate into an appendage to your soul.  You will not be able to live without it.  And that is beautiful.

Light a candle, dim the lights, light the incense and pray the prayers the church has sung for over a thousand years; Pray the Psalms....

Peace,

+Tom