Praying the Psalms
This is a new column for our local theologians and biblical scholars to share their thoughts.
May 08, 2021
By Msgr James Gnanapiragasam SSL, STL
It is to the credit of the Second Vatican Council that translations, especially in the liturgy, opened the floodgates for lay participation. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy emphatically promoted active participation, exhorting priests and others to pray the divine office and “to attune their minds to their voices when praying it. To achieve this more fully, they should take steps to improve their understanding of the liturgy and of the Bible, especially the psalms” (SC 90).
We undertake here to give a series of articles that would help readers to understand the psalms. Some of these psalms may be difficult to grasp and it might help to read and reread a particular psalm to get the full import of what it says. The vocabulary and images they use may be foreign to us. However, these psalms are our prayer. They are the prayer of the Church. Whether we pray in private or in common, these psalms express our experiences and we respond in prayer to these experiences.
Consequently, we will use the psalms as given in the Missal or the divine office in the Grail translation. Readers who do not have the Divine Office may use their own Bibles, which may even have footnotes to help in understanding. The numbers of the psalm will be indicated here as the Hebrew numbering of the psalm and the Greek or Latin numbering of the psalm which the Grail follows will differ. Bibles today usually prefer to use the Hebrew numbering which we give in bold print. The Grail is usually one less.
This psalm is the invitatory psalm for morning prayer in the Divine Office. It begins with two invitations to pray called out by the Levites (Vss 1-2 and Vs 6).
After each invitation, the crowd responds professing faith in the God of Creation (A mighty God … vs 3-5) and in the God of the Covenant (For he is our God…Vs 7).
What follows is an oracle spoken by God, reminding the people that the Covenant is important and how their ancestors disobeyed Him in the past.
We know that Jesus prayed the psalms. It would be fair to say that he knew the 150 psalms by heart. He had his own desert experience, hunger and temptation to power. He knew how hurt his Father, the God of the Covenant, was by their disobedience.
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