PRAYING THE PSALMS

Arsenios · Aug 5, 2017

For the Eastern Orthodox Faith, the Psalter is prayed through once a week, sometimes a little more, at least in the Monasteries... For the rest of us who do daily Services, some Psalms are prayed every day for the specific Services for which they are prescribed...

Most notable for me is Psalm 51, [Ps 50 LXX] prayed every day...

The effect of its being prayed each and every day is a cumulative wearing down and erosion of a lot of spiritual detrius... A lightening of the soul...

And if it is memorized, it is always there for anyone to pray, day or night, in traffic or in Church...

Anyone else tap this vast resource [the Psalter] for daily prayers?

Arsenios

Constantine the Sinner · Aug 5, 2017

Yes, I try to fulfill the monastic prescription each day. It works spiritual wonders

RC1970 · Aug 5, 2017

Arsenios said:
For the Eastern Orthodox Faith, the Psalter is prayed through once a week, sometimes a little more, at least in the Monasteries... For the rest of us who do daily Services, some Psalms are prayed every day for the specific Services for which they are prescribed...

Most notable for me is Psalm 51, [Ps 50 LXX] prayed every day...

The effect of its being prayed each and every day is a cumulative wearing down and erosion of a lot of spiritual detrius... A lightening of the soul...

And if it is memorized, it is always there for anyone to pray, day or night, in traffic or in Church...

Anyone else tap this vast resource [the Psalter] for daily prayers?

Arsenios

Yes, Psalm 51 is excellent. I also like Psalms 16, 19, 27, 46, 65, 86 and 136.

Psalm 46 was one of Luther's favorites.

AMM · Aug 5, 2017

I often carry a Psalter around with me to fill my spare time with something edifying.

I recently purchased a gregorian Lutheran breviary which has a 1-week schedule to go along with the daily offices. I have yet to successfully pray 7 times in a day every day for a week, but I've loved that each office includes at least one psalm (if long), often several shorter psalms. It's great for my spiritual life.

AMM · Aug 5, 2017

Psalm 51 is phenomenal (I apologize, I don't know all the LXX/MT numeric differences so I'm going to use MT for familiarity), but I also really love 32, 69, 70, 95, 121, 130, 131.

Arsenios · Aug 5, 2017

Constantine the Sinner said:
Yes, I try to fulfill the monastic prescription each day.
It works spiritual wonders

I am getting older these days, and less and less able to work, and I have been looking at that regimen of prayer - Do you use the HTM translation? Or are you one of those "most despised guys" on my list who can actually pray the Psalter in Greek?

So how do you work the kathismas in to your prayers? Do you pray them as a part of the Small Compline prayers? And if you have been doing so, in the main, for say a year, have you been finding it easier and easier to actually pray the Psalms, rather than just read them? And do you pray them aloud?

Are you preparing to become a monastic?

Please forgive me and disregard all my questions that do not appeal to you -

It is just that you are the first person outside a monastery I have encountered to actually be taking on this podvig... And the monks generally listen to it being read...

So I suffer from an exuberance of curiosity fed by a proximal and decrepitational future...

Say THAT 10 times fast!

Thank-you...

Arsenios

Arsenios · Aug 5, 2017

Lutheran Monk said:
I often carry a Psalter around with me to fill my spare time with something edifying.

I recently purchased a gregorian Lutheran breviary which has a 1-week schedule to go along with the daily offices. I have yet to successfully pray 7 times in a day every day for a week, but I've loved that each office includes at least one psalm (if long), often several shorter psalms. It's great for my spiritual life.

Sounds like you have run into some Eastern Orthodoxy in your monastic walk...
Your sig line's Greek version of the Jesus Prayer kinda lights things up there!

Do you read the Psalter in your spare time for edification?
Or do you actually pray it?
I heard a Romanian Bishop once chastize a British journalist..
The journalist wanted to discuss some lines of some Church prayers...
The Bishop said: "NEVER theologize your Prayers!"
It was such a great rebuke that the journalist kept it in the article he was doing, I think for National Geographic - A television article...

Arsenios

Constantine the Sinner · Aug 5, 2017

Arsenios said:
I am getting older these days, and less and less able to work, and I have been looking at that regimen of prayer - Do you use the HTM translation? Or are you one of those "most despised guys" on my list who can actually pray the Psalter in Greek?

So how do you work the kathismas in to your prayers? Do you pray them as a part of the Small Compline prayers? And if you have been doing so, in the main, for say a year, have you been finding it easier and easier to actually pray the Psalms, rather than just read them? And do you pray them aloud?

Are you preparing to become a monastic?

Please forgive me and disregard all my questions that do not appeal to you -

It is just that you are the first person outside a monastery I have encountered to actually be taking on this podvig... And the monks generally listen to it being read...

So I suffer from an exuberance of curiosity fed by a proximal and decrepitational future...

Say THAT 10 times fast!

Thank-you...

Arsenios

Yes, I use the HTM. I don't say them with compline generally; I read the first kathisma (yes, aloud) after my morning Scripture reading, which follows my morning prayers; I work in the other two later, and I find praying as opposed to just reading comes more naturally with some than others. And it is the morning prayers I find hardest since you're to say them immediately upon waking, meaning before coffee. I use the morning prayers found in the Jordanville prayer book.

I am indeed planning to enter the moastic life

Arsenios · Aug 5, 2017

Lutheran Monk said:
Psalm 51 is phenomenal (I apologize, I don't know all the LXX/MT numeric differences so I'm going to use MT for familiarity), but I also really love 32, 69, 70, 95, 121, 130, 131.

There are so many translations around that it is hard to pick one from which to commit Psalms to memory... Holy Transfiguration Monastery's "The Psalter: According to the Seventy" is I think the very best of the best...

It gives the prescribed rules for the reading of the Psalter according to the Liturgical Calendar of the Church...

Are you living in a monastery?

Arsenios

Arsenios · Aug 5, 2017

Constantine the Sinner said:
Yes, I use the HTM. I don't say them with compline generally; I read the first kathisma (yes, aloud) after my morning Scripture reading, which follows my morning prayers; I work in the other two later, and I find praying as opposed to just reading comes more naturally with some than others. And it is the morning prayers I find hardest since you're to say them immediately upon waking, meaning before coffee. I use the morning prayers found in the Jordanville prayer book.

I am indeed planning to enter the moastic life

May God Bless your walk, my Brother...

I know that praying Ps 50 comes very easily for me now, of course, but also the 6 Psalms of Orthros...
Regular reading is so much more beneficial than merely an occassional read that cannot even grasp the rhythm and flow of the prayer...

Do you do much with the Midnight Office and Ps 118, the Kathisma of one Psalm?

I did it for awhile - I still love doing it...

Arsenios

Arsenios · Aug 5, 2017

RC1970 said:
Yes, Psalm 51 is excellent. I also like Psalms 16, 19, 27, 46, 65, 86 and 136.

Psalm 46 was one of Luther's favorites.

Do you have a particular translation you like?
Are you memorizing some of them?

Ps. 46 - Be still and know that I AM God...

Do you have a regular rule of reading them?

Arsenios

~Anastasia~ · Aug 5, 2017

You make my spirit long ...

I pray the Psalter as a discipline sometimes, but my discipline has been severely curtailed in some ways at some times over the past year. My health is improving, so I hope I can get back to greater intensity, but the things of life will require a lot of intensity to "catch up" as well. It's been a hard year. All in God's time I suppose. I'm thankful to have time.

But yes, I pray the Psalter sometimes. My eyes are not the best, so I usually use what I can have illuminated to pray from, which means my iPad generally. I have a Psalter in there.

It seems psalms are more easily prayed if they come during prayers, not a time set aside only for them and just jumping in. When the words match what is in the spirit it is more alive. I suppose things vary from person to person for various reasons, but I tend to think that having the reading be active prayer is something of a grace extended by God, something to seek, and be grateful for when it comes. I mean that I'm not so sure it's our much-practice that matters. Though practice/discipline of course helps focus and to repel distractions. But God can bestow it at times when we have not earned it by any effort of our own, is what I mean.

We don't often speak about the mechanics of prayer, do we?

Arsenios · Aug 5, 2017

~Anastasia~ said:
You make my spirit long ...

I pray the Psalter as a discipline sometimes, but my discipline has been severely curtailed in some ways at some times over the past year. My health is improving, so I hope I can get back to greater intensity, but the things of life will require a lot of intensity to "catch up" as well. It's been a hard year. All in God's time I suppose. I'm thankful to have time.

There is actually a CD of the Psalter - 3CDs fpr the whole 150 Psalms...
Done by a monk - I have it but it started acting up, maybe from too much heat in the car...
But for a long drive cross country, it is wonderful... I have found, however, that reading aloud makes more of a prayer than does praying along with a recitation on the CD... Might just be me...

It seems psalms are more easily prayed if they come during prayers, not a time set aside only for them and just jumping in. When the words match what is in the spirit it is more alive.

That is the monastic praxis... The rest of us schlubnikoffs have to fit things together as best we can and have time...

I suppose things vary from person to person for various reasons, but I tend to think that having the reading be active prayer is something of a grace extended by God, something to seek, and be grateful for when it comes.

I listened to Mother Ephraxia pray the Symbol of the Faith [the Nicene Creed] once at a baptism of an infant - In Greek which I did not understand - And I felt myself being lifted up... I was a little disconcerted, and was ready to dismiss it as a fluke when she then prayer the Pater Ymon - Our Father - And it happened again... That was when I came to understand that everything, even the Nicene Creed, is a prayer in the hands of the right person...

I mean that I'm not so sure it's our much-practice that matters. Though practice/discipline of course helps focus and to repel distractions. But God can bestow it at times when we have not earned it by any effort of our own, is what I mean.

No question about that - Yet the monks pray the Psalter weekly, and as it becomes more familiar it CAN become more of a prayer than a reading or a recitation... And I am not sure that from the outside one can tell the difference... Russians intone their readings in their peculiar fashion such that it is so predictable that people hearing it can perhaps pray it more easily?

I tend to understand prayer more as talking with God, so that when I get familiar enough with a Psalm I can speak it as if I AM talking to God, and that is what I mean by prayer... I would be interested in hearing from others who have a different approach...

We don't often speak about the mechanics of prayer, do we?

Hardly ever...

I'm putting you on my prayer list for awhile, ok?
I am not alone in this...

Arsenios

~Anastasia~ · Aug 5, 2017

Arsenios said:
There is actually a CD of the Psalter - 3CDs fpr the whole 150 Psalms...
Done by a monk - I have it but it started acting up, maybe from too much heat in the car...
But for a long drive cross country, it is wonderful... I have found, however, that reading aloud makes more of a prayer than does praying along with a recitation on the CD... Might just be me...

That is the monastic praxis... The rest of us schlubnikoffs have to fit things together as best we can and have time...

I listened to Mother Ephraxia pray the Symbol of the Faith [the Nicene Creed] once at a baptism of an infant - In Greek which I did not understand - And I felt myself being lifted up... I was a little disconcerted, and was ready to dismiss it as a fluke when she then prayer the Pater Ymon - Our Father - And it happened again... That was when I came to understand that everything, even the Nicene Creed, is a prayer in the hands of the right person...

No question about that - Yet the monks pray the Psalter weekly, and as it becomes more familiar it CAN become more of a prayer than a reading or a recitation... And I am not sure that from the outside one can tell the difference... Russians intone their readings in their peculiar fashion such that it is so predictable that people hearing it can perhaps pray it more easily?

I tend to understand prayer more as talking with God, so that when I get familiar enough with a Psalm I can speak it as if I AM talking to God, and that is what I mean by prayer... I would be interested in hearing from others who have a different approach...

Hardly ever...

I'm putting you on my prayer list for awhile, ok?
I am not alone in this...

Arsenios

I always appreciate prayers.

I for one have never been able to pray with a CD, or a podcast prayer, for example. I can be inspired to listen to them, but I have been unable to truly pray with a recording, even if it is a prayer I know well and pray often.

For me, familiarity is neither a benefit nor a hindrance, necessarily. It can be. I do appreciate praying those prayers I know from memory when I cannot read, but I can also easily cobble together parts from various prayers to express what I want to say. It is not the rule if course, but it works well. I like the language used in the prayers of the Church. It keeps everything expansive, and reminds me of such things as the majesty of God, of His great mercy, or a hundred other things, using those words, even if I use them to pray my own thoughts.

On the other hand, it is possible for the Trisagion, for example, or anything else to become a simple recitation. We have to guard against that, when we might not really want to cooperate in prayer. I get asked this often, by Protestants, and sometime I get accused or they don't think formal prayers can be anything except a recitation.

I agree that the Creed, the Psalms, anything like this can be a prayer.

(And I'm not presuming to lecture you - you probably know all this far better than I. Just adding my little thoughts on the subject.)

AMM · Aug 5, 2017

Arsenios said:
Sounds like you have run into some Eastern Orthodoxy in your monastic walk...
Your sig line's Greek version of the Jesus Prayer kinda lights things up there!

Do you read the Psalter in your spare time for edification?
Or do you actually pray it?
I heard a Romanian Bishop once chastize a British journalist..
The journalist wanted to discuss some lines of some Church prayers...
The Bishop said: "NEVER theologize your Prayers!"
It was such a great rebuke that the journalist kept it in the article he was doing, I think for National Geographic - A television article...

Arsenios

I certainly have run into Orthodoxy quite a bit. I'm a potential catechumen/convert; still need to work some things out and meet with a priest as well as my Lutheran pastor, but it's a likely possibility that I'll be converting soon. Needless to say, I love much of what I have encountered in my reading of Orthodoxy.

I do both praying and "just" reading the psalter. More often than not, it starts off as an actual prayer, and then partway through I realize I have just been mindlessly reading the words without either praying or learning... Ah, sin!

I'm not sure I fully understand the Bishop's point; I've read this a couple times now and I'm starting to "get it" I think, but not sure...

Arsenios said:
There are so many translations around that it is hard to pick one from which to commit Psalms to memory... Holy Transfiguration Monastery's "The Psalter: According to the Seventy" is I think the very best of the best...

It gives the prescribed rules for the reading of the Psalter according to the Liturgical Calendar of the Church...

Are you living in a monastery?

Arsenios

Indeed, picking a translation is extraordinarily hard. Currently I use a mix of KJV and ESV. I have heard great things about the HTM translation, however, and should pick up a copy, especially considering my potential conversion, so I would be using the same translation as my jurisdiction (presumably).

The rule in my breviary is based on St. Benedict's rule, which is somewhat flexible, as I understand it, in which psalms are assigned when. Would the rule in HTM's Psalter be St. Basil's? (Is there a prescribed psalm arrangement in his rule? I've not gotten a chance to read it, but I'm correct in believing it's the foundation for eastern monasticism, correct?)

I do not live in a monastery; I'm more of a half-Benedictine oblate than anything else. Unfortunately, monasticism is frowned upon in the practice of the lutheran church (though doctrinally this is often an incorrect attitude); I know a couple people who are also following a small monastic rule and we have a long-term hope of creating a (confessional) lutheran american monastery. (Of course, that's assuming I don't convert first!)

Arsenios · Aug 5, 2017

What a wonderful thread so far!

Monastic wannabe's have a wonderful genuineness about them...

As do all the monks I know...

I just want to say thank-you...

Services tomorrow AM...

God bless you all!

Good-night.

Arsenios

Arsenios · Aug 7, 2017

I have been thinking about the difference between praying and reciting and reading silently the Psalms... And I must say that all these are the praying of them... I remember one elder saying to a young man who had been complaining that he did his prayers without any compunction or even any connection to their words, even though he faithfully "did his prayer rule" every morning and every night... The elder replied to him: "I thank God that the demons understand the words!"

So perhaps we mis-speak if we regard 'mere' recitation of a Psalm as not being a prayer... I mean, discipleship means discipline, and a discipline of prayer is not the inspiration of prayer, but instead lays or builds or keeps clean or adds to or helps preserve a foundation in our souls... So that we pray even when, and perhaps even especially when, we don't feel like praying at all, and the words of prayer come off our tongues like wooden coins... And we do not feel as if we are praying at all...

And yet we doggedly soldier through, reminding ourselves that we are not worthy of exaltation in prayer, and that we should thank God that we can pray at all, and that our infirmities are ours to bear, and that God will remove them, or not remove them, at His good pleasure... And in the meantime, we keep ranks with the prayers so lovingly handed down to us by the Saints whom God has Glorified...

At 73, I can report to you that it is a worthwhile quest!

Arsenios

Sojourner1 · Aug 7, 2017

I just purchased a book called "The Divine Hours" by Phyllis Tickle. It is a compilation of prayers from The Book of Common Prayer, the writings of the Church Fathers, Morning Psalms, and Scripture readings (from the New Jerusalem Bible). I am very new to praying the four sets of offices (not something I learned growing up as an evangelical protestant!). This is a new part of my disciplines and it's a bit of an adjustment. I'm was doing a morning devotional (like the Daily Bread devotional) for so many years...and I needed something more, something deeper. I am enjoying this new discipline so far!

Arsenios · Aug 7, 2017

Sojourner1 said:
I just purchased a book called "The Divine Hours" by Phyllis Tickle. It is a compilation of prayers from The Book of Common Prayer, the writings of the Church Fathers, Morning Psalms, and Scripture readings (from the New Jerusalem Bible). I am very new to praying the four sets of offices (not something I learned growing up as an evangelical protestant!). This is a new part of my disciplines and it's a bit of an adjustment. I'm was doing a morning devotional (like the Daily Bread devotional) for so many years...and I needed something more, something deeper. I am enjoying this new discipline so far!

The full daily cycle of Services begins with one's
Morning Prayers, followed by one's
Rule of Prayer, then
Orthros [Matins] then
First Hour
Third Hour
Sixth Hour
9th Hour
Vespers
Small Compline
Midnight Office

So it is a lot...

I am lucky enough to have a Priest who does Matins and Vespers daily
Into which I add my morning and evening rule, as a substitute for morning prayers and small compline...

So for a local Parish, we are very blessed...
Most local Communities do NOT do even these daily services...

But we take on as much as we can with our regular work in the world...
Some do more, some less... But they are all there for us, should we find time...

Basic premise: Better to pray than not to pray...
Corollary: Do as much as you can...
Corollary: Always do SOMETHING...

Even if it is only a little bit - A "Lord have Mercy..."
Never be shy about talking to God...
Unless you are around people!

Arsenios

Arsenios · Aug 8, 2017

One of the things that many Protestants find problematic is the repetitive nature of praying, where we pray a large number of Psalms daily, and the whole Psalter weekly in addition to those prayed in the daily services... Each Service of the Hours recites 3 different Psalms making 12, then the 6 Psalms of Orthros plus Ps 50, then the Midnight Office with Ps 50 and a Kathisma (Ps 118 normally) and a Kathisma is the equivalent of about 6 average size Psalms - 20 Kathismas comprise the whole Psalter... So we are up to 26 Psalms a day and we haven't included Vespers yet... This for the services, plus 3 Kathismas each day for the Psalter itself, eg another 18 Psalms + or -...

A person almost must have to be a prisoner in a cell to have enough time to get through them all -

And their issue seems centered around a Bible verse about "vain repetitions" in markets and street corners... Yet the Church that gave us this Scripture has prescribed this practice from the beginnings, and how to present this prescription has been a concern of mine for some time now...

Of interest is the daily reading of Psalm 50 [51 of the Jewish text] - One man asked me why that should be such an everyday Psalm, and when Small Compline is added, more than once a day? I tried to answer him that one cannot pray this Psalm too many times, and that every time it is prayed or chanted or intoned or read aloud or silently, it helps the one involved to progress toward maturity in the Faith... I fear that this answer was not heard very well - He seemed to prefer to STUDY the Psalm, rather than to pray its holy words... And having studied it, to regard it as sort of "in the bag" mentally...

And this studying of the Psalms, rather than the regular praying of them, seems to be the Protestant way of approach to matters of piety... And while it makes classroom sense, and especially to do well on an exam, it seems to me counter to what I have found in their reading - eg That the same words read many many times are always able to open to meaning deeper than the ones I have found in them up to the point of the next encounter with them...

eg Holy Writ yields less to study than it does to repetition in prayer, and especially to prayer in the prescribed Services of the Church that gave it to us... And how to convey the value of this discipline of prayer in the life of the faithful has been a challenge to me personally when conversing with Protestant protagonists...

Has anyone had any success?

Arsenios

PRAYING THE PSALMS

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