Psalms

The Psalter is the prayer book of Israel and the daily breviary of the Church. One hundred and fifty inspired songs span every register of the human heart before God — adoration, thanksgiving, repentance, complaint, supplication, and triumphant praise. Saint Athanasius said of the Psalms what no other book in Scripture can claim: “Whereas in the other books of Scripture one hears the words of God to man, in the Psalms one hears the words of man speaking to God.”

Catholic tradition associates seventy-three of the psalms with David, with others ascribed to Asaph, the sons of Korah, Solomon, Moses, and anonymous psalmists. The composition spans from David's tenth-century court to the post-exilic period; the Psalter as we have it was likely assembled in five “books” (Pss. 1–41, 42–72, 73–89, 90–106, 107–150) by the time of the second Temple. The Catholic numbering follows the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate (the numbering used in the Liturgy of the Hours and most Catholic Bibles) and differs slightly from the Hebrew/Protestant numbering for Psalms 9–148.

Thematically, the Psalms unfold the whole drama of salvation history. They sing of the covenant (Ps. 88), the Davidic king (Ps. 2, 109), the Temple (Ps. 121), and the law (Ps. 1, 118). The royal psalms and messianic psalms — Psalms 2, 21, 44, 71, 109, 117, and others — were read by the apostles as direct prophecies of Christ. “The Lord said to my Lord, sit thou at my right hand” (Ps. 109:1) is quoted by Christ himself (Matt. 22:44) and is the most-cited Old Testament verse in the New Testament.

The Psalter also embraces the full range of human suffering. Psalm 21 — “O God my God, look upon me; why hast thou forsaken me?” — is the prayer Christ takes upon his lips on the cross. Psalm 50, the great Miserere, has been the Church's prayer of repentance since the earliest centuries. The lament psalms teach us that prayer is not pretending; we may bring grief, anger, and bewilderment to God in their full force, and find that he listens.

In Catholic life, the Psalms are everywhere. The Liturgy of the Hours has the Church praying through the entire Psalter every four weeks; the Psalm Responsorial follows the first reading at every Mass; the Psalms are woven into the Rosary, the Office of the Dead, and every traditional devotion. The Catechism teaches that “the Psalter is the book in which the Word of God becomes man's prayer” (CCC 2587). To learn to pray as a Catholic is, in large measure, to learn to pray with the Psalms.