On the Road to Emmaus

The Book of Psalms is an incredible gift of God to the Church. Regularly singing the entire book of Psalms is the spiritual practice I commend to people most frequently. Their uniqueness lies in while most of Scripture portrays the history of Israel from either a God’s-eye or birds-eye view, the Psalm give us the inside perspective of how Israel experienced their life before God, and simultaneously invites us into the personal experience of that very Story. Praying the entire book of Psalms is the core of the Daily Office and thus should never be downplayed, omitted or shortened.

Historically, the entire office developed from this nucleus of psalmody. Even as far back as the Desert Fathers and Mothers (4th century), it was common for a monk to pray the entire book of Psalms every single day. As St. Benedict established in the sixth century, it became standard practice for the Psalms to be recited once per week. To this kernel of Psalms were added Scriptural readings, prayers and chants which eventually grew into the formal structures of the Daily Office.  When Cranmer released the Book of Common Prayer in 1549, the entire Psalter was to be prayed each month. The 1979 edition makes provision for either a 7-week or one-month cycle.

Interestingly enough, my practice of praying the Daily Office began by praying the psalms. I heard somewhere that Martin Luther had the entire book of psalms memorized from singing it through every week as a monk. I don’t really know if the story is true, but I decided that I wanted the same to be true of me in 30 years. So I began singing through the Book of Psalms on a weekly basis. I’ll tell you, that when I did it the first time, I discovered how completely unfamiliar I was with the Psalms. Many passages, I felt like I had never heard or read before.

The Psalms are rather strange in the light of contemporary Christianity. Yet their incredible richness stems from a form of spirituality that is a marked alternative to the quasi-gnostic forms of spirituality that masquerade throughout the Church as Biblical. The Psalms represent to us the most concrete and expansive expression of a truly Biblical Spirituality. In contrast to a quasi-gnostic nihilism that might say “nothing in the world matters” or that history, the life of the body, circumstances, etc. all don’t matter because of Jesus (or something akin to that), the Psalmists seem to strongly believe that their lives on earth truly matter and truly matter to God. The Spirituality of the Psalms is not an “I’ll retreat into my inner life because there nothing in the world matters” but rather a much more risky partnership with the compassionate God who draws near to His people in the earthly life so unstable, unpredictable, full of calamity yet imbibed with meaning by virtue of the God who created it and continually chooses to acknowledge its worth. God’s constant intervention into earthly life (or the groan rising from the absence of God’s intervention) persistently affirms the value of an earthly, bodily, physical, sensory, historical, full-of-feeling existence which remains under the persistent threat of a nihilism seeking to render it meaningless. This spirituality, though very much full of hope (and indeed precisely because it is), never allows us to “soar above the vale of tears” but again and again brings us into a suffering resistance to the violence, evil, injustice and death that so marks our age.

OK – I’m trying just to teach you how to pray the Psalms, but sometimes I get really excited. I am really passionate about the Psalms and their Spirituality. Eventually (since I already have 4 or 5 series after this one already planned), I’ll come back and unpack this previous overly-long paragraph.

Back to the Prayerbook.

This page should look familiar from the last time.

Immediately after the Phos Hilaron, or any opening hymn/song/canticle, follows the “Psalms Appointed.” This means the Psalms that are appointed for the day, according to whatever schedule of Psalms you happen to be following (I’ll come back to this in a second). The rubrics say that the Gloria Patri (“Glory to the Father, and to the Son…”) is said at the end of the Psalms. This could be either after each Psalm (or section of Psalm 119, or other Psalm that is split up), or after all the Psalms prayed/sung at that time. I like to sing to the Gloria Patri after every Psalm because it helps me focus (and refocus) on praying to the actual persons of the Trinity, the overflowing community of self-giving love.

We’ve skipped a few pages now to # 585. The BCP contains the entire Book of Psalms.

“First Day: Morning Prayer” is the first of many indicators included right in the text of the Psalter that divides the Psalms into a 30-day schedule. If you pray both Morning and Evening Prayer, then you would pray them as divided for Morning and Evening. If you pray only one office per day, you would pray both the Morning and Evening psalms for each given day. If you want to sing the Psalter twice a month, use Days 1 and 2 on the first day, 3 and 4 on the second day, etc.

If you’re not using the BCP but just want to pray the Psalms out of your Bible, click here to download a schedule for dividing the Psalter into monthly, bi-monthly or weekly schedules.

Since it is a 30-day schedule, the “First Day” means the first day of the calendar month. On months with more than 30 days you can pick any day to repeat. In February (less than 30 days), you’ll just skip the days not in the month and start back again at the beginning on March 1.

We’ve skipped pages again – now we’re at 936.

This is the first page from the Daily Office Lectionary. A lectionary is a schedule of readings according to the Church Year.

I’ll explain how to navigate the lectionary more when I discuss the “Readings” section of the Office next time, but for now, notice how next to Sunday at the very top, there are the numbers “146, 147 * 111, 112, 113.“

These are Psalms for each day according to a 7-week schedule. The Psalms left of the asterisk are for Morning Prayer and right of the asterisk are for Evening Prayer. Again, if you pray one office daily, pray both sets of Psalms.

This schedule obviously does not move sequentially through the Psalms like the 30-day schedule. However, it is preferable if you have less time available to pray the Office.

An additional option for one with limited time would be to do a 60-day cycle through the Psalms – by praying the First Day: Morning Prayer Psalms on Day 1, then First Day Evening Prayer on Day 2, and so on.

That’s it! Having completed the Opening (section 1) and the Psalms (section 2), next time I’ll discuss the third major section of the Daily Office – the Readings.

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• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 6) – The Prayers (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 3) – The Opening (0)
• How to Pray the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer (Part 1) – Christian Year Overview (8)
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