Psalms

Well, I did the math. Or whatever you'd call it: I sketched out what it would look like to follow the Psalter laid out by Benedict in his monastic Rule. If you were to follow his one-week Psalter, you'd end up praying through 40 psalms a day (19 of which are before 7am!).

This seems overwhelming to us, but Benedict reminds us that "our holy ancestors, energetic as they were, did all this in a single day. Let us hope that we, lukewarm as we are, can achieve it in a single week." Benedict's droll humor is amusing as always, but here it has a sting: the Psalter in a week? We must be tepid in the extreme: since Vatican II, devout monks and Catholics have prayed through a Four Week Psalter; and as Protestants we're lucky if we've read the Psalms in their entirety, ever.

I can't help but think that we're missing out on something deeply important here. Never having done more than the Four Week Psalter myself, it's hard to say exactly what that is, but I think Kathleen Norris points the way in her book, The Cloister Walk.

She points out that the Psalms are deeply human, while being at the same time divinely inspired. They give words to our most common experiences: joy, love, fear, doubt, loneliness, shame and hope. They assure us that God does not stand apart, uncomprehending, while we swing through the range of emotions. Rather, He is with us in our daily experience. As we become familiar with the Psalms, as they become the vocabulary by which we understand our own emotional and spiritual lives, we remember that while we are experiencing deeply human reactions, God is unflinchingly present. And this brings its own kind of hope.

Sometimes we feel that we can only end our meditations with the conviction that darkness is our only companion. That psalm always befuddled me, because it didn't transpose back into a major key at the end; it didn't resolve with faith. But sometimes that's all we can muster—an acknowledgment that we are emotionally bankrupt and cannot even lift our eyes. If left to our own devices we would surely believe that all is lost, that our doubt and fear and trembling has at last driven God away in disgust and anger. But, no: God is still there; He has seen it; He has made this experience Holy Writ. The Psalms are our guarantee in this. They recast our lives within the limits of God's Providence.

This is, to me, reason enough to desire to get the Psalms into my head and into my heart. Hopefully, lukewarm as I am, I can still manage to follow the Four-Week Psalter; but I do still envy those who can pray the Psalter in a week. Not because they are more holy—but because their eyes must see so much more clearly!