+PRAYING THE PSALMS WITH CHRIST AS HEAD AND BODY 16 June‘24
Since we are praying the psalms all through the day, I thought to continue with a few more reflections from Fr Frank Matera’s book Praying the Psalms in the Voice of Christ. Let me repeat his quote from St Augustine whom he draws from frequently, “when the Body of the Son [the Church] prays it does not separate its head from itself. The one sole Savior of the Body is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who prays for us, prays in us, and is prayed to by us.”
As we stand in choir reciting or singing the psalms, we are to have a growing awareness that we are really praying as Christ’s Body, that our prayer is one with His so that it becomes fully alive. There is a lot being said and written about Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, especially as we prepare for the up-coming Eucharistic Congress to be held this July 17-21st in Indianapolis, IN. It is a call to be mindful of His presence in all his Body, especially in the least and most burdened of his members. Our prayer in Choir each day is a wonderful opportunity to be one with all of Christ’s members. It allows us to take part in the transformation so necessary on all levels of our society, allowing the Holy Spirit to penetrate the whole human family.
As Fr Matera points out: “The early Church interpreted the psalms in several ways: as a word spoken by Christ, as a word about Christ, as a word to Christ, as a word about the Church, as a word spoken by the church.” He doesn’t deny for a moment that “this Christological reading of the psalms is different from the way contemporary exegesis interprets them in the light of their historical situation.” Their “Sitz im Leben” can be helpful in understanding the psalms in terms of their historical setting in Israel’s life. Their historical setting however, is not very helpful when it comes to praying them in a liturgical setting. When we pray the psalms as the voice of Christ, we pray them with the crucified and risen Lord, as head of his Body, the Church. Here we enter into the very prayer of the Church in every part of our world today. Or as Matera says:
“In these psalms we hear the voice of the suffering Christ and of his Body. Accordingly, although they may not apply to the situation of every individual, they allow believers to enter the experience of the suffering Christ and the members of his Body who suffer today.”
There are many reasons for praying the psalms in the voice of Christ:
“Jesus prayed and made them his own. They expressed the joys and hopes, the sufferings and complaints of his people, Israel, as well as his own experience of God’s presence and absence. They proclaimed his deep and abiding trust in God, his rock, his refuge, and his strength. Because Jesus prayed the psalms, we pray them in his voice and learn to pray as he prayed.”
It seems to me that most of our monastic life is dedicated to exploring the depths of our hearts, allowing us to experience all that goes on deep down within our human reality. Christ enables us to not be afraid of going there, letting the joys, the frustrations, the hopes, the fears, the questioning to come to the surface. Bringing all our own experience, and that of the whole human family before our living and loving God, facilitates a sanctification that we will only come to know and understand in the life to come. Praying with Christ in Choir is to enter, however obscurely at times, into our eternal dwelling place. When we allow Jesus to pray the psalms in us, then, he prays for and in the name of his whole human family; he prays as its embodiment.
Another reason we pray the psalms in the voice of Christ is that “the risen Lord prays and intercedes for his Body, the Church (Romans 8:34 and Hebrews 7:25). ..To pray in the word of Christ is to pray in a way pleasing to the Father.”
Because of the Incarnation, Christ has entered into every aspect of our human condition and there is nothing in the psalms that Christ cannot speak, not even a words of guilt for sin. For example Matera tells us that:
“although the speaker of Psalm 50 confesses his guilt and need for forgiveness, we hear the voice of Christ in this psalm because the sinless Christ has taken on our sinful condition so that we can share in his divine sonship (2 Cor. 5:21) Christ the head is speaking in the voice of the Body.”
Praying the psalms every day, praying them seven times a day is calling us to enter ever more into Christ’s very own consciousness. His giving himself to us in the Eucharist is above all, it seems to me, an invitation to share in his own life, in his very own consciousness, to open ourselves to the divine presence that permeates all of creation and every human heart. Just so the Psalms also are to call forth all that is authentic, all that is life-giving. They are to fill us with God’s very own perception of our world and of all that lives in it. What an opportunity it is as we stand in choir, to grow into this divine likeness that seeks to renew the face of the earth!