Day 333: The Psalms (2590-2597)

• It’s Day 333!!

• THE PSALMS, THE PRAYER OF THE ASSEMBLY

• We will also review what we read yesterday about The Psalms

• Let’s pray!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we ask you to please receive our thanks, receive our praise. Lord God, the Psalms, the Psalter, is your gift to us so that we can praise you the way you deserve. These prayers are your gift to us so that our hearts have a way of expressing the truth in the depths of our hearts, but also reaching the truth and the heights that is you, that is what is true about you and who you are. So we thank you and we ask you to please help us not only pray, and when we are praying extemporaneously, Lord God, help us to pray well. We don’t know how to pray as we ought. But also when we pray the Psalms, Lord God, help us to pray the Psalms not in an empty way, not in a hollow way, but help us to pray the Psalms in a way that is alive and dynamic. Where your Words change our hearts as often as we read them, as often as we utter them or sing them. Let your Words change our hearts. Let your Words become our words. Let your heart become our heart. We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen”

• So there we have it!!

• Let’s go back as we said…

• Paragraph 2585 says, “From the time of David to the coming of the Messiah texts appearing in these sacred books show a deepening in prayer for oneself and in prayer for others. Thus the psalms were gradually collected into the five books of the Psalter (or ‘Praises’), the masterwork of prayer in the Old Testament.”

• Remember how important praise is in our relationship with the Lord

• Remember Judah?

• What does Judah mean?

• Judah means PRAISE

• Let Judah go up first

• Let PRAISE go up first

• There are many Psalms of praise

• It is an incredible way to start one’s day or any time during the day to give God praise

• And we can do that through the Psalms

• Paragraph 2586 says, “The Psalms both nourished and expressed the prayer of the People of God gathered during the great feasts at Jerusalem and each Sabbath in the synagogues. Their prayer is inseparably personal and communal; it concerns both those who are praying and all men. The Psalms arose from the communities of the Holy Land and the Diaspora, but embrace all creation. Their prayer recalls the saving events of the past, yet extends into the future, even to the end of history; it commemorates the promises God has already kept, and awaits the Messiah who will fulfill them definitively. Prayed by Christ and fulfilled in him, the Psalms remain essential to the prayer of the Church.”

• The Psalms teach us how to pray and also become our prayer

• They become the thing that expresses the depths of our heart

• The Psalms remind us of God’s goodness and faithfulness

• Almost every other Psalm says, “Remember, God this is what you have done…”

• Almost every Psalm reminds the people, “This is what God has done…”

• The Psalms remind us, “The God who was faithful in the past is faithful now, and will be faithful in the future…”

• This is not one of those situations where we say the Old Testament is dead or no longer of use to us

• The Old Testament is STILL the Word of God

• We pray the Psalms because they remain the Word of God

• Even though Jesus Christ prayed them and fulfilled them, they remain an ever PRESENT and ever POWERFUL way to pray

• Paragraph 2587 says, “The Psalter is the book in which The Word of God becomes man’s prayer. In other books of the Old Testament, ‘the words proclaim [God’s] works and bring to light the mystery they contain.’ The words of the Psalmist, sung for God, both express and acclaim the Lord’s saving works; the same Spirit inspires both God’s work and man’s response. Christ will untie the two. In him, the psalms continue to teach us how to pray.”

• Let’s listen to Fr. Mike talk about the Liturgy of the Hours and his vow to pray them every day…

• Fr. Mike went through the motions with the Liturgy of the Hours

• The more and more he prayed the Psalms, the more and more they became his prayer

• Every word Fr. Mike tried on his own wasn’t enough

• Those words were not capturing what he was going through

• Then, from memory, he started praying the words of one of the Psalms 

• It kept flowing

• He was talking to God in the Words of God

• That Psalm captured the depths of his heart more than he could 

• Sometimes belief affects behavior and sometimes behavior affects belief

• “God, come to my assistance. I do not know how to pray as I ought.”

• “Holy Spirit, come and teach me how to pray. I do not know how to pray as I ought.”

• The Psalms are great because they are not just certain kinds of prayers

• Paragraph 2588 says, “The Psalter’s many forms of prayer take shape both in the liturgy of the Temple and in the human heart. Whether hymns or prayers of lamentation or thanksgiving, whether individual or communal, whether royal chants, songs of pilgrimage or wisdom-meditations, the Psalms are a mirror of God’s marvelous deeds in the history of his people, as well as reflections of the human experiences of hte Psalmist. Though a given psalm may reflect an event of the past, it still possesses such direct simplicity that it can be prayed in truth by men of all times and conditions.”

• All these different kinds of prayers can meet us in any given season of our life

• Paragraph 2589 says, “Certain constant characteristics appear throughout the Psalms: simplicity and spontaneity of prayer; the desire for God himself through and with all that is good in his creation; the distraught situation of the believer who, in his preferential love for hte Lord, is exposed to a host of enemies and temptations, but who waits upon what the faithful God will do, in the certitude of his love and in submission to his will. The prayer of the psalms is always sustained by praise; that is why the title of this collection as handed down to us is so fitting: ‘The Praises.’ Collected for the assembly’s worship, the Psalter both sounds the call to prayer and sings the response to that call: Hallelu-Yah! (‘Alleluia’), ‘Praise the Lord!’ What is more pleasing than a psalm? David expresses it well: ‘Praise the Lord, for a psalm is good: let there be praise for our God with gladness adn grace!’ Yes, a psalm is a blessing on the lips of the people, praise of God, the assembly’s homage, a general acclamation, a word that speaks for all, the voice of the Church, a confession of faith in song.”

• Let’s listen to Fr. Mike recap this paragraph…

• Humility and trust are the takeaways

• Sometimes God leads us to blessings, sometimes to places of hardship, sometimes to places of rejection, sometimes to have all these enemies and temptations because we have chosen God

• AND YET…

• God continues to be faithful

• God will do something in the life of the person who waits upon the certitude of his love and his submission to God’s will

• This is the heart that goes through almost all of the Psalms

• This is the heart that is meant to go through our prayer as well

• This trust and humility

• “I know, God. Yes, I may have been led to this place of distress, this place of trial, this place of challenge, but I know the God who led me to this moment will lead me through this moment.”

• This is true for all of us

• We need to hold on to this in our prayer

• This constant characteristic of simplicity, humility, trust, and confidence that even in the darkest of days, God is still with us

• This is expressed in all the Psalms which is why it is so good to pray the Psalms

• Fr. Mike is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT…