the psalms in christian life and prayer
TRANSCRIPT
THE PSALMSIN
CHRISTIAN LIFE AND PRAYER
Simon Bryden-Brook
Global Ministries UniversityCoursework II [TH 630]In part fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of DMin
July 2008
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CONTENTS
Introduction 46
1. Christians and the Psalms 48
2. New Age Oblates 64
3. The Hidden Dynamic at Vespers 70
4. Classifying the Psalms 75
Select Bibliography 84
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INTRODUCTION
A period of three years was spent by the author studying the psalms closely and the huge
literature that goes with them. The papers presented here reveal the context in which
these studies were done – specifically as a Benedictine oblate, living close to Douai
Abbey and attending Vespers three or four times a week and Morning Prayer perhaps
once or twice a month.
Some of these papers were thus written specifically for oblates (especially ‘New Age
Oblates’ and ‘The Hidden Dynamic at Vespers’) and they are presented here, although
they may lack the full scholarly apparatus of footnotes and references.
The first paper in this compilation seeks to explain to modern Roman Catholics why it is
that the Church insists that the prayer book of the Jews should be at the centre of the
Liturgy of the Hours. The theological centrality of the psalms for Christians is insisted
upon and demonstrated.
The paper ‘New Age Oblates’ demonstrates how central the concept of the Rule of God
(the ‘kingdom’) is to the psalms and to the Christian response, whether as oblates or not.
This is done particularly by reference to the traditional Benedictine Vespers of Saturday.
A paper follows which looks in some detail at the structure of traditional Benedictine
Vespers and that of the reformed Roman office, and seeks to see in it a dynamic and a
unity, firmly based in the psalms. Yet this dynamic is totally linked to the Incarnation
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and the person of Jesus, whom John Henson has called ‘the complete person’ and ‘God’s
true likeness’.1
A final paper briefly looks at the insights faith can bring to an understanding of the
psalms, by specifically examining the classification by function (rather than form) which
has been developed by the American Lutheran theological and biblical scholar Walter
Brueggemann. His work merits closer attention by those who daily pray the psalms but
constraints of time prevented me from elaborating his insights.
The bibliography is restricted to works specifically of interest to this examination of the
place of the psalms in Christian prayer, liturgy and theology.
Simon Bryden-BrookJuly 2008
1 John Henson’s terms for ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Son of God’ in Good as New: a radical retelling of the scriptures, (O Books, 2004) p 25
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CHRISTIANS and the PSALMS
Confusingly there are two different numbering schemes for the psalms. The first number given below is that used in our Catholic and Orthodox liturgical books. This is followed
by the number used in the Hebrew text and our bibles.
Christianity replacing Judaism
Any practising Christian is aware that the Jewish prayer book, the Psalter, lies at the centre of
Christian public prayer. Morning and evening prayer in the episcopal churches, Anglican,
Catholic and Orthodox, consist almost wholly of the Jewish psalms. It is sad that most Roman
Catholics hear little of the Psalter beyond the responsorial psalm proclaimed at the Sunday
Eucharist, but those who visit religious communities find that the recitation of the psalms lies at
the heart of the public prayer of the Church, the liturgy of the hours.
For some this is a shock. They find the language and content of the psalms incongruous compared
to the language of traditional Roman Catholic popular piety. ‘Mourning and weeping in this vale
of tears’ or ‘Shine, Jesus, shine!’ is language more familiar to them than ‘rescue me from sinking
in the mud’ (Ps 68 [69]:15) or ‘precious oil running down Aaron’s beard’ (Ps 132 [133]:2).
Some Christians are puzzled by the use of the term ‘the Hebrew scriptures’. What is wrong with
calling them the ‘Old Testament’? The key to the puzzle is our relationship as Christians with
Judaism. Is it true to say that Christianity has superseded Judaism so that the ‘New Testament’
replaces the Old and takes away its significance? Must the religion of the Jews be seen as old hat
and discarded in favour of our superior new version? Not so. In a world where we have become
more aware of the importance of acknowledging the riches of religious traditions other than our
own, we are more careful than we have been over the centuries not to offend by thoughtless
language the susceptibilities of the Jews.
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But more than this, any sensitive reader of the New Testament (we may prefer to call them ‘the
Christian scriptures’) is aware that the Jewish scriptures are there frequently referred to and
indeed explained and elaborated. ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them,’ says Jesus (Mt 5:17) and St Paul
confirms that the old covenant (or ‘testament’) has not been superseded (Rom 3:31).
In what sense then is the Jewish dispensation (or ‘covenant’ or ‘testament’) fulfilled and not
superseded or abolished? It is the way we understand this that is the key to why we are keen not
to appear to belittle the Jewish scriptures by calling them ‘old’ and why we continue to use and
be fed by the Jewish prayer book, the Psalter, both in our private devotions2 and in the public
prayer of the Church. Indeed, Christians pray the psalms with Jesus the Jew.
Jesus the Christ
As Christians not only do we believe in the message of Jesus, the words that he uttered and which
are recorded, admittedly with elaborations and commentary, in the Christian scriptures, but we
believe in Jesus as the Christ, God’s anointed, the Messiah.
But were not the psalms written long before Jesus was born and in ignorance of him and his
message? Even so, for us Psalm 109 [110] refers to the victorious Jesus:
The Lord’s [God the Father’s] revelation to my Master [Jesus]:“Sit on my right;your foes I will put beneath your feet.”
We see in Psalm 2 a reference to the future sufferings of the newly born Jesus:
Why this tumult among nations,among people’s this useless murmuring?They arise, the kings of the earth;
2 Ps 115 [116] before Holy Communion, Ps 137 [138] after Holy Communion, and Ps 129 [130] for the dead, for example.
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princes plot against the Lord [God the Father] and his Anointed [Jesus].
We believe in the Incarnation. Scholars like Professor Geza Vermes3 are unable to take this step
of Christian faith despite shedding, by their scholarly work, much light on Jesus and his
teachings. However much insight such scholars are able to bring to the words of Jesus, and there
is no doubt that we are immensely enriched to be reminded of the Jewishness of Jesus and his
religion, they are unable to see him as the Word of God. Indeed they suggest that it is highly
debatable that Jesus himself shared this belief. And yet Christians so believe.
À propos Benedict XVI’s first encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Professor Janet Soskice has written:
The novelty of Christian teaching on love is not in ‘what Jesus taught’ but ‘who Jesus was’ – for if God is love, then Jesus is, in Christian belief, this love incarnate. Jesus is both the homeland which we desire and, and our way to that homeland. His sacrifice on the cross is, the Pope tells us, ‘love in its most radical form’ and by receiving the sacraments we, whose love on its own is too weak, are fed by the divine Love, and ‘enter into the very dynamic of self-giving’. By this we are united not only with God but with one another; we become, as week after week Christians pray at the Eucharist, ‘one body’.4
Professor Soskice might have added that in praying the Prayer of the Church we also ‘enter into
the very dynamic of self-giving’.5 Indeed, we enter into the very homeland of Jesus and his
disciples, into the land and the faith which God gave to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, and into the history of God’s chosen people. The prayer of the Church is the prayer of
Jesus and by making it our own we enter fully into Jesus’ prayer, which is of course nothing but a
total self-dedication to the will of God.
Without a proper understanding of the doctrine of the Incarnation, Christianity is in danger of
being dismissed as a cruel joke, at best another collection of man-made pious insights, rather than
a dynamic for living and for transforming the world and society.6 Karl Marx famously challenged
3 And we should have to say some members of the Jesus Seminar, it would appear.4 The Tablet (4 Feb 2006, 4f)5 Benedict XVI, Deus caritas Est (2005), 136 See for example Gerd Luedemann’s The Great Deception (SCM, 1998) and some but not all the writings of the Sea of Faith
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religion, and specifically Christianity, and labelled religion as the ‘opium of the people’:
The foundation of irreligious criticism is this: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed man's self-consciousness and self-awareness so long as he has not found himself or has already lost himself again. But, man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.7
Christianity is not, as Marx insists, necessarily a religion of illusions and unreality. It can be, and
for many people over the centuries it undoubtedly has been; all of us are tempted to escape into
illusion and unreality, especially when the pain of reality seems to hard to bear. For Christians the
meaning of what Marx calls ‘man’ is to be found in Jesus the man, who is the Christ. This is
where an understanding of the Incarnation enables a Christian to live with reality, or ‘have life to
the full’8 (John 10:10). Christianity is no opium, no drug to dull the pain of earthly existence; we
need to learn to accept the pain. Rather, Christianity shows the way to be fully human, following
Jesus, the complete person and God’s true likeness9. There is no ‘human’ solution.
Jewish and Christian prayer
If understanding Jesus as God’s anointed is central to a Christian use of the psalms, then so is our
7 Karl Marx, ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February, 18448 ‘Living splendidly’ is Alan Dale’s version, rather than the traditional ‘everlasting’ or ‘eternal life’. New World, (OUP, 1967)9 John Henson’s terms for ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Son of God’ in Good as New: a radical retelling of the scriptures, (O Books, 2004) p 25
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understanding of prayer and of God’s presence. For the Jew, God is intimately present at all
times, willing to listen to whatever God’s people have to say and as a loving parent, never being
shocked or rejecting, however childish, self-centred or even vengeful the outpourings.
O God, break the teeth in their mouths;tear out the fangs of these wild beasts O Lord.Let them vanish like water than runs away;let them wither like grass that is trodden underfoot. (Ps 57 [58]:7-8)
But the Jews have always recognised that far more important than what they have to say to God is
what God has to say to them. Listening to God, hearing God’s message and responding to it by
acting in accordance with God’s will is central to Jewish prayer and this is the prayer of the
psalms. The Christian who prays the psalms is doing no less then the Jew who does so, seeking to
hear God’s voice and having the strength to respond to it – precisely what Jesus prayed and did.
In fact the Christian is doing more than this, praying the psalms with Jesus in the paschal light.
Of course the term ‘God’s word’ means much more to a Christian than to a Jew. For us Jesus is
God’s last Word, as it were. Just as the Jews saw God’s word as fecund (Is 55:11) and reviving
(Ps 18 [19]:8). Christians see in Jesus God’s life-giving Word, God with us (Emmanuel means
just that), to whom we respond ‘not only with our lips but in our lives’10 so that we come to live
‘in Christ’, as St Paul teaches (Gal 2:20), and become the very Body of Christ ourselves, the
Word incarnated in our twenty-first century world. Ezekiel prophesied,
‘I will put my sanctuary among them for ever. My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. Then the nations will know that I the Lord make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them for ever.’ (Ezk 37: 26-28)
10 General Thanksgiving, Book of Common Prayer, (1662) by Bishop Reynolds of Norwich, perhaps based on a Coptic original [Charles Neill and J M Willoughby, The Tutorial Prayer Book (London, Harrison Trust, 1913) p 147]
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Christians see this prophecy as fulfilled in the Christian community, striving to be the presence of
the Risen Christ in the world. So Psalm 8 seems to speak of our great vocation to share in this
redemptive work of Jesus:
When I see the heavens, the work of your handsThe moon and the stars which you arranged,what are we that you should keep us in mind,men and women that you care for us?
You have made us little less than godsand crowned us with glory and honour,gave us power over the works of your hands,put all things under our feet.
Our relationship with God
Central for the Christian using the psalms is an understanding of our relationship with God. The
Jewish scriptures tell us how from the very beginning God sought intimacy with humankind.
Unlike the pagans who believed their gods present in idols, no image was permitted the Jewish
people. They learnt of God present in a burning bush, in the ‘still small voice of the storm’ (1
Kings 19:12)11, present in the Ark carried through the desert, present in the Holy of Holies in the
Temple on Mount Zion, and present indeed in his name YHWH which must never be uttered. All
of these figure in the psalms. For Christians God is still with us, but now pre-eminently in the
person of Jesus, the Risen Christ, present sacramentally in the Eucharist, celebrated in the Liturgy
of the Hours and incarnated in us his people, the Church. For Christians too, no image is
permitted; Jesus is God made present.
O where can I go from your spirit,Or where can I flee from your face?If I climb the heavens you are there.If I lie in the grave you are there.
If I take the wings of the dawnand dwell at the sea’s furtherst end,even there your hand would lead me,your right hand would hold me fast. (Ps 138 [139]:7-10)
11 ‘Light murmuring’ NJB
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We hear the whole story of God’s relationship with his people at the Easter Vigil every Holy
Saturday. God loves humankind and is totally committed to us; for the Jewish people of course,
this means that God is committed to the Jews. The psalms delight to rehearse God’s dealings with
his people:
They forgot the things he had done them,the marvellous deeds he had shown them.He did wonders in the sight of their forebears,in Egypt, in the plains of Zoan.
He divided the sea and led them throughand made the waters stand up like a wall.By day he led them with a cloud,by night, with a light of fire.
He split the rocks in the desert.He gave them plentiful drink as from the deep.He made streams flow out from the rockand made waters run down like rivers. (Ps 77 [78]:11-16)
Even so, the scriptures make plain that in fact the covenant relationship is between God and the
whole of creation12, of which we are the custodians.
How many are your works, O Lord!In wisdom you have made them all.The earth is full of your riches.
There is the sea, vast and wide,with its moving swarms past counting,living things great and small.The ships are moving thereand the monsters you made to play with.
All of these look to youto give them their food in due season.You give it; they gather it up.You open your hand; they have their fill. (Ps 103 [104]:24-28)
The later prophets insisted that God was not in fact exclusive in his favours and that God’s love
extends to the rest of the world, to those whom the Jews referred to as ‘the nations’. God’s love,
we know as Christians, extends to all humankind not just to those who do God’s will, the
12 See Robert Murray, The Cosmic Covenant, (S & W, 1992)
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virtuous, or those who belong to the chosen race, to the elect, or even just to the household of
faith.13
All the nations shall come to adore youand glorify your name, O Lord.For you are great and do marvellous deeds,you who alone are God. (Ps 85 [86]:9-10)
‘Babylon and Egypt I will countamong those who know mePhilistia, Tyre, Ethiopia,these will be her childrenand Zion shall be called “Mother”for all shall be her children.’
It is he, the Lord Most Highwho gives each his place.In his register of peoples he writes:‘These are her children’and while they dance they will sing:‘In you all find their home.’ (Ps 86 [87]:4-7)
God’s rule
Perhaps even more important for the Christian using the psalms is our understanding of God’s
rule, that is the values which God wishes to prevail among humankind. ‘Yours is an everlasting
kingdom; your rule lasts from age to age,’ proclaims the psalmist (Ps 144 (145]:13). What is this
‘rule’? For the Jews it is a world where justice and peace reign, where God’s will is venerated and
observed.
‘It is he who gives bread to the hungry, the Lord, who sets prisoners free,
the Lord who gives sight to the blind, who raises up those who are bowed down, the Lord who protects the stranger and upholds the widow and orphan.’ (Ps 145 (146):7-9)
But who on earth will do this other than those who obey God’s will? Here is the echo of the
prophecy of Isaiah that God would make his people ‘a light for the gentiles, to open eyes that are
13 Placards which can be seen at some demonstrations, usually in the USA, reading ‘God hates fags’ are thus false. God does indeed love fags, and amazingly God also loves those who distort God’s word to proclaim such a message of hatred! Similarly, Christians believe that God loves blasphemers and unbelievers and does not want them to be the subject of Fatwa or Jihad.
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blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.’ (Is.
42:6f)
How can a Christian hear these words without immediately recalling our Lord’s parable of the
last judgment, the separation of the sheep from the goats:
‘When did we see you see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ (Mt 25:37-39, NIV)
Surely too we also recall the words of the Mother of God as recorded in Luke’s gospel:
‘You have put down the mighty from their seat and have lifted up the powerless. You have filled the hungry with good things and have sent the rich away empty . . . You, remembering your mercy, have helped your people . . .’ (Lk 1: 52ff)
Isaiah’s promise of a light blazing forth on the people that walk in darkness14 also reminds us of
Simeon, who took the infant Jesus into his arms when he was presented in the Temple and said
‘Now my eyes have seen your salvation . . . a light for revelation to the gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.’ (Lk 2:29ff)
Similarly, we can hardly forget the words of John the Baptist’s father Zechariah, who said of his
newly born son,
‘You, my child, shall be called a prophet of the Most High . . . you will go . . .to prepare the way for him . . the rising sun will come to us . . . to shine on those living in darkness and guide our feet into the path of peace.’ (Lk 1:76 etc)
With the Jews we join with the psalmist in proclaiming,
14 Isaiah 9:1
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‘The Lord has made known his salvation; has shown his justice to the nations. He has remembered his truth and love for the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.’ (Ps 97 [98]:2-3)
But of course we understand this differently. ‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in
you,’ promises Ezekiel (Ez 36:26) and for Christians this promise is both fulfilled in Jesus and
being fulfilled in us, his Church, the Body of the Christ, for that is the essence of the Christian
vocation, to be the presence of God in our world. Psalm 84 [85] speaks of the coming golden age,
when with our help God’s will rules the cosmos:
I will hear what the Lord God has to say,a voice that speaks of peace,a peace for his people and his friendsand those who turn to him in their hearts . . .
Mercy and faithfulness have met;justice and peace have embraced.Faithfulness shall spring from the earthand justice look down from heaven.
The Lord will make us prosperand our earth shall yield its fruit.Justice shall march before himand peace shall follow his steps. (Ps 84 [85]:9, 11-14)
Luke tells the story of how, on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection, the risen Christ
‘beginning with Moses and all the prophets, explained what was said in all the scriptures
concerning himself.’ (Lk 24:27) In Luke’s later story of the risen Jesus appearing to his followers
in the locked room, we hear how Jesus said, ‘Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me
in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’ (Lk 24:44) This is the traditional triple
reference to the Hebrew scriptures and shows that no Christian can live without them: law15,
prophets and psalms.
15 As found in the Torah, the five books of Moses.
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The concept of God’s rule, which Jesus proclaimed as breaking in upon us now, is therefore
central to an understanding of the psalms and how they are understood by Christians. The three
gospel canticles quoted above, called by their opening words in Latin Magnificat, Benedictus and
Nunc Dimittis, are but Christian psalms16, using the vocabulary and concepts of the traditional
Jewish Psalter but in the light of God’s revelation in Jesus. In the praying of the psalms we ask
ourselves how we are going to respond to this proclamation of God’s rule.
The message of the psalms
With the insights which our faith gives us, the Christian can therefore continue to pray the psalms
with our sisters and brothers, the Jews. In them we learn that God is ever present as transcendent
Creator. ‘Where can I flee from your face?’ (Ps 138 [139]:7] Not only this, but the ever-present,
all-seeing God, loves me and wants intimacy with me and yearns for my commitment in return.
In my life I see that God blesses me and at times seems to withdraw and even allows me to suffer.
But in my pain God re-appears, returns to me, offering both forgiveness for actions of mine that
may have taken me from God’s presence (Ps 50 [51]:13) and comfort in my pain. God seeks me
out and revives me. For Christians of course this reviving, this new life which God gives us after
raising us up from the depths, often so eloquently described in the psalms, is nothing but the new
life mediated to us by the Resurrection. ‘I live – not me – but Christ lives in me.’ (Gal 2:20)
For primitive religions, ritual is an attempt to contact the divine, to mediate to humankind the
power of divine intervention in past saving events. For the Jew as for the Christian it is the other
way round: the worship of those whom God has already saved. But for the Christian, worship is
even more. It is a celebration of how God has touched us, has united himself to us and is ever
16 Indeed, the textual similarity of the Magnificat and the Song of Hannah in 1 Sam 2:1-10 cannot be denied. Nevertheless, in all these Gospel canticles, quotations from and allusions to the Jewish scriptures are to the Greek LXX rather than to the Hebrew which says something about the context of their creation.
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present to us and dwelling in us, a joyful celebration of salvation that is just as real and active in
the ritual celebration as it was in the historical event. Our Christian prayer is a participation in
the eternally present salvific Pasch of Christ.17 It is sublimely and supremely experienced in the
Eucharist.
The psalms in Christian context
We may at times of course be puzzled by some of the details we find in some of the psalms, such
as the references to ‘Sihon, king of the Amorites, Og, the king of Bashan’ etc (Ps 134 [135]:11
and 135 [136]:19 & 20) or scandalised by the desire to ‘dash the children of Babylon on the rock’
(Ps 136 [137]:9). The important thing for us is that these psalms were the prayers of Jesus the
Jew, Jesus the rabbi from Galilee, the prayers of Jesus, a human being like us. Scholars like
Professor Vermes18, Albert Nolan19, and Leonard Swidler20 have shown how enriching it is to our
Christian faith to understand the Jewishness of Jesus and to enter deeply into the thought-patterns
of the tradition by which he was nourished. Even so, as Christians, we often find new meaning,
never intended by the author:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Ps 21 [22]:1)
Even if Jesus did not in fact utter these words on the cross (Mt 27:47), they seem ready made for
him and for Christians they must always refer to him. So too other psalms cannot be read by the
Christian without recalling our Lord’s suffering:
Have mercy on me, O Lord,for I am in distress.Tears have wasted my eyes,my throat and my heart. . .
In the face of all my foesI am a reproach,an object of scorn to my neighbours
17 Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1993 2nd rev edn) p 34018 Geza Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew (London, SCM Press, 1993) for example19 Albert Nolan, Jesus before Christianity, (London, DLT, 1997, rev 1992)20 Leonard Swidler, Yeshua – a Model for Moderns, (Kansas, Sheed & Ward, 1988)
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and of fear to my friends. (Ps 30 [31]:10, 12)
But as Christians we gain even more from using the psalms in the Liturgy of the Hours. The
Christians of the Apostolic Age focussed on the contemporary, active, Risen Christ present in the
Church through his Spirit rather than what he had said and done during his earthly life.21 The
apostles remembered Jesus and had no need of a written history; only as the memories faded was
a record necessary. For St Paul, liturgy is Christian life and the liturgy can be seen as ‘the on-
going Sitz im Leben of Christ’s saving pattern in every age, and what we do in the liturgy is
exactly what the New Testament itself did with Jesus: it applied him and what he was and is to
the present’.22 The eschaton is not a time or a thing; it is a person, the new Adam, Jesus Christ.
And the new creation is a life lived in him – or rather, his life in us.23
The Christian faith has only one object, the mystery of Christ dead and risen. But this unique mystery subsists under different modes: it is prefigured in the Old Testament; it is accomplished historically in the earthly life of Christ; it is contained in mystery in the sacraments; it is lived mystically in souls; it is accomplished socially in the Church; it is consummated eschatologically in the heavenly kingdom.24
St Paul insists on our personal participation in the Redemption so that the liturgy becomes a self-
fulfilling prophecy:
Our common worship is a living metaphor of this same saving reality, not only representing and re-presenting it to us constantly in symbol to evoke our response in faith and deed, but actively effecting it in us through the work of the Holy Spirit, in order to build up the Body of Christ into a new temple and priesthood in which offerer and offered are one.25
The fathers of the Second Vatican Council expressed this in the following way:
Christ Jesus, high priest of the new and eternal covenant, taking human nature, introduced into this earthly exile that hymn which is sung throughout all ages in the halls of heaven. He joins the entire community of humankind to himself, associating it with his own singing of this canticle of divine praise. For he continues his priestly work through
21 Taft, op cit p 22822 Idem, p 33623 Idem, p 34524 Jean Daniélou, “Le symbolisme des rites baptismaux,” Dieu vivant I (1945) 17, translation by Taft (op cit p 371)25 Taft, op cit, p 344
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the agency of his Church, which is ceaselessly engaged in praising the Lord and interceding for the salvation of the whole world. . . the divine office . . . is truly the voice of the bride addressing her bridegroom; it is the very prayer which Christ himself, together with his Body, addresses to the Father.26
Conclusion
Like the Jews but with the faith that comes from our understanding of Jesus as God’s anointed,
we stand in the presence of God. This presence is symbolised for us in church by the altar, to
which we turn at the start of morning prayer, making the sign of the cross on our lips, to recite the
Venite, the invitatory psalm (94 [95]) with its solemn call to listen to God’s voice and ‘harden not
your hearts’27.
Come, ring out our joy to the Lord;hail the rock who saves us.Let us come before him giving thanks;with songs let us hail the Lord . . .
Come in, let us kneel and bend low.Let us kneel before the God who made usfor he is our God and wethe people who belong to his pasturethe flock that is led by his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice!“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,as on that day at Massah in the desertwhen your forebears put me to the test;when they tried me, though they saw my work.” (Ps 94 [95]:1-2, 6-9)
We hear of God’s covenant love for his people down the ages, knowing that this extends not only
to the Jews, his own chosen people, but to all of humankind. We yearn, with the psalmist, for the
rule of God, for God’s reign of justice and peace on earth, knowing that Jesus has told us that the
kingdom is breaking in now and it is up to us to respond and to realise it. ‘Thy kingdom come;
thy will be done.’
Let the people praise you O God;
26 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 83-84 in W M Abbot, The Documents of Vatican II (London, Geoffrey Chapman, 1966) p 16327 Again, at the end of Morning and Evening Prayer and Compline we turn to face the altar for the gospel canticles, once more solemnly making the sign of the cross.
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let all the peoples praise you. (Ps 66 [67])28
All this message we find in the psalms as they have come down to us through the Jewish people.
As Christians we add nothing and delete nothing, for we have no need to do so.29 We are content
to make our way slowly and meditatively through psalm after psalm, praying them in the same
way as the Jews do and as Jesus did, but with our Christian faith. As a token of this we add a
Christian doxology to each psalm. In traditional wording this is ‘Glory be to the Father and to the
Son and to the Holy Spirit’. Some Christians of today are happier with a reformulation such as,
‘Glory to God, Source of all being, eternal Word and Holy Spirit’. But even these doxologies are
using words taken from the Jewish scriptures, understood of course by us as Trinitarian.
There is no formal explicit proclamation of the Gospel in the liturgy of the hours except on
special occasions, beyond a few words at the readings, and these are not only brief but merely
hints and reminders. The psalms require no contradiction or trumping by Christians. In our
tradition morning and evening prayer end with the gospel canticles, Benedictus or Magnificat and
we have already seen how these fit seamlessly with the psalms. Then we recite the Pater Noster,
the very prayer which Jesus taught us. With him we are praying to the Father, seeking to unite our
wills to God’s and to proclaim the reign of God.
‘The Opus Dei . . . is a work of God in us before it is a work we do in response to his call.’30 ‘The
almighty has done great things for me – holy is his name!’ sings the Mother of God in the
Magnificat (Luke 1:49) and these words ‘sum up the whole dynamic of liturgical anamnesis and
thankful praise,’31 that is the Liturgy of the Hours, the core of which is the psalms.
28 For centuries, this psalm was said every day at Lauds. RB 12 & 13.29 The General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours (found in Vol I of the Divine Office) at 131 expresses reservations. J D Crichton commented on ‘sub-Christian’ passages in the psalms and concluded, “The only solution to the problem that I can see is that the church should recognise frankly that there are still psalms and parts of psalms in the office that the Christian cannot use or can only use by means of a complicated exegesis.” Christian Celebration: The Prayer of the Church, (London, Geoffrey Chapman, 1976) p 84.30 I Hausherr, “Opus Dei,” Monastic Studies II (1975) 195ff, quoted in Taft op cit p 36531 Taft op cit p 365
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NEW AGE OBLATES
I was struck recently by some words written by that popular writer and speaker, the missionary
priest Adrian Smith:
The phrase ‘Kingdom of God’ as an expression of the vision of Jesus, has lost its appeal to us of the western world in the twenty-first century. The word ‘kingdom’ conjures up images of knights and castles and implies a masculine God. Since Jesus was not speaking of a geographical location, a happier expression might be the ‘Reign of God,’ or had he been employing today’s language he might have spoken instead of the Christ Age, or the Age of Universality, or the New Civilisation of Love, all of which are more meaningful expressions where there are few kingdoms remaining.32
Our own Joan Chittister has written of the Rule of Benedict:
Benedictine spirituality is the spirituality of the twenty-first century because it deals with the issues facing us now – stewardship, relationships, authority, community, balance, work, simplicity, prayer, and spiritual and psychological development.33
Oblates know that the way we deal with these daily issues is first by listening. Joan Chittister
tells an amusing ancient story from another ancient tradition:
‘Where shall I look for enlightenment?’‘Here.’ The Holy One said.
‘When will it happen?’‘It’s happening right now,’ the Holy One said.
‘Then why don’t I experience it?’‘Because you do not look,’ the Holy One said.
‘What should I look for?’‘Nothing,’ the Holy one said. ‘Just look.’
‘At what?’‘Anything your eyes alight upon,’ the Holy One said.
‘Must I look in a special kind of way?’‘No,’ the Holy One said. ‘The ordinary way will do.’
‘But don’t I always look the ordinary way?’
32 Adrian B Smith, Tomorrow’s Christian, (Winchester & NY: O Books, 2005) p 633 Joan Chittister OSB, The Rule of Benedict – Insights for the Ages, (NY: Crossroad, 1992) p 15
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‘No,’ said the Holy One. ‘You don’t.’
‘Why ever not?’ the disciple demanded.‘Because to look you must be here,’ the Holy One said. ‘You’re mostly somewhere else.’34
Coming to the monastery on an oblate retreat or for a visit, we are able for a moment to share that
contemplative mental attitude of the monastic and just look and listen. Then we may begin to
understand more what the Vision of Jesus was and is and what it means for us today; Benedict
speaks of his ‘little Rule’ as a means of bringing the faithful disciple back to God. ‘Listen!’ he
says, but only ‘if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the
strong and noble weapons of obedience do battle for Jesus, the Christ.’35
We could do worse by looking and listening once more to that central prayer of the Christian, the
model prayer composed by Jesus himself for his followers.36 To help us look at this most familiar
of prayers anew, let us use a modern translation.37
Loving God, here and everywhere,help us to proclaim your valuesand bring in your New World.
Just as Adrian Smith suggests that the word ‘kingdom’ carries a lot of baggage for us today, so
the word ‘heaven’ needs examining (‘who art in heaven’ or ‘here and everywhere’). Jesus was
keen that God’s Rule should be proclaimed now and on earth, indeed he insisted that the Rule of
God has both been inaugurated and is to come. So we have his prayer, our prayer, that we bring
about this Rule of God, this heaven on earth. This is the obedience to God’s will which Jesus
calls for; ‘Thy will be done – thy kingdom come!’
34 Chittister op cit p 178 (RB 72, Good Zeal)35 RB Prologue36 Matthew 6; 9-13 and Luke 11; 2-4. Even the sceptical Jewish scripture scholar Professor Geza Vermes has no doubt that this prayer were composed by Jesus himself, unlike much else piously put into his mouth by the evangelists. Vermes, The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, (London Penguin, 2003) pp 222 ff. Emeritus Professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford, Vermes is a noted scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a former Catholic priest.37 John Henson, Good as New: a Radical Retelling of the Scriptures [Alresford & NY: O Books, 2004] p 132
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Saturday Vespers reminds us of this with the very first psalm antiphon, taken from the first psalm
that evening:
‘Your rule is a rule for all the ages.’38
The Grail version translates this verse from the psalm as:
Yours is an everlasting kingdom;Your rule lasts from age to age.
The whole of psalm 14439 is a reflection on the Rule of God, to which Jesus gave so much
priority. A careful study of the text indicates the characteristics of this Rule – kindness,
compassion, unstinting love, faithfulness, justice and peace. These are words that occur
throughout the psalms to indicate what sort of relationships we are expected to have – with God
and with our neighbours.
It has been pointed out40 that Ps 144 [145] contains many of the elements of the Our Father: the
sanctification of God’s name (144 [145]: 1, 2, 21), the coming of the Kingdom (11,13), the giving
of daily bread (15-16) and help against temptation (14). Like the psalms, this prayer of Jesus’
‘expresses two particular cries of the human heart: the one a prayer of praise (“hallowed by thy
name”); the other, a cry for help, a supplication.41 So the rest of the Our Father looks at our needs
and asks:
Supply us our day-to-day needs.Forgive us for wounding you, while we forgive those who wound us.Give us courage to meet life’s trials and deal with evil’s power.
Here too the first psalm at Saturday vespers shows us how God supplies the needs of those who
look to him:
38 ‘Regnum tuum, Domine, regnum omnium saeculorum’. 39 145 in the Hebrew, the first half being the last psalm on Friday vespers and the second half the first psalm on Saturdays.40 Jean-Pierre Prévost, A Short Dictionary of the Psalms (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1997) p 47 f41 Prévost p 48
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The Lord supports all who falland raises all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all creatures look to youand you give them their food in due time.You open wide your handand grant the desires of all who live.
The psalmist’s cry is taken up in the next psalm at Saturday vespers42:
It is he who keeps faith for ever,who is just to those who are oppressed.It is he who gives bread to the hungry,the Lord, who sets prisoners free,
the Lord who gives sight to the blind,who raises up those who are bowed down,the Lord, who protects the strangerand upholds the widow and orphan.
The following two psalms43 continue the theme of a God who is faithful to his people and who
maintains the world. They are very rich and bear deep and careful study.
The Our Father, however, does proceed beyond the Jewish tradition in two ways.44 First, God is
addressed as ‘Father’ and this is to become standard in Christian prayer. Second, it is an
innovation for Jesus to insist on the explicit requirement that we forgive those who have hurt us.
The psalms often speak of the forgiveness we hope for from God but never the forgiveness we are
to show others. Nevertheless, this demand of Jesus’ is in the tradition of those calls upon us to ‘be
holy as God is holy’45 – to ‘be compassionate as God is compassionate’46 and ultimately to ‘be
perfect as God is perfect’.47
42 145, 146 in the Hebrew.43 146 and 147 [both together forming 147 in the Hebrew version]44 Prévost loc cit45 Leviticus 19; 2 and elsewhere46 Or be ‘merciful’ Luke 6; 36 47 Matthew 5; 48
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Does it seem odd that these profoundly Jewish prayers, sung now for three thousand years from
the tenth century before the coming of Jesus the Christ are still seen as valid in the third
millennium, the New Age? They were the prayers of Jesus, as we see from our brief examination
of the Our Father, and so they must be our prayers too.
We see also how their themes were ecstatically taken up by Mary, Mother of Jesus, in the gospel
canticle which is sung every night towards the end of Vespers. Let us again use a modern
translation to enable us to look at it afresh:
I sense the greatness of Godwho makes my joy complete;God smiled at me and asked my help,and everyone will dance with gleeat the wonderful thing happening to me.What a God!
In every age God aids the good,upsetting the plans of the arrogant:see how the powerful fall off their perches!Honour for the modest, a banquet for the hungry;The rich get nothing and slink away!
God keeps promises to friends and companions –Abraham, Sarah, and their like today.48
Any translation of the Magnificat must fail to convey the riches of this great Christian canticle, composed in the tradition of the psalms. Several scholars maintain that behind the Greek text found in the Gospel of Luke there lies a Hebrew original49. This text has been reconstructed50 and shows a remarkable unity and many of the skilful artifices used by the composers of the traditional psalms. There are interesting links, for example, between the Hebrew words for ‘lowly handmaid’ (Lk 2; 48) and ‘his servant’ Israel (54) which make Jesus the incarnation of Israel and links the mystery of the Incarnation with that of the mystery of the People of God. Throughout the Magnificat too, in its reconstructed Hebrew form, there are many references and typically Hebrew verbal allusions to God’s ‘power’, peaking in verse 51:
He has shown the power of his arm.He has routed the proud of heart.
48 Henson op cit p 18249 For example, Matthew Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Oxford 1954 2nd edn) p 111 ff. See also Gustaf Dalman, Worte Jesu (ET Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1909); C F Burney The Poetry of Our Lord (Oxford, Clarendon, 1925); Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos (San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1990) for the Jewish meaning (Aramaic and Hebrew) behind the Greek of the LXX.50 Samuel Terrien, The Magnificat - musicians as biblical interpreters (NY/Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 1995) pp 6-10.
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This vision of the Rule of God is the great tradition of the Jewish religion which Jesus has passed
on to us. He developed two great insights. First, God is an inclusive God and welcomes the
nations, as indeed at various stages in the history of Israel the prophets and psalmists foresaw;
God can no longer be understood as the jealous tribal God of the Jews alone.
Second, Jesus calls his followers to be proactive in proclaiming the Rule of God, feeding the
hungry, housing the homeless, sheltering the refugee, visiting the sick and those in prison and
providing clothing for the poor.51 Faithful to the development of Christian thought that followed
Jesus’ death and resurrection, we must go further; we are both to recognise the Divine in the
Humanity of others (the Incarnation) and to reveal the Divine in our own Humanity (the
Resurrection, the Mystical Body of Christ).
This surely then is our calling as Christians in this wonderful New Age proclaimed by Jesus,
sharing in his priestly work of succouring the world and manifesting the unbounded love of God
for all his creatures. The world after the Resurrection of Jesus is dominated by the Risen Christ,
into whom we are incorporated by baptism and whose presence as the Body of Christ we are
called to be. Let us do his work!
Yours is an everlasting kingdom;your rule lasts from age to age.
51 Matthew 25: 31-46 and Psalm 145 [146] above.
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THE HIDDEN DYNAMIC AT VESPERS
Latin Vespers at a Benedictine monastery can be confusing for visitors – not knowing when to
stand or sit, which way to turn, what comes next or even what is being sung – still less what it all
means! There are so many treasures in the office, however, as we already know from
participation at Lauds in English, that any effort made to become more familiar with Latin
Vespers is well rewarded.
There are two main focuses of attention in the offices of Lauds and Vespers – the psalms and the
Gospel canticle. At Benedictine Latin vespers particular psalms are allocated for each weekday
(unlike the four week cycle of the Roman office) psalms 144 (ii) to 147 on Saturdays for
example, and these are then rounded off as it were by the Gospel canticle, the Song of Mary or
Magnificat.
The psalms are Hebrew hymns with two main messages: the first is that God is present, lovingly
longing for us to acknowledge this; and the second is that God reigns and wishes us to respond to
his covenant love for us and to be involved in realising the Rule of God in our world and among
those we encounter. This is the Jewish prayer then, with which we fully identify ourselves, and
which in the office we sing alongside Jesus, the faithful Jew.
We start the office by rising to our feet and calling on the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
whose name is so holy that no Jew utters it, even today. God’s name is not particularly well-
known even to Catholics but it is of course indicated by the four Hebrew letters YHWH. The
Jews are however allowed to utter its abbreviation, Yah or Yeh. So our office begins with our
turning to the altar, symbol (but only symbol) of the presence of God, invoking God’s aid in our
attempts to praise God as we sing in Hebrew Allelu-YAH! Let’s praise Yah! As we know from
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the psalms, the Jews did not believe that God actually confined himself to Jerusalem, to Sion, still
less that God could be found only in the Temple, the Holy of Holies. But just as Moses felt
himself unworthy before the burning bush, so we should revere the bare stone altar with its two
simple candle flames, aware that we are in the presence of the All Holiest, whose ancient name is
Yah.
After this solemn opening acknowledging God’s presence, at Douai Abbey we then sit for the
four psalms. These are each presented with its own antiphon, a few words which suggest to us
something of the riches of the psalm in question. These repay a little study. On Saturday the first
antiphon is usually ‘Regnum tuum Domine’ – ‘Your kingdom Lord is a kingdom for all the
ages!’ It is of course a Jewish prayer and features as the central message of Jesus. He taught us
that the kingdom is not something in the future, although its full realisation is, but that it is
breaking in on us now and we are called, as the followers of Yah, to proclaim it and to practise it:
justice, peace, freedom, love, unity. With Jesus and the Jewish people we pray these psalms,
acknowledging the presence of God in nature, in salvation history and in our own lives; we listen
to God’s call to bring about God’s Rule on earth and yearn with Jesus and the Jews for the
triumph of Yah.
A short scripture reading is followed by the Respond, a sort of short musical meditation taken
from a psalm or referring to the feast or liturgical season, and then the hymn, a further topical
meditation. We rise for the hymn, and remain standing to the end for the more solemn part of the
office, as now we want to add our Christian insights to our Jewish heritage.
The tone changes dramatically as we prepare to sing, at Vespers, the great Song of Mary,
composed in anticipation of the Coming of Jesus, the Incarnation. It is prefaced by a special (or
‘proper’) antiphon, intended to focus our minds on one aspect of the great mystery of our religion
about to be proclaimed in the Gospel canticle. (The monastic community at Douai reclines to sing
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the Magnificat antiphon, but to avoid too much movement at a solemn moment visitors should
remain standing in respect as we prepare to sing Mary’s song. It is also best to remain standing
when the antiphon is repeated after the Magnificat, although the monks again recline.)
We affirm the promises of Judaism; we acknowledge the presence and the claims of Yah, the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom Jesus committed himself fully but we, unlike our sisters
and brothers the Jews, know that God made great promises which would be fulfilled only by
God’s own assumption of our humanity. We turn to the altar as Mary sings in great joy of the
imminence of the realisation of this promise – Jesus is coming! Now the altar is not just the
presence of Yah, like the Ark of the Covenant that sat in the Holy of Holies in the Temple of
Jerusalem on Mount Sion, but it symbolises the presence of Jesus, coming among us, the Holy
One who was not too holy to disdain joining us as a human being. Having sung the psalms with
Jesus the Jew, we now sing with Mary, God-Bearer, looking forward with joy to God’s most
momentous intervention in human affairs. So we turn from the altar after the ‘Glory be’ so that
we can sing again the antiphon chosen for the canticle.
Then comes the magic moment when for the first time we call on God as Jesus, the Human-God.
His name in his own language is Yeh-shuah (meaning ‘Yah saves’). Christians refer to this as the
Holy Name at which we bow our heads and we are encouraged to be intimate with Jesus, our
brother, and call him by his personal name. Our respect for Yah, the Source of All Being,
prevents us from being so familiar with the Father by uttering God’s name YHWH. But we
hesitate at Vespers even to utter the name JESUS. We have waited through the psalms to
acknowledge Jesus and we have sung Mary’s Song as she waited in joyful hope for the coming of
our Saviour, and now at last we acknowledge the Incarnation by crying in Greek – ‘Kyrie eleison,
Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison’ – ‘Lord, Saviour, Lord, have mercy on us’, echoing the Hebrew
call to Yah with which we opened Vespers.
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And Jesus then responds. In the name of the Christian community, of the body of Christ, the
abbot, abbess, prior, prioress or other person presiding at Vespers in the ancient Latin form sings
to us Jesus’ own prayer about our wish to acknowledge God, to yearn for his Rule, to commit
ourselves to bringing God’s rule into effect in our own small circle. This is the great encounter,
the challenging encounter that is happening at Vespers.
Yah’s desperate longing for humankind to share in his work of bringing justice and peace to the
world, God’s Rule, has led to God joining us in our fallen human lives, showing us that we can
indeed share the divine work. What is more, we can become a community of the very presence of
God in the world, the body of the risen Jesus. So it is that at Lauds at Douai, and in the Roman
office, rather than one person it is the whole Christian community that joins in reciting Jesus’
prayer, his response to our cries of acknowledgment, our cries of greeting, our recognition that
Jesus is the fulfilment of Yah’s promises – Yah saves! Jesus!
So we can consider the Our Father, a prayer which even the most sceptical of scripture scholars
acknowledges was composed by our Lord, as the high point of Vespers. We have mused on four
psalms in the presence of Yah accompanied by Jesus the man, Jesus the Jew. Then Mary reminds
us that the coming of Jesus was to fulfil God’s promises, and we finally call on Jesus as Lord,
Kyrie, to which he responds in the prayer he gave us.
This is a prayer which summarises the faith of Jesus and challenges us to move from being
obedient followers of God, like the Jews, to move even beyond our recognition that Jesus is Lord,
to the profoundest mystery of the Incarnation, that Jesus calls us to be the presence of God in the
world. God is not in a stone altar with candles, not even in the broken bloodied corpse of the
Human-God lying in Mary’s arms, but in the Risen Body of Christ, the Church. Just as the
dynamic of the Eucharist is the making present of Jesus first through bread and wine to the end
that God’s people can be the Body of Christ, so in Vespers the dynamic is the same: a Sacred
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Encounter and a Challenge.
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CLASSIFYING THE PSALMS
Categorisation of the psalms by scholars today is normally done by their form, after a critical
editorial analysis informed by known facts and carefully argued inferences. Gunkel52 was the first
scholar to begin the classification and his work has been built on my others, notably Mowinckel53.
Brueggeman accepts this work and is particularly influenced by the refinements introduced by
Westermann54.
Gunkel identified five main types of psalm:
Hymns of Praise (including Enthronement Psalms and Songs of Sion)
Laments of the Community
Royal Psalms
Laments of the Individual (the largest group)
Thanksgiving of the Individual
He also saw several minor types, including Pilgrim Psalms, Thanksgivings of the Community,
Psalms of the Law, Wisdom Psalms and mixed types. More recent scholars feel that almost all
psalms are either Lamentations or Songs of Praise, although Psalms of the Law do not fit into
such a scheme.55
The grouping found in Brueggemann’s work56 is however of a totally different kind. It is by
52 Hermann Gunkel, Einleitung in die Psalmen, 193353 Sigmund Mowinkel, Psalmenstudien, 6 vols (1921-1924); also his The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962)54 Claus Westermann, The Psalms, Structure, Content and Message (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1980)55 This summary is taken from the helpful introduction by Charles Mortimer Guilbert in The Psalter – a New Version for Public Worship and Private Devotion, (NY, Crossroad, Seabury Press, 1978) produced for ECUSA and based on Coverdale’s translation of the psalms as found in the Book of Common Prayer56 The Message of the Psalms – a theological commentary, (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984) and indeed Brueggemann’s own The Psalms and the Life of Faith (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1995)
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function – that is, the use to which the psalms are put by believers in the faith community.57 It is
to be welcomed that an acceptance of the fact of religious faith in the critic, and here specifically
Christianity, is permitted to play a part in what had previously been seen as a purely dispassionate
academic exercise, untainted by belief. This was always a largely spurious approach as inevitably
those interested in the psalms and playing a part in the great debate came from a tradition of faith,
and what is more almost exclusively Christian and until latterly, almost wholly Protestant. If non-
believers played a part in the discussion, they were mainly scholars who had moved on from their
original faith commitment but who retained an understanding of and sympathy for the literature
and its cultural setting.
It is particularly to be welcomed by Catholics, whose scripture scholars were for decades in the
van of scripture studies, forced by the threat of punitive action by the Inquisition to deny in public
the conclusions of scripture scholars that they were happy to accept intellectually and in private.
Today it is left to the strict Jew to insist on the Davidic authorship of the psalms. But the
classification of the psalms which is now widely accepted by Christian scripture scholars,
although it provides great insight into the way the psalms were produced and the context in which
they were most likely formed, offers little to the student who is not a believer.
For this reason, the faith of more traditional groups such as Jews and Eastern Orthodox Christians
cannot be lightly dismissed by other believers less willing to view with suspicion the scholarly
work of the last two centuries. What such traditional believers have to say about the use to which
they find they can put the psalms may of course be coloured by beliefs which those informed by
modern scripture scholarship will not accept. To believe that God’s name is ‘Jehovah’ or that
Joseph Smith was his latter-day prophet means that we are inclined to treat with suspicion what
insights such believers offer us on texts as seemingly uncontroversial as the psalms. The
introduction of faith into a discussion of the psalms should always be accompanied by frequent
reminders that the exercise has become no longer purely scholarly. Even so, it would be utterly
57 Excluded from his treatment are the traditional categories of royal psalms, songs of Sion and the great historical recitals.
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foolish to ignore the fact that it was a faith system that created the psalms, that they were only an
articulation of faith when they came into being, and that they have been used, loved and
interpreted over three millennia at least by believers rather than un-believing scholars.
But even if we decline to accept, for example, the Davidic authorship of Psalm 50 (51), the
informed believer in the third millennium cannot but be reminded of David and his seduction of
Bath-Sheba in the cry,
My offences truly I know them;my sin is always before me.Against you, you alone, have I sinned;what is evil in your sight I have done . . .
From my sins turn away your faceand blot out all my guilt.
Similarly, no Christian can sing Psalm 2, Psalm 109 (110) or Psalm 117 (118) without being
reminded of the Incarnation:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son.It is I who have begotten you this day.”
and
The Lord’s revelation to my Master:“Sit on my right! . . .
You are a priest for ever,a priest like Melchizedek of old.”
and
The stone which the builders rejectedhas become the corner stone.
It would be seen as unscholarly to insist that these psalms are at best in some way prophetic or at
very least open to hindsight or an application which their authors had no inkling of. But
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Brueggemann insists that to examine what use we put the psalms to is a respectable exercise that
in no way diminishes the work of scholarly men like Gunkel who sought to proceed in a neutral
and detached way, uninfluenced by religious dogma.
A popular Catholic writer comments:
Faith . . . is a capacity within people to contain and receive all things, to hold on to nothing, with almost no need to fear or judge rashly. Faith-people find it unnecessary to secure themselves because they are secure at a deeper level; there is room for Another in that spacious place.
If someone is not holding together the Big World, then I had best concentrate on making sense out of my own little corner. If No One else is in charge, I had best take charge. If No One else is caring for me, I had better be preoccupied with security and insurance. If No One else is naming me, I will be very invested in my own image. If the only joy is self-acquired, then any mood-altering substance will do. All the burden, anxiety and options are back on me and I must take myself too seriously – it is the glory and the price of secular men and women.58
Here we have the key to the Israelite world-view. In a word, it is faith or trust, faithfulness, a
sense of reliability (emeth ). The writers of the psalms and of all the ancient Jewish literature
believed that they lived in a world characterised by covenant-relationships – God is faithful and
his people are loyal and trusting – righteousness in fact (tsedek ). Covenant relationships are
characterised by steadfast love – solidarity, covenant love59 - (hesed ). God had made the world,
seen that it was good and kept it under his benign protection; God had made humankind and
similarly, according to this predetermined plan, intended it to enjoy dominion over creation in
return for keeping its side of the bargain by respecting and obeying God’s law (torah ). This state
of right relationships involving all parties, God, the natural world, humankind, God’s people and
ultimately me as an individual, was described by the term shalom ( peace or perhaps better –
harmony)60.
The psalms abound in these terms. Here are just a few places where they occur:
58 Richard Rohr, ‘Faith’ in TIKKUN magazine [www.tikkun.org for full ref]59 Coverdale’s ‘loving kindness’60 See Giles Hibbert, The Beatitudes (London, CCC, 2004)
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Lead me Lord in your justice (righteousness) - tsedek (Ps 5; 9 [6])
He guides me along the right path (Ps 22; 6 [23])
For his love endures for ever - hesed (Ps 135 refrain [136])
May the mountains bring forth peace for the people - peaceand the hills justice - tsedek (Ps 72; 3 [73])
Justice and right are the pillars of your throne;love and truth walk in your presence (Ps 88; 15 [89])
Mercy and faithfulness have met;justice and peace have embraced.faithfulness shall spring from the earthand justice look down from heaven (Ps 84; 11-12 [85])
This orientation of the believer to the universe, to others and to God is what Brueggemann sees as
the primary function of his three categories of psalm. It is indeed the fundamental attitude of the
believer and the ground of his61 faith and thus of the practicalities of his life. At its most primitive
perhaps it can be found in the ancient Egyptian Hymn to the Sun, (Ahk-naten)62 written in the
third century before the Christian era and, some scholars believe, the original text which lies
behind psalm 103 (104).
Bless the Lord, my soul!Lord God, how great you are,clothed in majesty and glory,wrapped in light as in a robe!63
Here, where the Egyptians saw their relationship as one between themselves and the constant all-
nourishing and beneficent sun, Israelite believers see Yah () as the One to whom they are
fundamentally orientated.
So it is that Brueggemann finds he can categorise many of the psalms into three groupings which
61 The author is a male and thus although a gender-neutral possessive adjective would be less offensive, uses the male form throughout simply because English has no such adjective (or related pronoun) if one rejects the growing use of the ugly and ungrammatical ‘their’ rather than ‘his/her’.62 James B Pritchard, Ancient Near East – an anthology of texts and pictures (London: OUP, 1958) p 226 ff (ANET, 328-329)63 Ps 103:1-2{104] The version used here is The Grail Psalms – an inclusive language version (London: Collins Liturgical, 1986)
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he names orientation, dis-orientation and new orientation. This reflects, he insists, common
human experience and not solely those of a religious disposition. We are happy and balanced,
living untroubled lives, enjoying well-being and success and then something happens to disturb
our equilibrium and we are thrown into disarray, questioning all our previously assumptions and
sometimes even plunged into despair. But there is light at the end of the tunnel and in due course
we re-adjust and rise above misfortune to find a new, perhaps wiser, state of equilibrium.
At least, such is the experience of those who are not depressives or confirmed pessimists. It is a
natural cycle reflected in the repeated move from birth to childhood and maturity, to illness,
senility and ultimately death, but not before the experience of giving birth to the next generation,
fated to repeat the never-ending movement. A similar cyclic movement is seen in the daily cycle,
from sunrise to dusk and night followed by sunrise and a new day, as also in the annual cycle
from summer and harvest through autumn and winter to spring and another summer64.
Just as Darwin and his followers showed that the slow result of this constantly repeating cycle
was evolutionary, the development of ever more complex and adapted beings, leading perhaps to
Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point65, so Jews and Christians show in their use of the Psalms that
simple faith in the goodness of God is threatened by our experience of natural disaster, of illness
and unhappiness, of human weakness, whether sin or the betrayal of idolatry and apostasy, and
only overcome by the generosity of the One who created us and redeemed us. Then we are
offered a new beginning, a new life – “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow!” (50 [51):9)
Such a dynamic is not a once only never to be repeated experience in life but the sad repeated lot
of humanity, condemned ever to move from satisfaction to failure and then a new beginning.66
64 Cf the Hymn of Aten which sees the sun as the giver of life after darkness and winter, taken perhaps as a basis for Ps 103 (104). See above..65 See for example Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (ET London: Collins, 1959)66 One is reminded of the legend of Sisyphus, condemned to roll a huge stone uphill that constantly rolled back down again.
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So Bruggemann does not hesitate to speak of the moves from orientation to disorientation and
new orientation in the very life of Jesus: in the form of God, he emptied himself and was highly
exalted.67 He sees them reflected in liturgy, via the sacrament of baptism to new life. It is seen in
the history of the Jews and of Israel, through the horrors of exile, destruction of the Temple, of
Christian persecution and of the Holocaust to the ‘surprise of the State of Israel.’68 These
movements are but reflections of reality, he insists, and what is more they are ‘subversive of the
dominant culture’69 which prefers to deny harsh reality, leading to social inaction, self-deception
and unwarranted optimism. For this reason he quotes Miranda. “The Psalter represents a struggle
of the just against the unjust.”70 The Psalms offer a way for believers to understand lived reality.
Bruggemann sees five groups of psalms of orientation which he names, songs of Creation, Songs
of Torah, Wisdom Psalms, Songs of Retribution and Occasions of Well-Being.71 These all
celebrate a world of God’s abiding presence, of sanctuary, well-being, trust and security, in
possessing the land with all God’s blessings. It is a world of order, of God’s law, of submission to
God’s will, in short – of wisdom; a world of moral symmetry where humankind’s freedom to act
is in the legitimate expectation of reciprocity72, of justice and right relationships in family,
household and tribe, above all of creating a just society characterised by peace. This is real living,
with God giving focus, the guarantor of serenity, living with confidence in reliance on God, on
whom we are dependent.
Psalms of disorientation – the most numerous in the psalter - reflect the fact that life is rarely so
orderly. Our world can collapse about us and we feel abandoned. These psalms can be outspoken
to a shocking degree and but never move into denial; the bad times are faced and evil not
67 Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms 11, referring of course to Phil 2:5-11.68 Loc cit69 Op cit 1270 Jose Miranda, Communism in the Bible (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1981)71 The Message of the Psalms pp 25-4972 In all things God works for the good of those who love him [Rom 8:28, RSV]
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explained away. The Jews experienced exile and Jesus experienced the crucifixion – both
showing God’s willingness to participate in our messy lives. These psalms speak of terror, of
hurt, of sickness, isolation, imprisonment, destruction and even desperation. The depths are
plumbed and the psalmist knows that God accepts the unacceptable, as we must in our human
condition. There are some ignoble sentiments expressed in these psalms, because they are honest:
grievance, resentment and vengeance for example. The relationship with God is in disarray and
leaves the psalmist all but incoherent – but still honest and candid.
God does hear our prayer and Brueggemann’s third category, psalms of new orientation, reflect
this. After the exile came the Promised Land and after crucifixion comes new life. The themes
here are victory, triumph, salvation, hope, trust, confidence, release, an answer, relief, restoration,
joy, liberation, peace, deliverance, sanctification. Central of course is the triumph of justice,
equity and right, a social transformation, a new world order, a new regime, where God reigns.
Glory be to God,Source of all Being,Eternal Wordand Holy Spirit,as it was in the beginning,is now,and ever shall be!
AMEN.
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