(This series of reflections on the monastic way is my invitation to you, my sisters and brothers, for a deeper reflection on what we are called to in the Order. Not all members of the Order identify with monasticism given our dispersion. However, as abbot I find value in exploring our life together from that perspective. I welcome your responses.)

In the late 1980s, I remember a conversation with a prominent United Methodist pastor—a man I deeply respect still—concerning the contents of the forthcoming United Book of Worship (UMBOW). He was on the revision committee. I told him that I hoped the UMBOW would include the complete Psalter. Without a moments hesitation he replied, “Why would you want all 150 Psalms?” Perhaps he was thinking that the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal included a number of Psalms aligned with the Revised Common Lectionary so as to be sufficient for use in corporate worship. Or perhaps he was thinking that there are a number of Psalms with sentiments (as John Wesley is reputed to have said) unfit for Christian lips to speak. I confess here that I had in mind the possibility of a daily office use of the book, a purpose that I soon learned was beyond its scope. It was in fact never conceived of as “prayer book,” or even a people’s book.

The full Psalter

Thomas Merton, along with others in the long tradition of monasticism, viewed the Psalms as the Christian’s school of prayer. I have long appreciated his exhortation, “We must go on plunging our leprosy, like Naaman, in this Jordan of Psalmody.” (Bread in the Wilderness, p. 63; see also 2 Kings 5: 1-19) To echo Naaman’s scorn of Elisha’s prescription, there are seemingly far more sophisticated and beneficial literary rivers than the Psalter for our prayer.

This may be true for those who pray as private individuals. For them, there is no need to take up the troubling pre-Christian and non-Christian sentiments in the Psalms. See for example Psalm 63: 9-10; 69: 24-30; 137:7-9; 139: 18-21. These prayer texts are but a few of the vitriolic and hateful sentiments that occur frequently in the Psalms. Some prayer books, even the 1979 Book of Common Prayer daily office lectionary put these and other sections in parentheses to indicate that they may be skipped.

 By contrast, the point I want to make here is that in the monastic tradition monks and nuns are committed by vocation to pray the whole collection of Psalms, including all of the cursing and disconcerting sections. On what basis did monasticism come to a positive answer to the question: “Can Christian’s sincerely pray, ‘O God, break the teeth in their mouths…’ (Psalm 58:6 BCP) or ‘let them be food for jackals’ (Psalm 63:10 BCP) or ‘Happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!’? (Psalm 137:9)”

Our Lukan vow to “seek the sacramental life” includes the following expansion and interpretation of the Rule of Life and Service: “As we faithfully pray the Daily Office, and live so as to embody our prayers, we endeavor to live the sacramental life.”

There is no prescription here or elsewhere in the Rule of Life and Service for how we are to pray the Psalter as part of the Daily Office, or how completely we are to pray it. However the goal is clear: “By so doing, we seek to be formed as a means of grace for all those we meet and serve in Christ’s name.”

Is there a clue here and a point of connection to monastic appreciation and attention to the fullest use of the Psalms for spiritual formation: namely, “how we live the sacramental life…for all those we meet and serve in Christ’s name”? The monastic tradition over the centuries embraced praying the whole Psalter as the center piece of its daily prayer.

What line of thought might support this use?

A theological approach to praying the Psalms with, in and through Christ

Here I list a summary of points gleaned from reading “Songs on the Road” (chapter 6) in Maria Boulding’s Gateway to Resurrection.

1. The singers of Israel were brutally and ruthlessly honest before God, believing that nothing they found important was unsuitable for mentioning in God’s presence.

2. The Psalms as such are songs for a people still on the way; not for a people already arrived at love’s perfection.

3. There are pre-Christian and non-Christian elements in us that may benefit from exposure to God in our prayer.

4. The Church, particularly monasticism, retained the Psalms as Christian prayer because Christ himself had used them, so providing a language for expressing Christ’s own prayer. The Psalms are Christ’s prayer.

5. In Luke’s gospel, the risen Christ opens the minds of the joyous but still unbelieving disciples to understand the Scriptures referencing “everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms [that] must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44-45)

6. When Christ cried on the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1) he took up into his passion then and now the suffering of the world. Maria Boulding expresses it this way,

We are inextricably involved in the suffering of the world if we pray the psalms and that means not only the suffering of believers who consciously unite themselves with the pain of Christ, but also the agonies of the many millions who do not know him, and may never know him until they die and discover that they were beside him on the cross through most of their obscure and desperate lives. (Gateway/Kindle, loc. 1060-1062).

7. So, all of who we are, including our weaknesses, failures, inconsistencies, anguish, and muddled thought and emotions can be gathered up and transformed through the cross and resurrection.

8. Augustine of Hippo’s doctrine of the totus Christus (the Whole Christ) understood as Christ in his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession and return has wed himself to us wholly and totally, head and members, bridegroom and bride.

9. Understood this way, the Psalms are the prayer of the whole Christ, and as we pray communally the whole Psalter, we must recognize our voices in him, and his accents in ourselves. Boulding translates Augustine in this way:

We pray to him, through him and in him; we speak with him and he speaks with us. We utter in him, and he utters in us, the plea made in this psalm…Let no one, then, on hearing these words, maintain, ‘This is not said by Christ’, or, on the other hand, ‘I am not speaking in this text.’ Rather let each of us who know ourselves to be within Christ’s body acknowledge both truths, that ‘Christ speaks here’, and that ‘I speak here.’ Say nothing apart from him, as he says nothing apart from you.” (Gateway/Kindle loc. 1033-1037)

10. Central to the monastic way of praying the Psalms is this truth: “[I]t is always the whole Christ who prays, the Christ who is Head and members, never to be divorced.”  (Gateway/Kindle loc. 993)

There is much more to the monastic use of the whole Psalter. And this short column does not answer many of the questions that arise as we pray this or that Psalm. Our ongoing use and reflection over a lifetime will bear fruit, even it we do not yet fully grasp the wholeness Christ seeks with and within us. We trust that praying the Psalms with Christ will accomplish that.

What is your practice of praying the Psalms? Between the ideal of monastic use of the full range of the Psalter and the actual struggle of doing so, how wide is the gap for you? Where do you find yourself struggling or stumbling in praying the Psalter? What understandings and approaches have you found helpful in embracing the Psalms in praying the Daily Office with the Order and the whole church? What authors and books have helped you on the monastic path of praying the Psalms with Christ?

Br. Abbot Daniel+

 

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