Like
many popular songs today the Psalms were sung and
learnt by heart because they expressed the various
moods of joy and sorrow, of need and thanksgiving
of the people of Israel.They are a very human collection
of songs, and include words of anger and hatred as
well as of love; there are poems of repentance seeking
renewal, as well as poems of quiet reflection on
the beauty of God, his wisdom and his justice. Some
psalms are striking hymns of praise of God's glory
and of the wonders of creation. Other psalms are
long reflections on the story of salvation. They
were used to accompany the many social and religious
contexts of life in Israel: they give voice to Israel's
'philosophy of life'.
We believe that singing
the psalms as Jesus did gives us a unique way of
sharing his experience of God. We sing the psalms
with Christ and as members of his Body, the Church.
In this way the psalms express our joy and thanksgiving
for what God has done for us in Jesus Christ; they
also express our sense of need, and of our longing
for him. There are psalms that help us express our
all too human feelings of anxiety and distress, as
well as the psalms of tenderness where we can simply
put ourselves at God's feet in quietness and trust.
Saint Athanasius called the Psalms a mirror of the
soul; but they are also a mirror that helps us turn
our attention to God. If they help us express the
various moods of the soul, they also help us turn
to the Holy Spirit that purifies our hearts and draws
us to the knowledge of God.
This is why the Psalms
have always played a major part in the prayer of
monks, as they do in the official prayer of the Church.
St Benedict wanted monks to sing the entire Psalter
every week; the times of common prayer, especially
during the night, were substantially filled with
the singing of psalms, and they would have been something
monks began to learn by heart from their earliest
days in the monastery. Nowadays many monasteries
have adapted the arrangements St Benedict laid down.
At Downside, we follow a pattern that spreads the
Psalter over two weeks, and which tries to respect
the liturgical value of each psalm, so that each
part of the day, as well as the days of the week,
can be turned to the praise of God with suitable
psalms.
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