Liturgical uses of the psalms

In another forum someone raised the potential usefulness of a database of liturgical uses of the psalms, focusing on the way they are used in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

I actually have compiled all that information, so thought I'd start updating my posts on the psalms to include it for those interested.

Why is the use of the psalms in Mass propers of interest?

One of the key contributions of Dom Prosper Gueranger's (1805-1875) magisterial work, The Liturgical Year, - though one largely ignored by modern exegetes - was his extended commentary on the linkages between the Mass propers  (mostly psalm verses) for particular Sundays and seasons, and the readings they accompany.

In particular, Gueranger's commentary makes  it clear, I think, that the liturgy can be a source of instruction for us on how the Church has traditionally interpreted particular psalms, or verses thereof.

As such, consideration of the liturgical uses of the psalm can often be a useful supplement to other sources for the traditional interpretations of psalms such as their Scriptural uses (particularly in the New Testament), the commentaries of the Fathers and Theologians, manuscript illuminations, the chants they are set to and so forth.

For this reason, for my own purposes I've collated a list of  Mass propers by psalm, and will start making them available in my notes on individual psalms.

The place of the psalms in the Office

The placement and uses of psalms in the Office too, can often be revealing.

Much twentieth century liturgical scholarship assumed that the placement of psalms in the Office was largely driven by purely functional considerations.  Pascher, Callaewaert and other liturgists postulated, for example, that reductions in the number of psalms said each day drove progressive reallocations of psalms between the hours, rather than considerations of meaning. St Benedict, it was claimed, wanted a shorter day Office to accommodate the demands of agricultural work, so he used the Gradual psalms at the little hours rather than Psalm 118 and cut the number of Vespers psalms. 

Medieval commentators such as Bede, Amalarius of Metz, Smaragdus, Honorius Augustodunensis and William Durandus, however, took a rather different view.  They provided extended explanations of just why particular psalms were used at particular hours, or on particular days. Bede, for example, pointed out  in his commentary on the book of Nehemiah that St Benedict's use of the Gradual psalms at Terce to None reflected his teaching on  the ascent to heaven by the cultivation of humility in chapter 7 of the Rule, while Smaragdus, in the introduction to his commentary on the Office canticles portrayed the Lauds (ferial) canticles as tracing out the life of Christ over the seven days of the week. 

The medieval commentaries are attracting more attention these days, as scholars appreciate that the uses and placement of the psalms, the texts selected for repetition or use in responsories, the rituals that accompanied their use, and the chants they were set to and more were all often a very deliberate acts of Scriptural interpretation.

For this reason, a database of these uses has potential value for study of both the individual psalms and the Office itself.  And comparison with more modern forms of the Office can perhaps provide some insight into the iconoclasm (or other takes on the psalms) of more modern forms of the Office.

Notes on the psalms

One of the key objectives of this blog is to penetrate the meanings of St Benedict's particular ordering of the psalter, as set out in chapters 8 to 18 of his Rule.

I have though, from time to time, commented on their use in other forms of the Office, such as Tenebrae during the Triduum, the Office of the Dead, the Little Office of Our Lady, and the Mass propers for assorted Sundays.

Along the way I have compiled up a lot of  notes on other uses of the psalms - in particular their placement in some of the older forms of the Roman psalter, and use in the EF Mass.

Accordingly, I plan on going through and updating (or posting) the introductory post on each psalm to include summary information on the liturgical uses of the psalms for those who might find this of interest to anyone.

The amount of information I've collated varies depending on when I did it - for the early psalms it is pretty bare bones, later on I started included the 1970 Liturgy of the Hours and other forms of the Office than the Roman.  My plan therefore is to try to add a bit of information as I go through the posting process, and then go back and add additional references as I have time.

The table below shows my proposed format for this information, and is set out for comment:

RB cursus
Monastic/(Roman) feasts etc
Roman pre 1911
Matins responsories
Other early Offices: eg Caesarius (RV/RM) Alexandrine, etc
Ambrosian
Brigittine
Maurist
Thesauris schemas	A:; B ; C:; D:
Roman post 1911	1911-62: . 1970:
Byzantine	Kathisma /stasis
Mass propers (EF)

The key abbreviations are:

Mass propers:

AL Alleluia
CO Communio
GR Gradual
IN Introit
OF Offertory

Office forms:

RB: Psalm cursus as set out in the Benedictine Rule (and still used as the ferial office of 1962).

Monastic: Psalms used in the 1962 (and earlier) monastic Offices for commons or feasts (largely follows he Roman Office).

Matins responsories: Verses used in Matins responsories, referenced to feast or set (eg David (Kings) after Pentecost, Wisdom/August), etc.

Maurist: As used by the Hungarian-Maurist Congregation, taken from the Keller book psalms schema summary

Thesaurus Schemas A  -D: As set out in the 1977 Thesaurus providing guidelines for experimentation for Benedictine monasteries.

Roman pre-1911: Psalm schema used post Trent until reforms of Pius X.

Roman 1962:  Psalm schema used (or 1911-62) reflecting the Pain reforms.

Roman 1970: Liturgy of the Hours four week cursus.

Maurist: As used by the Hungarian-Maurist Congregation, taken from the Keller book psalms schema summary

Brigittine: Also taken from the Keller book psalm schemas.

Byzantine: Kathisma (K) an Stasis (S).

Caesarius: As set out in the Rule for Virgins/monks, first half of the sixth century.

Alexandrine: Codex Alexandrinus psalm list (c5th)

Comments please!

Please do use the comments box on individual psalm listings to note any corrections, suggest any other uses that would be of particular interest, provide data you have at your fingertips, or request data for a particular psalm.

St Benedict's liturgical genius and the design of Lauds - Part I

Frescos in St. Michael the Archangel Church in Lesnovo, Macedonia, c14th

Over the next few weeks I plan to take a look at the psalms and canticles of Lauds, and today I want to provide a brief overview of where I am coming from on this topic.

On the ordering of St Benedict's psalm cursus

One of the staples of current orthodoxy about the Benedictine Office, courtesy largely of the work of Dom Adalbert de Vogue, is that the allocation of psalms to particular hours by St Benedict has no particular rationale other than keeping the hours relatively short.

The prevailing consensus is that St Benedict largely took the Roman Office of his time (and/or perhaps that of  'the Master'), and tweaked it a bit to make the day hours a bit shorter and more varied: the reasoning for his redistribution of psalms is essentially 'mechanistic'.

This view continues to be propagated through the work of Paul Bradshaw and others, who argued, for example, that St Benedict's Prime was simply as place to dump the unneeded psalms of Matins freed up by the alleged reduction in the length of the Night Office compared to that of the Master's (Daily Prayer in the Church, 1981, pg 148).

There are several problems with this position, which I won't go into here.  Suffice it to say for the moment that our knowledge of the details of Roman Church's Office at this time is pretty much entirely speculation: the first full description of it dates from around 850 AD.  In my view the numerous tables of reconstructed Roman Offices so popular in twentieth century and current liturgical studies reflect the same mentality as attempts to construct the mythological 'Q' source text for the synoptic Gospels.  And just as the consensus around that theory is now happily collapsing, sooner or later the current orthodoxy around the Office will surely follow.

But what should replace it?

The content of the psalms

The biggest problem with virtually all of the modern commentaries on the Office seems to me to be that they pay only superficial attention to comments by the Fathers and monastic writers on the content and meaning of the psalms, and largely ignore the symbolism embedded in some of the features of the Office.

This isn't terribly surprising.  Given that the modern Office has entirely abandoned the traditional eight hour structure, one wouldn't expect a lot of emphasis on the symbolism that underlies that number for example.  And when it comes to the psalms themselves, the Christological meaning of the psalms that was so central to the Fathers has largely been lost in recent centuries, replaced by historico-critical preoccupation with the development of the texts and their literal sense that renders them largely devoid of modern relevance.

My view is that by learning to walk 'in the steps of the Fathers', and understand the way they approached the psalms (and the symbolism of the Office more generally), I think we can arrive at a much richer understanding of the Divine Office.

St Benedict's liturgical genius

Fr Cassian Folsom, in his series of conferences on monastic prayer a few years back, for example argued that when St Benedict, in the Rule, says put nothing before the Office, he is implicitly saying put nothing before Christ (who we can find in the Office).  He noted that understanding the Christological content of the psalms is essential to this end.

One way in which St Benedict uses these Christological means, in my view is through a certain 'vertical' unity in the Office, with the psalms chosen for each day effectively providing a meditation on key events in the life of Christ.  Lauds is key to this program, since my theory is that St Benedict started from the ferial canticles he took from Roman practice, and developed his Office around the program they set up.  My recent series on the first psalms of Matins each day suggested that these psalms were specifically chosen to give effect to this program, and I've previously looked at the variable psalms of Lauds in this context.

I've also suggested that St Benedict gives the individual hours of his Office a certain 'horizontal unity'.

Prime, for example, far from being a mere dumping ground for some psalms surplus to requirements as some have suggested, I would argue is very carefully designed indeed, focusing on the kingship (including the judicial power) of Christ.

And I'm not alone in thinking that the themes of Prime are very closely connected to the Benedictine Rule: the Rule's very opening lines invite us to renounce our own will and take up arms under Christ our true King; and mindfulness of God's scrutiny of our actions and the coming judgement is a key theme of both the Prologue and the spiritual teaching of the Rule.

Where Lauds fits

In this series I want to focus primarily on another key theme of the Prologue to the Rule, namely that Christ is calling us into his kingdom, inviting us to be dwellers in heaven, and pointing to the way to enter.  It is this theme, centred on the priesthood of Christ, that I think is the key focus for Lauds.

The key Scriptural text for the priesthood of Christ is the book of Hebrews, which draws out the idea of Christ's sacrifice on the cross as playing out the role of the High Priest, who on the feast of the Atonement each year offered a sacrifice and then brought the blood into the holy of holies, the innermost sanctum of the temple and the microcosm of heaven.  Through his death he offers the perfect sacrifice for our sins; through his Resurrection he enters with his blood into the holy of holies, allowing us 'to follow him to glory' (RB Prologue).

The second Matins invitatory, Psalm 94, which is given an extensive exposition in Hebrews, perhaps invites us to reflect on the twelve tribes of Israel wondering in the desert for forty years, unable to enter the Promised Land.

Lauds in St Benedict's conception, I think, moves us to the happy resolution of this piece of salvation history, with Christ reopening the way to the true promised land for those who respond to his call.

Above all, Lauds is a celebration of the Resurrection, an hour at which Christ continuously calls us into the kingdom, and invites us to enter the gates of heaven, to become dwellers in his tabernacle through faith and good works.

Click here for the next part in this series.

Psalm 92: The organic development of the Office?

Since today is the feast of the Assumption, I thought I’d interrupt my consideration of St Benedict’s weekly psalm cycle and focus instead on one of the festal psalms of the day, Psalm 92.

It also provides an opportunity to reflect a little on what constitutes legitimate liturgical development and what doesn’t!

The Benedictine Office and feasts

St Benedict’s Rule prescribes that on the feasts of saints and festivals, the Office should be performed as on Sundays (so three Nocturns at matins for example) except that the psalms of the particular day are to be said.

Somewhere along the way, the Benedictine Office instead adopted the practice of using the actual Sunday psalms, at Lauds and Vespers, and special sets of psalms at Matins instead. Moreover, the ‘Sunday’ psalms used at Lauds on major feasts are not the standard Sunday psalms of the Benedictine Office (Psalms 117&62), but rather those of the Roman Office, Psalms 92 &99.

This elaboration of the liturgy was not, of course, restricted to the Benedictines: as time went on the Church sought to give greater honour to God and his saints in many ways, including through the liturgy.

And just as the traditional version of the Mass has what Catherine Pickstock in After Writing calls liturgical stuttering - stops and restarts, circling and around and returns to things, repetitions that do not flow in a neatly linear way - so too our weekly cycle of worship is interrupted by the injection of feasts. Perhaps they serve in part as a reminder that God stands outside time and space, and can jolt us, just a little, out of our time bound, linear logical conceptions of Him?

The Kingship of God

Certainly Psalm 92 draws our attention to the eternality of God and his Christ: “My throne is prepared from of old: you are from everlasting” (v3).

In the context of Our Lady’s Assumption into heaven though, it is perhaps the stress on the kingship of God that is most relevant for us to focus on today: Psalm 92 is actually the first of a group of psalms (to Psalm 99) that proclaims the kingship of God, and looks forward to the establishment of his dominion over the earth.

Opinions differ on its age, and whether the Septuagint/Vulgate ascription to David should be accepted or not, but the current consensus seems to be that because of the style of its language, it is in fact fairly ancient, from the early period of the monarchy.

St Benedict himself gave this psalm no special prominence, taking it out of Sunday Lauds and consigning it instead to Friday Matins. Its return to the Benedictine Office in the form of festal Lauds and Sunday Lauds during Christmas and Eastertide perhaps suggests that this one change he made to the Office that did not entirely stand the test of time, but rather proved to be inorganic!

Still this in itself tells us something about what is and isn’t legitimate change to the liturgy. St Benedict certainly reshaped his Office quite substantially, importing elements from other rites (such as hymns from the Ambrosian) and adjusting which psalms were said when.

All the same, it survived in its essentials for over a millennium in part surely because he respected things such as the existing tradition about which psalms were said in the morning, which in the evening.  And in giving his Office a more thematic approach than that the Old Roman Office he took as his template, he did not attempt to impose a simple linear, logical progression of ideas and events, but rather allowed his Office to move back and forwards between ideas, providing a meditation for us rather than a logically sequenced piece of closely argued theology.

St Benedict’s approach to creating a distinctively Benedictine Office - one that for centuries shaped a distinctively Benedictine spirituality -  provides no justification whatsoever, I would suggest, despite the claims to the contrary, for the decidedly inorganic revisions of the Divine Office adopted by most modern Benedictine monasteries.

Our Lady pray for us.

Psalm 92

Dóminus regnávit, decórem indútus est: * indútus est Dóminus fortitúdinem, et præcínxit se.
2 Etenim firmávit orbem terræ, * qui non commovébitur.
3 Paráta sedes tua ex tunc: * a sæculo tu es.
4 Elevavérunt flúmina, Dómine: * elevavérunt flúmina vocem suam.
5 Elevavérunt flúmina fluctus suos, * a vócibus aquárum multárum.
6 Mirábiles elatiónes maris: * mirábilis in altis Dóminus.
7 Testimónia tua credibília facta sunt nimis: * domum tuam decet sanctitúdo, Dómine, in longitúdinem diérum.

The Lord has reigned, he is clothed with beauty: the Lord is clothed with strength, and has girded himself.
For he has established the world which shall not be moved.
2 My throne is prepared from of old: you are from everlasting.
3 The floods have lifted up, O Lord: the floods have lifted up their voice.
The floods have lifted up their waves, 4 with the noise of many waters.
Wonderful are the surges of the sea: wonderful is the Lord on high.
5 Your testimonies have become exceedingly credible: holiness becomes your house, O Lord, unto length of days.