Domine, exaudi orationem meam, et clamor meus ad te veniat.
1. Since the beginning of Christianity, the Psalter has formed the core of Christian prayer. We see this right from the New Testament; St. Paul tells the Ephesians to "address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs"; elsewher he advises the Colossians to "admonish one another in all wisdom, and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God." (Eph. 5:19, Col. 3:16) The First Epistle of Clement, one of the earliest Christian writings outside of the New Testament, quotes the psalms upwards of fifty times, testifying to the deep integration of the psalms into the apostolic Church's worship and piety.
2. At the time monasticism emerged in the deserts of the East in the mid-3rd century, the Desert Fathers had already incorporated the psalms into their daily prayer, finding in them an effective remedy against the evil one. In St. Athanasius's Life of Anthony, the great Desert Father repeatedly invokes the psalms against the demons. He quotes Psalm 118 to defeat the spirit of lust (Chap. 6). When attacked by a demon tempting him with pomp and wealth, Antony recalls, " I sang psalms against him, and he vanished away" (Chap. 40). Antony's followers turned to the psalms regularly as well; Athanasius describes their burgeoning community thusly: "So their cells were in the mountains, like filled with holy bands of men who sang psalms, loved reading, fasted, prayed, rejoiced in the hope of things to come" (Chap 44). We see, furthermor, that the recitation of the psalms had been attached to specific times of day by the early 4th century. A monk came to Antony seeking advice on persevering in his monastic vocation. Antony told him, " Pray continually; avoid vainglory; sing psalms before sleep and on awaking" (Chap. 55).
3. Particular psalms likely began taking on fixed places in the monastic prayer cycle during the 4th century. Around 420 St. John Cassian wrote his Institutes in order to offer advice on how to organize a monastery. Cassian presents the recitation of specific psalms at fixed times as a hallowed tradition by his day. "The soldier of Christ," he says, "should next learn the system of the canonical prayers and psalms which was long ago arranged by the holy fathers in the East." (Book II:1) Nevertheless, Cassian admits there was little uniformity in these arrangements in his own time:
For we have found that many in different countries, according to the fancy of their mind...have made for themselves different rules and arrangements in this matter. For some have appointed that each night twenty or thirty Psalms should be said, and that these should be prolonged by the music of antiphonal singing , and by the addition of some modulations as well. Others have even tried to go beyond this number. Some use eighteen. And in this way we have found different rules appointed in different places, and the system and regulations that we have seen are almost as many in number as the monasteries and cells which we have visited. There are some, too, to whom it has seemed good that in the day offices of prayer, viz., Terce, Sext, and Nones, the number of Psalms and prayers should be made to correspond exactly to the number of the hours at which the services are offered up to the Lord. Some have thought fit that six Psalms should be assigned to each service of the day. (Book II:2)
4. It was, of course, the Holy Father St. Benedict of Nursia in the 6th century who gave us the form of the Psalter that has proved so instrumental in shaping the spirituality of Latin Christianity. Combining the influence of Cassian with his own insights honed from six years alone at Subiaco, Benedict’s Psalter struck the perfect median between rigor and flexibility, reflecting the noble balance that characterized the entire Benedictine Rule and made Benedictine monasticism so wildly popular in the West. Even when the Benedictine family tree began to diverge in the 10th and 11th centuries, its offshoots continued to use the hallowed Psalter, which would hold an integral place in religious life throughout the Latin west into modern times. It is difficult to overstate how influntial the Psalter (especially the Benedictine) has been in the formation of Christian spirituality throughout the ages. It is no wonder that some of the most beautifully illustrated manuscripts to come down to us have been Psalters, such as the Queen Mary Psalter, the Utrecht Psalter, and the Cathach of St. Columba.
5. In the 20th century, certain "experts" began expressing dissastisfaction with the psalms. C.S. Lewis famously derided the psalms, dedicating an entire book to deconstructing the traditional Christian veneration of the Psalter. Lewis called the psalms “vulgar,” “petty,” “self-righteous,” “contemptible” and even “devilish." He calls certain passages “childish,” says they demonstrate “pettiness and vulgarity,” are “hard to endure,” and he even goes so far as to call them “diabolical” in certain places. He even questions whether they are actually inspired. (C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms [San Diego: Harcourt, 1958], pp. 21-25, 18-19). Lewis predictably objects to the imprecatory psalms (texts which invoke God's curses or ask God for vengeance), but in a broader sense, he struggled with the notion of the Psalmist—and by extension, ourselves—asking God for vindication. Lewis can never accept the idea of a petitioner asking God prosecute his case; he did not even approve of the most frequently cited text in the Divine Office, Psalm 70:2, "O God come to my assistance, Lord, make haste to help me," because it seems to imagine God as our debtor who "owes" us vindication. Lewis, in an almost quasi-Lutheran sense, suggests that we can only ever ask God for pardon, never justice:
I make the Jewish conception of a civil judgment available for my Christian profit by picturing myself as a defendant, not the plaintiff. The writers of the Psalms do not do this. They look forward to judgement because they think they have been wronged and hope to see their wrongs righted” (ibid.,13).
6. The Catholic architects of the Novus Ordo also had reservations about the traditional Psalter. After Vatican II, it was Study Group 3 of Bugnini's Consilium who were tasked with the distribution of the psalms across a new four-week cycle that would become the Liturgy of the Hours. With more laypeople praying the psalms in the vernacular, Bugnini and his associates were concerned that people would not understand the imprecatory psalms in their proper spiritual context. Study Group 3 recommended omitting the most problematic passages and reassigning them to the minor hours so they were less likely to be prayed by those without proper formation (as laypeople tended to primarily pray Lauds and Vespers). Bugnini and Cardinal Lercaro, however, with incredible hubris, personally intervened with Paul VI and convinced the pontiff that the Psalter would not suffer if certain psalms were omitted in their entirety. As a result, Psalms 53, 83, and 109 were simply axed from the new Liturgy of the Hours, against the recommendation of Study Group 3, who merely wanted them reassigned. As Fritz Bauerschimidt observed in his article on this episode, this seems to suggest that these psalms have no place in the Christian life: "The position taken by Lercaro, Bugnini, and Paul IV seems to imply, that the cursing psalms can never be prayed fruitfully; not only are they not for everyone; it seems they are not for anyone. Paul VI had the option of leaving the imprecatory material in the Psalter, but not requiring that it be used. The decision to exclude these psalms and verses entirely seems to put them beyond the pale–not quite removing them from the canon, but certainly forbidding that they ever be prayed as part of the official prayer of the Church." (Bauerschmidt, "Cursing Psalms and the Liturgy of the Hours," Pray Tell Blog, Dec. 6, 2021)
7. We will return to the imprecatory psalms, but first for some personal perspective: I used to have the four-volume Liturgy of the Hours set. I tried to get into when I was a young man and a zealous revert. But try as I may, I could never stick to it. I went back and forth, picking it up and discarding it for months at a time. Truth be told, even years before going Trad, when I was still a JP2 New Evangelization Catholic, I found many of the texts in the Liturgy of the Hours to be...well...kind of gay. The New American Bible scripture translations always feel anemic and bland. The psalm translations–from the 1963 Grail Psalms–are weak and feminized. And the intercessions, most of them freely invented and then run through the ICEL gauntlet, sound just like the cringey Prayers of the Faithful at any Boomer Mass. Sometimes I would visibly wince when reading them. I eventually sold the set and just made do with Adoration, Rosary, and private devotions for my daily routine.
8. Some years later I was made acquainted with the Monastic Diurnal published by Clear Creek Abbey. I picked up a copy and attempted to reinvigorate my daily prayer by exposure to the traditional Bendictine office. At first I just did the little hours and Compline, the hours with the least amounts of flipping and ribbons. For the major offices I used the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (I use Latin-English edition published by Angelus Press, which also contains the Office of the Dead), which, besides being a bit easier, was also enthusiastically endorsed by St. Francis of Assisi for his lay brothers, a saint with whom I bear a special bond. Even so, I found it a struggle to commit to any form of fixed daily prayer and my adherence to praying the psalms was spotty at best. By disposition, I am not a Benedict but more of a Jeremiah; I am much more comfortable going into the woods and moaning my anguished prayers in a string of extemporaneous utterances rather than sitting quietly with a breviary. And so my prayer books tended to collect dust.
9. And so things would have continued, had not something changed in my life. Years of extemporaneous prayer and spiritual reading had made me quite comfortable expressing the movements of my soul, verbally or in writing; this comfort bore fruit in a greater sensitivity and depth to my spiritual life. The words of my prayers became more impactful, and in time I felt I could say more with less. Sometimes at Mass I would just mouth the Pater Noster over and over again, or an ejaculatory prayer like, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me," and to my delight and surprise, I found that I derived considerable nourishment as a result. In the past I had respectfully passed over memorized prayers as not suited to my disposition (sometimes I even wondered how the saints could apparently get so much out of them). But now I began to see. I revisited the memorized prayers every Catholic learns in childhood, but now from a position of spiritual maturity, seeing them no longer as prayers for beginners, but as treasures of immense value. Like Chesterton's boy in the Everlasting Man who walks around the entire earth only to return to his backyard and see it from a strikingly new perspective, I found that the memorized prayers were a lot bigger than I'd given them credit for. The words have not changed, but experience and maturity have caused them to mean so much more.
10. It was while rejoicing in this happy development that I thought perhaps I was in the right place to try the Psalter again, and so I took up the Monastic Diurnal and locked in. I began again with the little hours and Compline, just focusing on the ferias. Evntually I went major hours of the ferias, then finally Sundays and feasts. If I was short on time or traveling, I substituted the corresponding hour from the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What a different experience I now had! Whereras before I had found the Office a tedium, now it was a joy. The prayers of the psalms became spirit and life. Whereas before I had struggled to get more than one or two of the hours in, now I would go for days straight hitting all of them—and still with time to eagerly say a Rosary, get to Mass, or pop in for Adoration. I was so pleased, but also stunned. I had told myself for years that this kind of prayer just wasn't for me; how wonderfully our Lord guided my footsteps! With the Psalmist I could now say, "How sweet are thy words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (Ps. 119:103)
11. Lord knows I do not relate any of this for purposes of vainglory. Rather, I say it because I know many people struggle with the breviary. They struggle to understand its mechanics. They struggle to make time. Struggle to stay awake. Struggle to internalize the prayers they are repeating. If this resonates, then my story is for you, because I want to give you hope. I had spent years telling myself this kind of prayer "wasn't for me," and in doing so, depriving myself of one of the Church's most hallowed devotional practices that has formed countless saints. In reality, it was never about disposition; it was about maturity. I am not suggesting you are spiritually immature if you can't get into the Divine Office; I predicate this statement of my own experience and nobody else's. I do suggest, however, that our spiritual flexibility may not be as arthritic as we think. "With God, all things are possible" (Matt. 19:26)
12. In going through the traditional Psalter, the imprecatory psalms are ever-present. I don't think a day goes by that one is not getting a "Lord, vindicate me...let my enemies be confounded" sort of text. Now that I have been praying the Divine Office for some time, the thought of being deprived of these prayers fills me with indignation. I think what C.S. Lewis, Bugnini, and Lercaro miss is that the psalms, like any liturgical prayers, possess a level of meaning that goes far beyond the literal text. Bugnini imagined Catholics approaching the Psalter as if it were a Bible study, didactically pouring over the imprecatory texts and wondering what they meant. This is not how the Psalter is meant to be prayed; it is a cry from the heart! Something I love about the Psalter is how it gives voice to the full spectrum of human emotion, from the ecstasy of divine praise down to the dregs of deriliction. In praying the psalms, we identify with the Psalmist who, in a ritual sense, is a proxy for all humanity.
13. This is no less true when we get to the imprecatory passages. While we may not mean them literally, their sentiment remains valid. I will say, I have been falsely accused of things in my life—and in circumstances where I had no recourse, no way to answer back or defend myself. Anyone who has ever been falsely accused of something knows the awful feeling of helplessness, of burning indignation, of having no course of action other than to hold your clenched fist up to the heavens and cry, "Vindicate me, O God! May they fall into the pit they have dug for themselves!" Everyone will occasionally have such moments in this valley of tears, and as we are in the flesh, the imprecatory psalms reflect the trials of the flesh.
14. When you pray the psalms humbly—when you really give yourself over to them and let them speak on your behalf—they have a way of shaping you. Their text becomes your inner monologue, their vocabulary frames the very contours of your spiritual expression. The Psalter becomes an anvil where the soul is forged, transforming us into a "man after God's own heart" just as surely as their inspired author (cf. 1 Sam. 13:14). But we cannot have this transformative experience if we preside in arrogant judgment over them, convinced that their spirituality is too difficult for the uninitiated, or condemning their moral vision as childish. They can raw, to be sure, but they are raw because they are human—and we are raw.
Benedicamus domino. Deo gratias.
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