THE BOOK

OF
PSALMS
(STUDY NOTES)

Fr. Lorenzo Carraro, MCCJ

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 THE BOOK OF
PSALMS
TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction to the Psalms

2. Classification (General Suggestions)
3. Classification Specifics
4. Characteristics of the Genres
5. The Messianic Psalms
6.Reading the Psalms
7.The symbolic value of the Psalms
8.Jesus and the Psalms
9.Spiritual value of the Psalms
10.The Breviary about the Psalm
11.From PAUL JDHNSON, “The Quest for God”

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Fr. Lorenzo Carraro, MCCJ

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 INTRODUCTION TO THE PSALMS

PSALTER (Greek: PSALTERION ) is a collection of 150 lyrics/poems to be

sung with string instruments. The lyrics/poems/songs of the Psalms are
popular all over the world. The Psalter is the expression of the longing of the
human heart to be in touch with God. To be in touch with God is PRAYER.
The Psalter is the most beautiful collection of prayers.

The Psalms are a wisdom book in a special way because they require a way
of listening to them (once one has studied them) that gives way to that
SILENCE in which God speaks.

The Psalms are poetry and prayer. They have as central theme the DRAMA
of our Human Existence as it calls for God. They express a variety of
feelings that give resonance to the Human Drama that marks the field of our
prayer: to make room for the Spirit of God to intercede for us, within us (Cf.
Romans 8:26-27).

The Psalms are part of the heritage or patrimony of Humanity. They are
“the Prayer” par excellence. They are, as it were, within the “genetic code”
of humanity. The “child”, which is in every human being, crying for God
(Ps. 8:2-3). The moment of spontaneity and authenticity, the intensity of
the experience become words that resonate in the depths of our interiority
and become prayer.

“Nobody has ever seen God” (John 1:18). Our time is a time of noise, and
absence of God (secularization/materialism): our search for God must
therefore be done in Silence/ in the bosom of Silence/ and as the fruit of a
loving and persevering frequentation (Cf. Psalm 22:3).

In prayer, we run the risk of subjectivism, or psychologism: to make of our

prayer a monologue with ourselves, a mere psychological analysis. But the
word of God comes to our rescue. The Psalms are the words of prayer that
God himself puts in our mouth. It is the Holy Spirit the true Pray-er (2
Timothy 3:16). Cf. The note of Joseph Ratzinger (Congregation for the
Defense of faith) on the True Prayer of the Christian:

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 1. Christian Prayer is essentially the answer to a questioning which
comes directly from the word of God. A personal encounter with a
personal God.

2. The fruit of authentic Christian Prayer is the Obedience of Faith.

3. Christian Prayer is not only/mainly the profound expression of the

depths of our being but especially the fruit of the Holy Spirit who
prays in us.

4. In the Psalms: Jesus is hidden; The Holy Spirit rests.

The Classification of the Psalms

(General suggestions)

1.Traditionally, the PSALTER is divided into 5 books and each book ends
with a Doxology.
Book I : 1 – 41 (41:13 Doxology)
Book II : 42 – 72 (72:18-20 Doxology)
Book III : 73 – 89 (89:52 Doxology)
Book IV : 90 – 106 (106:48 Doxology)
Book V : 107 – 150 (From 147 to 150 all Doxology)
This division has no relevance because there is no order in the grouping of
the Psalms.

2.There are different way of classifying the Psalms and there are different
opinions as how to classify an individual Psalm (or to which category to
attribute it). What follows are different ways of understanding a
classification of the Psalms that shows us their richness.

3.The Psalms reflect the three basic moods of the human heart: The pinch of
need: Petition, Entreaty; The joy of receiving: Thanksgiving; The movement
of forgetting self, absorbed as we are in the beauty of God and his creatures:
Praise.

4.The following is a simple way of classifying the Psalms in reference to

our life experience: PSALMS of ORIENTATION: when everything goes
well: Hymns of Praise, Wisdom Psalms; PSALMS OF
DISORIENTATION: when there is a problem, suffering, crisis: Petition,

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Lamentation, Entreaty; PSALMS OF RE-ORIENTATION: God sends His
help/the situation changes for the better, life starts again: Thanksgiving.

Petition, thanksgiving and praise: 3 forms or kinds of prayer: they

correspond to the movements of the heart (the 3 moods of the Heart). It is a
story of ORIENTATION: God is the law of my life; it is a story of
DISORIENTATION: God is with me in the midst of my crisis. The
Psalmist still cries to God in darkness, pain and confusion; it is a story of
RE-ORIENTATION - God comes to the rescue. After death comes
Resurrection.

5.The PSALMS are a memory and a celebration of what God has done for
His people, Israel. In Deuteronomy 6:4 (SHEMA, ISRAEL) God (Moses)
exhorts the people to Hear and to Remember.

Hearing means:
Listening and Understanding.
• Remember- to keep in the mind and heart: memory, memorial;
• Celebrate – the memory has to be celebrated (obedience to the word);
• Act – celebration leads to action which has to transform or change the
situation.

Learn from the Psalms: Listen to heartbeat of Yahweh (the Psalms are the
heartbeat of Yahweh). Listen to Yahweh’s story in the Psalms. How he
wants to intermingle with the story of Israel/with my story – God and Me.

6.The dynamics of the PSALMS are from PLEA to PRAISE. Praise is the
point of arrival. In Hebrew, the Book of Psalms is called: “Book of Praises”.
Praise and Thanksgiving mark a movement of reaching out/having come out
of our problems. It is an Exodus and Exodus is the principal reason for
Praise: Freedom. Praise is an expression of the memory of the powerful
deeds of God.

7.Contrast between Saul and David ( 1 Samuel 16:23). David’s attitude is

to go out of himself by means of singing. This is the therapeutic power of
the psalms. David is a free spirit, loving, singing, praising, happily losing
control in dancing…In opposition to Saul: gloomy, jealous, depressed …
The same his daughter Michal: David’s dance is an act of exuberance, of
religious vitality. Michal’s refusal to praise and to dance is expression of
death/sterility (2 Samuel 6:14; 20-23). We however cannot come too quickly
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to PRAISE, otherwise it is a cheap praise, superficial. It will short-change
our prayer. We must not be afraid of looking in the face of our sins,
imperfections, problems and bring them to the Lord with the prayer of the
Psalms.

8. In order to understand the Psalms as Prayer, we need to enter in

consonance/ syntony with them. It is difficult to understand religious texts if
one is not a believer. It is even more difficult (extremely difficult) to
understand the Psalms as prayer if one is incapable of praying. So, we have
to study and approach the Psalm in a prayerful atmosphere as T.S. Eliot
writes: “The PSALMS: A privileged gateway to Prayer. Doors of
Perception.”

CLASSIFICATION SPECIFICS
Literally genre: it is a “literary unit : i.e. a form of expression with words
(written words) that has a certain unity. What is used are: words, formulae
(or forms: combination of words to create a sentence), and images. These
forms of expression are similar between themselves in as much as they
express a similar situation or sentiment (feeling). So a “literary genre” is the
use/usage of similar forms in order to fit similar contents. To classify or
describe a “literary genre” one has to consider 3 elements: the content, the
existential situation, the form/style.

Although The PSALMS are poetry and prayer and therefore have an infinite
variety and vitality of forms which defy classification, yet classification is
useful in order to reach a certain comprehension of the Psalms. It is a
way of putting order and “comprehend” i.e. embrace the richness of the
Psalter.

There follows a detailed classification of all the 150 Psalms according to

14 categories:

PSALMS OF PRAISE

1. (HP) HYMNS OF PRAISE: 8, 19, 29, 33, 100, 103, 104,111, 113,
114, 117, 135, 136, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150

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 2. (KY) PSALMS OF THE KINGSHIP OF YAHWEH: 47, 93, 96, 98,
99
3. (CZ) CANTICLES OF ZION: 46, 48, 76, 84, 87, 122

PSALMS OF THANKSGIVING

4. (CTH) COMMUNITARIAN THANKSGIVING: 65, 66, 67, 68, 85,

118, 124
5. (ITH) INDIVIDUAL THANKSGIVING: 9, 10, 30, 32, 34, 40, 92,
107, 116, 138

PSALMS OF ENTREATY

6. (CE) COMMUNITARIAN ENTREATY: 12, 44, 58, 60, 74, 77, 79,
80, 82, 83, 90, 94, 106, 108, 123, 126, 137
7. (IE) INDIVIDUAL ENTREATY: 5, 6, 7, 13, 17, 22,25, 26, 28, 31,
35, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 63, 64, 65, 69, 70,
71, 86, 88, 102, 109, 120, 130, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144

PSALM OF TRUST

8. (CT) COMMUNITARIAN TRUST: 115, 125, 129

9. (IT) INDIVIDUAL TRUST: 3, 4, 11, 16, 23, 27, 62, 121, 131

10. (RP) ROYAL PSALMS: 2, 18, 20, 21, 45, 72, 89, 101, 110, 132,
144

11. (WP) WISDOM PSALMS: 1, 37, 49, 73, 91, 112, 119, 127, 128,
133, 139

12. (HPS) HISTORIC PSALMS: 78. 105

13. (PE) PROPHETIC EXHORTATIONS: 14, 50, 52, 53, 75, 82, 95,
97

14. (L) LITURGIES: 15, 24, 81, 134

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 38. IE 76. CZ 114. HP
1. WP 39. IE 77. CE 115. CT
2. RP 40. ITH 78. HPS 116. ITH
3. IT 41. IE 79. CE 117. HP
4. IT 42. IE 80. CE 118. CTH
5. IE 43. IE 81. L 119. WP
6. IE 44. CE 82. CE 120. IE
7. IE 45. RP 83. CE 121. IT
8. HP 46. CZ 84. CZ 122. CZ
9. ITH 47. KY 85. CTH 123. CE
10. ITH 48. CZ 86. IE 124. CTH
11. IT 49. WP 87. CZ 125. CT
12. CE 50. PE 88. IE 126. CE
13. IE 51. IE 89. RP 127. WP
14. PE 52. PE 90. CE 128. WP
15. L 53. PE 91. WP 129. CT
16. IT 54. IE 92. ITH 130. IE
17. IE 55. IE 93. KY 131. IT
18. RP 56. IE 94. CE 132. RP
19. HP 57. IE 95. PE 133. WP
20. RP 58. CE 96. KY 134. L
21. RP 59. IE 97. PE 135. HP
22. IE 60. CE 98. KY 136. HP
23. IT 61. IE 99. KY 137. CE
24. L 62. IT 100. HP 138. ITH
25. IE 63. IE 101. RP 139. WP
26. IE 64. IE 102. IE 140. IE
27. IT 65. CTH 103. HP 141. IE
28. IE 66. CTH 104. HP 142. IE
29. HP 67. CTH 105. HPS 143. IE
30. ITH 68. CTH 106. CE 144. RP
31. IE 69. IE 107. ITH 145. HP
32. ITH 70. IE 108. CE 146. HP
33. HP 71. IE 109. IE 147. HP
34. ITH 72. RP 110. RP 148. HP
35. IE 73. WP 111. HP 149. HP
36. IE 74. CE 112. WP 150. HP
37. WP 75. PE 113. HP

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CHARACTIRISTICS OF THE GENRES

HYMNS

The hymn is a song/ joyous song of PRAISE for the marvels done by God.
Two are the fields where we contemplate God’s marvelous works:
1. Creation
2. Salvation History

FORMS:
1. INTRODUCTION: an invitation to praise directed to the
assembly or to the author himself;
2. BODY : The reasons for the praise of God are numbered
and explained, but with much freedom;
3. CONCLUSION can be a renewed invitation to praise as a
summary of the reasons.

To the Hymns we add:

The Psalms of the Kingship of Yahweh:

They describe the enthronement of Yahweh and they have a liturgical
framework. Probably they were composed for the occasion of the moving of
the Ark from one place to another. When the ark was arriving in the new
place and placed or put in place, then Yahweh was enthroned among/or in
the midst of the Cherubim, (Cf. Timothy Radclift: “The throne of God”: The
throne of God is empty: God is expressed as the GREAT ABSENCE in the
sense that He is TRANSCENDENT/completely different (not contained in
human words and images).

They are a celebration of the Divine Kingship; they respond to the

exclamation that we find in Isaiah (24:23; 52:7): Yahweh Malak: Yahweh
has become king. Our God reigns! The Kingship of God is celebrated in
time, and in opposition to the enemies, but it is meant for ever/everywhere:
eschatological dimension: in the end/or the end of time, the Kingship of God
will be recognized by everybody…

The Songs of Zion. These hymns are directed to the Holy City of Jerusalem.
They probably originated on the occasion of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem or a

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feast. Jerusalem is sacred because of the presence of God and is the place of
longing and praise because in it we meet God.

PSALMS OF THANKSGIVING

They can be communitarian or individual.

They are marked by joy: no one can be thankful and unhappy.
They are more focused on the Salvation History: what God has done for us.
They are the expression of an unshakable TRUST, that God will be faithful
to His promises.

They usually refer in thanksgiving to what God has done in the past, in order
to ask help for the present. For an example of this type of DOXOLOGY
(Praise) we have in Rev 4:8: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, the
Almighty; He was, He is and He is to come”. This verse reminds us of
Isaiah 6:3 and Exodus 3:14.

PSALMS OF ENTREATY
They are the most numerous, they occupy more than one third of the Psalter.
The entreaty is usually done in the context of trouble, suffering, problems;
the tone therefore is one of pain, sorrow and complaint or lament.

Form/Pattern:
1. INTRODUCTION: Invocation to God, calling on God; eagerly
addressing God to come to the rescue;
2. BODY: articulated often around the following two attitudes;
A. Lament or complaint
- Individual entreaty: danger, sickness, injustice
- Collective: natural calamity, epidemics, draught or
national catastrophe like defeat in war, invasion, etc.
B. Entreaty: cry to God, appeal for help: a real epiclesis: it
shows the closeness of Yahweh to His people. The past is a
reason to rely on God. The entreaty tends always to make
the Lord come down to the present situation of need:

Epiclesis: “Calling on God” is common and typical in

Christian Prayer: “O God, come to my assistance” (The

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 Father); “Come, Lord Jesus” (The Son); “Send your Spirit
on these offerings”; “Come, Holy Spirit” (The Holy Spirit)

3. CONCLUSION: Can be a blessing or renewed expression of trust or a

thanksgiving.

PSALMS OF TRUST
The prayer is addressed to God to express total and unconditional trust in
God, only source of peace and joy. It is usually provoked by an existential
situation. Ex. “Only in God is my soul at rest, only in God I trust for in you
I hope, my God”. The three dimensions of time: past, present and future are
summed up in “the present of God’s eternity”. These Psalms are a therapy
against self-centeredness and individualism. They express a peaceful
surrender and abandonment in God. There is no pattern, they are left to the
inspiration of the moment. Ex. Ps 4:8: “I will lie down in peace and sleep
comes at once for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safely”.

ROYAL PSALMS
They have a special place because of the function of the monarchy in the OT
and plan of salvation (Cf. the prophecy of Nathan (2 Sam 7). The succession
of King David is very important. It is considered sign of the presence of God
and place of his promises since the Messiah is expected to come from the
stock of Jesse and the family of David. A special section of the Royal
Psalms are the Messianic Psalms.

WISDOM (or DIDACTIC) PSALMS

This group contains a variety of compositions. They are very different from
each other and the main difference is that the focus is not usually God but
MAN. They are :
- a meditation on the Law
- a description/meditation on the different
destiny of the just man and the evil one.
- The problem of the just suffering
- The problem of the retribution of the evil
person (Cr. Ps 73:2-3)

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The same approach (Didactic) is about a category of PSALMS called
Historical: a meditation and a celebration of God’s presence in the
happening of the past, especially Exodus. The Psalms want to underline the
situation of the present, so the past events become, as it were, contemporary
because of the bearing the past events have in the present situation. It is a
wisdom approach to time as the milieu of God’s plan of salvation, where his
power is displayed.

THE MESSIANIC PSALMS

We have already drawn attention to the prophetic element in the Psalter by

mentioning the eschatological character of
1. The songs of Zion and of the Psalms of the Kingship of God.
The universal renewal foretold by these poems is the messianic
era (age); other psalms, more specifically, speaks of the
Messiah in person. Scattered through the Psalter, and of varying
literary form, is a group of
2. Royal Psalms:
These are: - divine oracles addressed to the King: 2, 110
- prayers for the King: 20, 61, 72, 89
- thanksgiving for the King: 21
- praying of the King himself: 18, 101
- or royal procession song: 132
- a hymn of the King: 144
- even a bridal ode for a royal marriage: 45

They are ancient poems, dating from the time of Monarchy and reflecting
the custom and ceremonial of the court. As originally composed, they
referred to the King as a contemporary, and had a royal successor of David
in mind.

BUT the King of the Chosen People is divinely anointed (in Hebrew
“Messiah, the anointed one”) and he is the recipient of God’s blessing, and
this blessing ensures the prosperity of his people. But this is not all. The
divine promises to the dynasty of David made it possible to glimpse beyond
this King to another and privileged descendant of David in whom God
would have particular delight and whom he would designate to his saving
work.

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This King is the anointed without equal, the Messiah. The prophecy of
Nathan (2 Samuel, 7) is the first in this series of prophecies related to the
Messiah, son of David. This promise was essentially one of stability for the
House of David, and this is the sense in which Ps 89:29 -38 and 132:11 – 12
quote it, but it was not long before it was interpreted as referring to an
INDIVIDUAL, and this in Acts 2: 30 comes to be applied to CRIST.

It was natural, therefore, for some of these ancient royal songs, remaining in
use after the fall of the monarchy, to become MESSIANIC SONGS in the
strictest sense of the word. The messianic sense of Ps 2, 72, 110 is plain.
(110 is the more frequently quoted in the N.T. than any other psalm). Even
the wedding song of Ps 45, interpreted in the marriage allegory, beloved of
the Prophets, came to express the union of the Messiah with his new Israel,
and Hebrews 1:8 applies it to Christ.

Following the same trend, the N.T. and early the Christian tradition
applies other Psalms to Christ which, although not royal Psalms,
anticipated the situation and mind of the Messiah, the suffering of the
essentially Good Man, thus 16 and 22 and selected passages from many
psalms, particularly : 8, 35, 40, 41, 69, 97, 102, 118.

Similarly, the Kingship Psalms have been applied to the Kingship of Christ.
Even if these applications go beyond the immediate literal sense of the text
applied, they are legitimate in that the hopes inspiring the psalms could not
be fully realized until the coming of the Son of God to the earth.

Analysis of SOME
Psalm 2: The messianic DRAMA.

Jewish and Christian traditions regard this Psalm as messianic in the same
way as 110 on which it possible depends. His horizon is the future messianic
era or age.
1. The rebels speak : 1 – 3
2. Yahweh speaks : 4 – 6
3. the Messiah speaks : 7 – 12
with a short conclusion
“You are my son” - By consecrating Him King of Israel, God pronounces
him “his son”. This title is present in the ancient books; but here it is more

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relevant in connection with Nathan’s prophecy regarding David’s descent.
In the new Testament, it is interpreted as “the eternal generation of the
Word”; in the same way it is used in the liturgy.
Acts 4:25 ff: Prayer of the apostles
13:33: Part of Peter’s speech
Hebrews 1:5: Christ superior to the Angels
5:5: Jesus chosen as high Priest

Ps 110: The Messiah: King and Priest and Judge

The prerogatives of the Messiah, worldwide sovereignty and perpetual

priesthood, are no more confirmed by earthly investiture than were those of
the mysterious Melchizedek (Genesis 14, 18f)
1 - 2 : King - Enthronement
3: Divine adoption
4: Priest according to Melchizedek (both are kings and priests; both
offer bread and wine; both receive their priesthood from God).
5 – 7: Judge

The most quoted Psalm in the New Testament:

- Matthew 22, 44
- Acts 2:34 –35
- Hebrews 1:13 5:6; 8:1; 10:12-13
-1 Peter 3,22
-Philippians 2:6-11

Psalm 45: Royal Wedding Song

According to some scholars, this psalm may be a secular song to celebrate

the marriage of an Israelite King; but Jewish and Christian tradition
understand it as celebrating the marriage of the messianic King with Israel
(prefiguring the Church)
cf. Ezekiel 16:8-13; Isaiah 62: 5; Song of Songs, 3:6-10 etc = a prophetic
theme).
1) vv. 2 – 9 : The poet first addresses the messianic King: crediting him with
attributes of Yahweh (Ps 145, 4 -7; 12-13 etc) and Emmanuel (Isaiah 9:5-6).
2) v. 10 – 16: then addresses the queen. Some passages draw their messianic
meaning from allegorical interpretation: v. 8: daughters of Kings: the pagan
nations converted to the true God; v. 10: forget your nation …..: Israel, like

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the ancestral figure of Abraham, must cut all links with the surrounding
pagan world; v. 12-13: the homage of the pagans peoples is prophesied for
the messianic age.

READING THE PSALMS

I. The classification should not be rigid; if has a functional importance. It is

a point of departure:
- it is useful to put the reader and the pray-er in the right atmosphere of
prayer, to assume the right attitude;
- It is the door/it gives the key for the right interpretation
- It is a springboard to the more intimate and profound fruition of the
prayerful and poetic aspects of the Psalms.

II. The second step is to un-tap all the philosophical and theological
richness of the Psalms, but especially the symbolic and spiritual dimensions
of the Psalms.

III: The point of arrival is PRAYER: to make present and personal the
prayerful value of each Psalm. Underlying the whole book of the Psalms is
the conviction that: “to pray to God has sense and value. The mere fact of
praying is seen as something extremely valuable. The Human Person (MAN)
in prayer/ while praying, places himself in his place as a creature, both
humble but very noble. Humble, because He becomes aware of being a
creature in front of the Creator; very noble because He knows that he can
speak with God, He is an interlocutor with God.

THE SYMBOLIC VALUE OF THE PSALTER

The prayer/poetry value of the Psalms goes beyond or transcends the

concrete circumstances in which they were composed: they become symbols
of the human condition and the human destiny and its relationship with God.
They have a universal value.

The three most elementary dimensions of the symbolic universe of the

Psalms are:
1. VERTICAL: The standing person
2. HORIZONTAL: The sitting down person
3. DYNAMIC: the person in motion
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The VERTICAL DIMENSION: The standing person: the Human Person is
a standing animal:
A. His head is symbol of his dignity (Ps.21,3 ; 110,7);
B. The standing person naturally looks at the heavens, the sky, God’s
habitation; lifting of the mind to God;
C. The greatest image of verticality: is the Holy Mountain, Mount Sinai,
the house of God, who comes down to meet the people. Man goes up
to meet God: Ps.43,3-4, guided by God’s light. The source of light is
God’s face. “Let the light of your face shine on us and we shall be
saved” (Ps. 80 refrain).
D. God looks down on us, and we look up to God: Ps. 123:1-2: To you I
lift up my eyes, you who dwell in the Heavens, like the eyes of slaves
on the hand of their Lord.

From this vertical symbolism we understand the importance of prayer,

that is essentially an act of trust in the Paternity/Maternity of God. A
God who cares, who comes down to meet his creature, who has pity.
Ps. 103:13-14: “As a Father has compassion on His sons, the Lord has
pity on those who fear Him for He knows of what we are made of, He
remembers that we are dust”.

II. The HORIZONTAL DIMENSION: the sitting person

A. A person sits in his house: symbol of stability:

– to sit
- to lie down
- to abide (inhabit)
Cf. Ps. 16:9: “And so my heart rejoices, my soul is
glad, even my body shall rest in safety …”.

C. God’s presence gives this stability, serenity. Habitation/house and

stability” “The upright shall live in your presence (Ps 140:114) … to
sit, to lie or to live in the House of God is to be in His presence:
Intimacy of friendship and dialogue.
D. The House: is the symbol of intimacy and stability: Ps 23:5-6 “He has
prepared a banquet for me… in the Lord’s own house shall I dwell
forever and ever”.
E. The House of God is Jerusalem or the Temple: Ps. 24:3 “Who shall
climb the mountain of the Lord; ? who shall stand in His Holy place?”
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 Innumerable are the references to the beauty and strength of the city of
God and of its temple. In it the faithful finds protection: Ps 91:4 “He
will conceal you with His pinions, and under His wings you will find
refuge” (this is a reference to the cherubs on the Ark of the Covenant).
God’s city is a citadel, a rock, a shield. In it man finds peace or
tranquility, intimacy: like the swallow or the sparrow: Cf. the whole of
Ps. 84 “How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord God of Hosts”.

III. The dynamic DIMENSION: The person on the move

A. The idea of the journey is very important in the Bible, with its
symbolic implications. The History of Salvation implies a Humanity
that moves towards God gradually/step by step/in the dynamism of
revelation/reception. The stages of Salvation History express the
direction of this journey. It’s a movement in time.
B. The movement towards the meeting/encounter with God, the House of
God, peace, stability, the temple of God, the City of God….
- “to go, to move”
- “the way”
- “towards” (direction)
C. A special place is reserved for the movement/journey towards the
Temple: to “climb” the Holy Mountain, Zion, … The “Gradual
Psalms/Psalms of Ascensions”: 120-134 are the songs of the Pilgrims to the
Temple of Jerusalem. The spirituality of the Pilgrim: a passage from the
everyday life (profane) to the temple (the sacred realm). Climbing to the hill
of Zion and the temple marks also the climbing of the incense from the altar
to the sky: symbol of people’s prayers. The movement upwards brings us,
through prayer, to God’s level where the mystery of man is better
understood and especially we experience communion with God.

JESUS AND THE PSALMS

As a pious Israelite, Jesus prayed the Psalms in the synagogue. The Psalms
were His Prayer Book. Through many quotations, the Gospels show us that

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Jesus mirrors Himself and the circumstances of His life in the Psalms (Cf.
Luke 24:44). For example:
Ps 110: Jesus uses it to claim His Divine Lordship
(Matthew 22-44-45);
Ps 118:22: Jesus mentions when he says that “the stone rejected by
the builders…” (Matthew 21:42; 1 Peter 2:7-8);
Ps 8:3: Jesus quotes this psalm to justify His solemn entrance into the
Temple (Matthew 21:16 “from the mouth of children, babes at the
breast…”).
Before going down to the Kedron Valley, after the last supper, he
recites the “Great Hallel” Ps 136 (Matthew 26:30);
Psalm 22:15-16 (John19:28 “I thirst!”);
- also 22:1 “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
(Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34);
Ps 31,6 “Into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46);

The Psalms have penetrated the fabric of the Gospels and through Jesus they
acquire all their splendor. Jesus embodies them and fulfills them: “All the
aspirations, sorrows and hopes of the human beings throughout the centuries
have gathered in the heart of Jesus and through Him they have found an
offering to God, appealing in a powerful and irresistible way through Jesus,
for love and redemption”.

The Prayer of Israel becomes the prayer of Jesus:

1. In praying the Psalms, Jesus prayed to God as ABBA. We
therefore can now pray to God in the Psalms as FATHER.
2. Jesus is spoken of in the NT as Lord (Adonay: The Lord in the
place of the unpronounceable Yahweh. In Greek is Kurios.
Some Psalms are attributed to Jesus by the Christians.
3. Jesus is “spoken of” in the Psalms (they speak of Jesus) like the
Messianic Psalms: 16, 110, 8, etc. There’s a whole Christology
in the Psalms.
4. Jesus recites the Psalms (as we saw before Cf. 22). We can see
that Jesus uses the Psalms to make sense of His life according
to the prophecies of the OT, and to help us to make sense of our
life too. This is particularly true of the last days of His life (in
the Agony in the Garden of Olives Ps 41-42; on the Cross: Ps
22, 31…).
5. Jesus’ story and destiny are embodied in the situation of the just
man unjustly persecuted: who does not show mere
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 resignation/passivity but cries to God in pain/anger/complaint
but also expecting liberation from God.

Spiritual value of the Psalms

(From the Jerusalem Bible)

The spiritual riches of the Psalter need no commendation. The psalms

were the prayers of the Old Testament in which God inspired the feelings
that his children ought to have towards him and the words they ought to use
when speaking to him. They were recited by Jesus himself, by the Virgin
Mary, the apostles and the early martyrs.

The Christian Church has adopted them unchanged for her official prayer.
Unchanged: the cries of praise, entreaty and thanksgiving, wrung from the
psalmist by event of their own times and by their personal experiences, have
a universal note, expressing as they do the attitude that every man should
have towards God.

Unchanged as regards the words but with a great enrichment of the sense: in
the New Covenant, faithful man praises and thanks God for unveiling the
secret of His inmost nature, for redeeming him by the blood of his Son, for
filling him with his spirit, hence each psalm ends with the Trinitarian
Doxology: Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

The ancient entreaties have become more ardent since the last supper, the
cross and the resurrection have taught mankind the infinite quality of the
love of God, the university and gravity of sin, the glory promised to the
faithful. The hopes sung by the psalmists have been fulfilled, the Messiah
has come, he reigns and all nations are summoned to praise him.

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THE BREVIARY ABOUT THE PSALMS

A reading from the discourses of St. Ambrose on the Psalms (1)

The delightful book of the psalms

Although the whole of sacred scripture breathes the spirit of God’s grace,
this is especially true of that delightful book, the book of the psalms. When
Moses related the deeds of the fathers he did so in a plain straightforward
narrative. But when he led the people through the Red Sea and saw King
Pharaoh drowned with his army, he lifted his mind to more exalted things
(since he had just accomplished a feat beyond his own powers) and he sang
a triumphal song to God. And Mary too took her timber and urged on the
other women, saying: ‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the
horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.’

History instructs, the law disciplines, prophecy foretells, correction shows us

our faults and morality suggests what should be done: but in the book of the
psalms there is something more than all this and at the same time a sort of
medicine for man’s spiritual health. Whoever reads the psalms finds a
special remedy to cure the wounds caused by his own passions. Whoever is
at pains to read the psalms will find in them a sort of gymnasium for the use
of all souls, a sort of stadium of virtue, where different sorts of exercises are
set out before him, from which he can choose the best suited to train him to
win his crown.

If anyone will study the deeds of those who have gone before him in order to
find something worthy of imitation, he will discover that just one psalm
contains the whole of their history; and in one short reading he will discover
a complete treasury of past memories. If a man is trying to discover what
gives law its force (it is the bond of love: ‘he who loves his neighbor has
fulfilled the law’), let him read in the psalms about the great love shown by
one man in submitting to great dangers in order to wipe out the shame of a
whole people. In this triumph of virtue he will recognize the great things of
which love is capable.

What can I say about the power of prophecy? What others announced in
enigmas seems to have been promised quite openly to the psalmist alone,
namely that the Lord Jesus would be born of his seed, as the Lord told him:
‘One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne.’ Thus, in the book of

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psalms not only is Jesus born for us: he accepts too his saving passion, he
dies, he rises from the dead and ascends into heaven and sits at the Father’s
right hand. This prophet alone announced what no other had dared to say,
and what was later preached in the gospel by the Lord himself.

A reading from the discourses of St. Ambrose on the Psalms (2)

I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also

What is more pleasing than the psalm? David himself expressed it so

beautifully, when he said” ‘Praise the Lord! How good it is to sing psalms to
our God! How pleasant to praise him!’ And this is indeed true: for in the
psalms there is an opportunity for the people to bless and praise God; the
psalms express the admiration that people feel and what the people want to
say; in them the Church speaks, the faith is professed in a melodious way
and authority finds a ready acceptance; there too is heard the joyful call of
freedom, the cry of pleasure and the sound of happiness.

The psalm soothes anger, frees from care and drives away sadness. It is a
weapon by night and a teacher by day: it is a shield in times of fear, an
occasion of rejoicing for the holy, a mirror of tranquility: it is a pledge of
peace and harmony, for with the aid of the harp the psalm makes one melody
from a number of different notes. The beginning of the day hears the sound
of the psalm and the end of the day hears its echoes.

In the psalm teaching is combined with charm; for it is sung for pleasure but
learnt for instruction. Is there anything that does not come to mind as you
read the psalms? It is there that I read: ‘A Song for the Beloved’, and at
once I am on fire with a desire for divine love. There too I see the secret of
revelations, the evidence of the resurrection, the gifts that have been
promised. In the psalms I learn to avoid sin and I forget the shame of sins
now repented.

What, then, is the psalm if it is not the musical instrument of virtues, which
the holy prophet played with the help of the Holy Spirit, making the earth
resound with the delightful melody of heavenly music? Just as this
harmonious music is played on the strings and chords of the harp, which are
fashioned from the remains of dead animals, and is made into a song of the
heavenly tune of divine praise, so the psalmist has taught that we should first

21
die to sin and then that the various works of virtue should appear in this
body. In this way our devotion should be sure to find favor with the Lord.

For this reason David taught that we should sing and praise the Lord in our
hearts, just as Paul also sang: ‘I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with
the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also.’
The psalms teach us to shape our lives and our actions by the study of higher
things, so that material pleasures may not arouse our bodily passions, by
which the soul is weighed down instead of being redeemed. And the holy
prophet said that he sang psalms for the redemption of his soul: ‘I will sing
praises to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel. My lips will shout for joy,
when I sing praises to you; my soul also which you have rescued.’

A reading from the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Pius X

on the Psalter in the Divine Office

The sweet sound of the Church’s singing

From the beginning of the Church, the divinely inspired psalms in the Bible
have had a remarkable influence in deepening the devotion of the faithful as
they offered to God a continual sacrifice of praise, that is the tribute of lips
that acknowledge his name. Moreover, following the custom of the old law,
they have played a major part in the sacred liturgy itself and in the divine
office.

From this there derived what Saint Basil calls ‘the voice of the Church’, and
the psalmody, which our predecessor Urban VIII describes as ‘the daughter
of the sacred chant which is sung without ceasing before the throne of God
and the Lamb’, the sacred chant which, as Saint Athanasius says, teaches
those whose primary concern is the worship of God how they should praise
him, and in what words they can glorify him worthily. Saint Augustine puts
it beautifully: ‘To show men how to praise him worthily, God first praised
himself; and since he has deigned to praise himself, man has discovered how
to praise him.’

Moreover, the psalms have the power to fire our souls with zeal for all the
virtues. ‘All our scripture, both Old and New Testaments, is divinely
inspired and is useful for teaching, as the apostle says. But the book of

22
psalms is like a garden which contains the fruits of all the other books,
grows a crop of song and so adds its own special fruit to the rest’: these are
the words of Saint Athanasius, and he goes on: ‘It seems to me that for him
who recites them, the psalms are like a mirror in which a man may see
himself and the movements of his heart and mind and then give voice to
them.’

Thus in his Confessions Saint Augustine says: ‘ I wept at the beauty of your
hymns and canticles, and was powerfully moved at the sweet sound of your
Church’s singing. These sounds flowed into my ears, and the truth streamed
into my heart: so that my feeling of devotion overflowed, and the tears ran
from my eyes, and I was happy in them.’

Who can remain unmoved by the many places in the psalms where the
immense majesty of God, his omnipotence, his inexpressible holiness, his
goodness, his mercy, his other infinite perfections are so sublimely
proclaimed? Who is not similarly stirred by the acts of thanksgiving for
God’s blessings, by the humble, trusting prayers for favors desired, by the
cries of repentance of the sinful soul? Who is not fired with love by the
faithful portrait of Christ the Redeemer whose voice Saint Augustine heard
in all the psalms, singing, sorrowing, rejoicing in hope, sighing in distress?

From: PAUL JOHNSON, The Quest For God, a personal

pilgrimage, N.Y., 1997:

The world of antiquity understood the value of repetition and persistence in

prayer. Every request is a form of prayer, if it be made decently and
honorably, and the first prayer recorded in the Old Testament is the prayer of
Abraham to God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham asks God to spare
the Cities of the Plain if enough righteous men are found there, and the
prayer is notable for its persistence and repetition—Abraham first sets the
viable figure at fifty, then forty-five, then forty, then twenty, and finally ten.
This first prayer was not a formal prayer, but was made on the spur of the
moment in response to God’s angry intimation that he had punitive plans for
the cities. But it had many of the characteristics of a set prayer and that is
why the authors of Genesis put it down as they did.

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However, among the Ancient Hebrews prayers soon attained permanent
form and became, as it were, universal prayers as opposed to particular ones,
though they continued to have nuggets of particular history buried in them.
The best of them were the form of musical poetry known as psalmody, the
psalms employing the Ancient Hebrew poetic device known as parallelism,
though they are not strictly speaking in meter, or if they are, we have to yet
identified it.

Parallelism is well suited to prayer because it involves an element of

repetition. It is of the kind of speech-protocol suitable when addressing a
great personage. Thus, synonymous parallelism simply repeats the same
thought in slightly different words – ‘Hear my crying O God: Give ear unto
my prayer.’ In antithetical parallelism, the first ‘member’ is contrasted with
the second: ‘A merry heart doth good like a medicine: But a broken spirit
dries the bones.’ Then there is synthetic parallelism, in which the first
member is developed by a second, similar thought, or a third. Thus: ‘The
kings of the earth stand up: And the rulers take counsel together: Against the
Lord and against his Anointed.’ There are further variations of this device,
identified by scholars as climactic, introverted, stair-like and emblematic
parallelisms, but all of them have the prayer-like characteristics of repetition.

I am going into this detail because that psalms are so important – and
beautiful. They are perfect prayers. Considering the oldest of them were
probably written well over 3,000 years ago, it is remarkable how many still
resonate so powerfully, how many echoes they still find in our hearts, so that
we can say or sing them to God in all sincerity, although the circumstances
which originally drew them from anguished Hebrew breasts have long since
passed away. There are human permanences of hope and despair, sorrow
and anger, love, laughter and tears in these ancient prayers which will
endure as long as our race.

There are 150 psalms, divided into five groups. Internal evidence of different
groupings indicates that these 150 were selected from a larger, probably
much larger, number. They are the best, or were thought to be the best.
Those who compiled the Hebrew Masoretic Text of the Old Testament
evidently believed that they were all composed by King David. So did St.
Ambrose and St. Augustine, great theologians and scholars and judicious
men not easily taken in by pious nonsense. On the other hand, St. Jerome, a
closer student of the Bible than either, refused to believe it and so, many
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centuries later, did Jean Calvin, who was a keen man for the psalms and
made them the centerpiece, almost, of his approved liturgy.

It seems evident now that they were composed by a number of authors at

different dates. But some are clearly very ancient and could have been
written under the first monarchs of Israel and even by David himself. He
was a most remarkable man by any standards, not only a great leader and
warrior, but an introspective, imaginative and thoughtful individual who
lived on his nerves as well as by his wits and courage: quite likely a poet, in
fact, and certainly a musician, as we are told explicitly by that part of the
Old Testament which is most reliable for factual accuracy and detail. David
believed in public performance and participated in it, and religious poetry set
to music was exactly what he liked.

There is, too, an element of state policy in some of the psalms which suggest
to me a kingly hand. And the psalmist’s zeal for the right often found
expression in a passionate desire to see God’s vengeance inflicted on the
wicked, who are as like as not enemies of state. These Imprecatory Psalms,
as they are termed (58, 68, 69, 109, 137, etc.) are distantly reminiscent of the
Ancient Egyptian Execration Texts, repetitive and rhythmic cursing-prayers
for invoking the wrath of various gods on Pharaoh’s enemies (and later, in
vulgar use, by individuals against personal enemies) and which reek of
paganism at its most distasteful.

The Imprecatory Psalms are potent and gamey stuff too, and when the
somewhat mealy-mouthed Anglican bishops prepared the revised Book of
Common Prayer in the 1920s, they omitted from public recitation these and
similar psalms whose tone of hatred and revenge they considered
inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity. This may have been one reason
why members of the House of Commons, who took a more robust view of
things, rejected the measure in 1928.

The book of Psalms as it has come down to us is a liturgical work for

regular, public performance. These prayers are meant to be chanted or sung
by an entire congregation, with or without music, and there is little doubt
that collectively they formed the official hymn book of the Second Temple,
erected after the return of the Jews from Babylonian exile. They were rather
like the Book of Common Prayer or the Stonyhurt Canzionale which I used
at school. When, at the Reformation, the psalms were translated into English
and put to music, and roared out by congregations of many thousands at St.
25
Paul’s Cross, immediately outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the effect
may not have been very different from what took place at the Temple in
Jerusalem in the second half of the first millennium BC.

But the transcendent merit of the psalms is that they lend themselves to
private, solitary prayer as well as to public performance. Jesus Christ seems
to have recited the psalms to himself and he certainly employed ideas from
them in his discourses (e.g. the metaphor from Psalm 118 of ‘the stone
which the builders rejected’). He quoted the psalms (22 and 31) even on the
Cross. And it is hard to think of any great man of the early Christian Church,
from St. Paul on – or, for the matter, any great rabbi – who did not make
continual and extensive use of the psalms. St. Augustine worked out in his
lengthy commentary on the psalms that the Christian message is prefigured
in almost every one. St. Jerome and St. Ambrose, and many other doctors
and teachers, recommended Christians to use the psalms constantly. And
they did.

When I was a boy, every priest of the Roman Catholic Church who said the
Divine Office from his breviary dutifully got through all the psalms once a
week. (This has now been changed: I do not know why – perhaps because
priests are thought to be too busy doing others things, like preaching the
‘social gospel’, etc.) The Anglican liturgy goes through the cycle once a
month. Devotion to the psalms cuts across every barrier of religious
temperament and affiliation. It was one thing people as diverse as monkish
Benedictines and fastidious Puritans, Luther and Francis Xavier, Wesley and
Newman, had in common – they loved and continually recited the psalms.

Even more striking was the fact that, over the centuries, the psalms were the
daily prayer-fodder of secular men and women as well as ecclesiastics.
Warlike knights usually had a little Psalter tucked away among their gear. It
slowly became dog-eared as they used it on campaign. Kings and queens had
their personal Psalters, very elaborate ones by the leading miniaturists for
public display, and much smaller ones, still richly decorated though, for their
personal use. These books too, where they survive, often show the marks of
continual use.

It seems to me a pity that this habit of reciting the psalms to oneself has
lapsed among most people. They still have a huge amount to offer us all, and
I am sure that many today, of all ages, both sexes, all kinds of temperament,
including those who find regular religious worship distasteful and personal
26
prayer difficult, would be astonished, if they looked into the psalms, by their
relevance and riches. They are, as one poet put it, ‘The pastoral heart of
England’ – and of other lands too.

The psalms, being both public and private, transcend the fundamental
division of prayer. In the ancient world, I imagine virtually all prayer was
public. The ancients did not like or understand the need for privacy. There
was something subversive about the private acts. Even in private, men
prayed aloud. They read aloud, always. Silent reading seems to have been
unknown in the classical world and came into use only in the second half of
the fourth century AD. When St. Augustine first met St. Ambrose, he was
struck by the fact that the great Bishop of Milan read to himself: ‘His eyes
scanned the page, and his mind penetrated its meaning, but his voice and
tongue were silent.’

Ambrose certainly prayed silently too. But he saw the point of public prayer
better than anyone else in those times. It was St. Ambrose, in the splendid
new basilica he completed in Milan in 386, who created the prototype
medieval cathedral worship, with daily Mass, regular prayers at morning and
evening and sometimes at other periods of the day, and special ceremonies
to commemorate the saints according to a strict calendar. To combat Arians
and other heretics, and the lingering paganism of the dying classical world,
he deliberately dramatized the cathedral services, clothing the priests in
splendid vestments, introducing the antiphonal singing of the psalms and
new-fangled metrical hymns.

For this singing he employed professional choristers, but he also trained the
congregation. He was fighting the Arians with their own weapons, for Arius
had been a great writer of propaganda hymns – popular monotheist ditties
for guilds of tradesmen, holy marching songs for soldiers, vast numbers of
whom had become Arians, and sacred sea-shanties for sailors. So Ambrose
wrote his own hymns for Trinitarian Christianity and he had a knack for it.
He was the first to put Christian prayers into hymn form, turning them into
memorable iambic diameters in four-line stanzas of eight syllables to the
line, which could easily be set to music and taught to the congregation. For
are still in use.
Thus St. Ambrose began the long and fruitful tradition of Christian
liturgical music, with not only the psalms and hymns but even more
important, the principal prayers of the Mass – Kyrie, Confiteor, Gloria,
Sequence, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei – set to music and
27
sung by choir or congregation or both. It is impossible to think of Western
music without it. First through plain-chant, then through polyphony, finally
through orchestrated settings of the Mass for full choir, these prayers
became the texts used by most of the greatest composers, from Byrd and
Palestrina and Purcell, through Bach and Mozart and Beethoven, then on to
Verdi and finally, in our own day, to Britten, to develop musical forms.

It is broadly true to say, from King David’s day to this, that prayer created
music and music was, until the rise of secular opera, a form of prayer, or its
handmaiden. Some held and hold, or course, that prayer and music can be at
variance. The Puritans of the sixteenth century argued that elaborate music
was a form of vanity which destroyed prayer, that polyphony in particular
was an obstacle to sincere prayer. They insisted there could not be more than
one note on each syllable of a musical setting of a prayer.

This was not what St. Ambrose had believed. He argued that the length and
complexity of a musical setting, and not least its volume, were important
elements in public prayer. He specifically approved of harmonics and wrote:
‘From the singing of men, women, virgins and children, there is a
harmonious volume of sound, like the waves of the ocean.’ He thought the
volume frightened the devil, while the harmonics and the beauty of the
melodic line were pleasing to God. Over the centuries most people have
tended to agree with St. Ambrose rather than the Puritans.

The grand musical settings can indeed help us to pray and give us spiritual
insights that we might not be able to obtain in any other way. Who has not
been uplifted by Bach’s B-minor Mass or his settings for the Passion? Who
does not feel that the requiem masses composed by Mozart and Verdi enable
us to think of the dead, and their relationship with God, more profoundly but
also more positively than before we heard the memorial prayers in these
sublime settings?

The word ‘uplift’ is a key one in prayer. The great eight-century Greek-
speaking theologian, St. John of Damascus, distinguishes between public
and vocal prayer, what he calls ‘the decent beseeching of Him’, and private
silent prayer, which he calls ‘the ascent of the mind to God’ (ascensus
intellectus in Deum). By mind, incidentally, St. John did not mean the reason
(ratio), but the faculty of spiritual vision. An alternative way of putting it is
expressed in the phrase sursum corda, ‘let us lift up the heart’. It is as though

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the person praying, silently and internally, not opening his or her mouth,
nevertheless almost physically, as it were, sends up unspoken words to God.

And the words must be tied to their thoughts – a point made, in his wicked
despair, by Claudius, the bad king in Hamlet, who is observed praying in his
chapel by the would-be-vengeful Prince:

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below

Words without thoughts never to Heaven go.

This practice of private prayer, or uplifting thoughts to Heaven, is not as old

as public communion with God, but it is ancient nonetheless. It was already
practiced in Jesus Christ’s day, and perhaps he learned it from his holy
mother, Mary, who as a young virgin utters a prayer of acceptance the
moment she is told by the Angel Gabriel that she is to bear the Son of God:
‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.’
Later, when she visits her cousin Elizabeth, Mary breaks into that exultant
prayer we now know as the Magnificat, beginning ‘My soul doth magnify
the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior.’

This spontaneous expression of Mary’s joy in her state, with its radical
notions of exalting the humble and over-throwing the mighty – so prophetic
of the coming message of Christianity – may seem strange coming from the
lips of a young virgin. But it has echoes of the psalms too, and we must
assume that Mary was brought up in a household where the psalms were
frequently, perhaps daily, recited, and had entered its common, everyday
language. At all events, these private prayers of Mary, addressed to herself
or to a single member of her family, were the precursors of the private
prayers which Jesus addressed to God on a number of occasions, notably
when he went into the desert to pray for his mission and again, at the end of
it, when he prayed alone in the Garden of Gethsemane for strength to endure
his coming Passion”.

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