In the last post in this series on praying the psalms with St Benedict, I suggested that the key focus of St Benedict in his Office as in the Rule, is the period of preparation for Easter: the monk 's life is essentially a perpetual Lent.
Rather than assuming we already incapable of sin, and can immediately imitate the angels, as some contemporary schools of monastic thought proposed, St Benedict emphasised the process of our gradual transformation through grace.
And he presents, I think, the psalms as a means to that end.
The psalms as a means to spiritual progress
One of the most intriguing Patristic discussions on the use of the psalms as a means of spiritual progress comes in St Basil the Great's brother, St Gregory of Nyssa's treatise on the psalm titles, or inscriptions. [1]
St Gregory argues that mankind was once truly part of the angelic chorus ever praising God, but through the Fall, was expelled from it. But we can be lead by the psalms, to progress in the spiritual life through five stages, that open ourselves to resonate to the music of the universe, and can thus rejoin to the heavenly choir, and thus defeat evil and gain the blessings promised to us by God:
St Benedict claims his Rule is one for beginners, sinners motivated at first by fear of hell, who need time to cultivate good habits, and hopefully eventually arrive at that happy where all is done for love of God. [3]
Each day in the Benedictine Office, for example, we are reminded of that period of preparation for entering the Promised Land, and invited to apply that typology to ourselves and our community in the forty psalms said each day, and in the verses of the invitatory Psalm 94.
Rather than assuming we already incapable of sin, and can immediately imitate the angels, as some contemporary schools of monastic thought proposed, St Benedict emphasised the process of our gradual transformation through grace.
And he presents, I think, the psalms as a means to that end.
The psalms as a means to spiritual progress
One of the most intriguing Patristic discussions on the use of the psalms as a means of spiritual progress comes in St Basil the Great's brother, St Gregory of Nyssa's treatise on the psalm titles, or inscriptions. [1]
St Gregory argues that mankind was once truly part of the angelic chorus ever praising God, but through the Fall, was expelled from it. But we can be lead by the psalms, to progress in the spiritual life through five stages, that open ourselves to resonate to the music of the universe, and can thus rejoin to the heavenly choir, and thus defeat evil and gain the blessings promised to us by God:
The divine book of the psalms wonderfully shows us the way [to blessedness] by a systematic, natural order presenting the various means for man to attain blessedness both by a simplicity which is evident and a teaching which is plain...The psalms' sublime teaching points out to us a way to blessedness which constantly leads persons progressing in the exalted life of virtue until they attain that measure of blessedness where the mind subjects transcendental reality neither to circumstantial evidence nor to opinions...
The first words of the [first] psalm are a gate or entrance into blessedness and open up to us the destruction of evil...When all creation above and below will join to form one dance, the pleasant sound from our symphony will complete what has been sundered, for sin now divides the spiritual creation which resembles a cymbal. When our humanity will be united to the angels and when the divine battle-order lifts it out of the present turmoil, it will sing a victorious song of triumph at the bloody defeat of the enemy. [2]A beginners rule
St Benedict claims his Rule is one for beginners, sinners motivated at first by fear of hell, who need time to cultivate good habits, and hopefully eventually arrive at that happy where all is done for love of God. [3]
Each day in the Benedictine Office, for example, we are reminded of that period of preparation for entering the Promised Land, and invited to apply that typology to ourselves and our community in the forty psalms said each day, and in the verses of the invitatory Psalm 94.
But perhaps the most important way, I want to suggest, that St Benedict teaches us how to 'progress in the monastic life and in faith' (Prologue to the Rule) is, I think the programmatic aspects of the weekly psalm cycle.
And it is this that will be the focus of the second part of this series.
And it is this that will be the focus of the second part of this series.
Notes
[1] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Inscriptions on the Psalms, Casimir McCanbley (trans), Hellenic College Press trans, 1995.
[2] ibid, Part I, 3, 12.
[3] See especially the Prologue, RB 4, RB 7, RB 73.
[1] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Inscriptions on the Psalms, Casimir McCanbley (trans), Hellenic College Press trans, 1995.
[2] ibid, Part I, 3, 12.
[3] See especially the Prologue, RB 4, RB 7, RB 73.
