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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