Psalms of Compline (Short summaries)/1 - Psalm 4

 Psalm 4 - Cum invocarem

Vulgate	Douay-Rheims
In finem, in carminibus. Psalmus David.	Unto the end, in verses. A psalm for David.
1 Cum invocárem exaudívit me deus justítiæ meæ: *  in tribulatióne dilatásti mihi.	When I called upon him, the God of my justice heard me: when I was in distress, you have enlarged me.
2 Miserére mei, * et exáudi oratiónem meam.	Have mercy on me: and hear my prayer.
3 Filii hóminum, úsquequo gravi corde? *  ut quid dilígitis vanitátem et quæritis mendácium?	O you sons of men, how long will you be dull of heart? Why do you love vanity, and seek after lying?
4 Et scitóte quóniam mirificávit dóminus sanctum suum: * dóminus exáudiet me cum clamávero ad eum.	Know also that the Lord has made his holy one wonderful: the Lord will hear me when I shall cry unto him.
5 Irascímini, et nolíte peccáre: * quæ dícitis in córdibus vestris, in cubílibus vestris compungímini.	Be angry, and sin not: the things you say in your hearts, be sorry for them upon your beds.
6 Sacrificáte sacrifícium justítiæ, et speráte in dómino, * multi dicunt quis osténdit nobis bona?	Offer up the sacrifice of justice, and trust in the Lord: many say, Who shows us good things?
7 Signátum est super nos lumen vultus tui, dómine: *  dedísti lætítiam in corde meo.	The light of your countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us: you have given gladness in my heart.
8 A fructu fruménti, vini et ólei sui * multiplicáti sunt.	By the fruit of their corn, their wine, and oil, they rest
9 In pace in idípsum * dórmiam et requiéscam;	In peace in the self same I will sleep, and I will rest
10 Quóniam tu, dómine, singuláriter in spe * constituísti me.	For you, O Lord, singularly have settled me in hope.

Pronouncing the words

You can heard the psalm read aloud slowly in Latin over at the Boston Catholic Journal.

Once you are confident of the pronunciation, try singing it with the monks - the videos below are one option, alternatively, listen to one of the archived audio files of Compline sung by the monks of Le Barroux..

(and for those who can't access this video, see below)

The sense of the psalm

Pick the summary of your choice and learn it, or copy it to create a cheat sheet to have handy for when you say the Office:

St Alphonsus Liguori:

According to interpreters this psalm was composed by David, happy to see himself delivered from the hands of Saul, or of Absalom. In a mystical sense it is applied to Jesus Christ inasmuch as he is the end of the law and of the prophets. Jesus Christ, of whom David was a figure, is properly the Saint of God, the Saint by eminence, he whom God has glorified above everyone else in a wonderful manner, v. 4; our Master and our Model, he reminds us at first of the efficacy of prayer: then he exhorts us to detach ourselves from the goods of this world, to flee from sin, to practise virtue, and to seek only justice, sanctity, by putting our whole confidence in God.

Fr Pius Pasch:

Trustful evening prayer. To oppose the allurements of the world, this psalm makes us aware of the good fortune of union with God.  It was a favorite with St. Augustine.  We ought to pray it, he observes, "trembling with fear, and yet all aglow with hope and exultation at God's mercy."

 Cassiodorus:

End does not mean here the decline of some object but the perfection of rungs of the spirit; as Paul says: The end of the law is Christ, unto justice to everyone that believeth? Christ is the glorious perfection of all good things. So the words, Unto the end, remind us that they are to be related to the Lord Christ, or as some prefer, we are to believe that they refer to us...Throughout the psalm the words are spoken by holy mother Church...  In the first section she asks that her prayer be heard, and rebukes the faithless for worshipping false gods and ne­glecting worship of the true God. In the second part she warns the world at large that it must abandon deceitful superstition, and offer the sacrifice of justice. Then in her attempt to win over the minds of pagans by the promise she has made, she relates that the Lord has bestowed great gifts on Christians…

My summary (in the context of the Benedictine Office): 

Psalm 4 recapitulates some of the key themes of the Benedictine Office (and Rule): the Benedictine day starts with an allusion to the call to praise God, to offer up the sacrifice of justice in verse 16 of Psalm 50 at Matins; here again in this psalm the Office recalls this sacrificial dimension of our prayer (v6).   In Psalm 94 at Matins we are called not to harden our hearts lest we be lost; so here again, God asks how long we will fail to heed his call to conversion (v3).  Just as Lauds we celebrate the rising sun, and the light of Christ, so here we are reminded that his is the light that shines in the darkness (v7), the grace that enlarges our hearts through grace (v1, 4) so that we can run 'with the unspeakable sweetness of love' (RB Prologue).  Above all the psalms calls on us to repent and asks God to grant us forgiveness and the grace to do better in future; and asks for God’s blessing on our sleep (v5), so that we can rise up again with him on the morrow (Ps 3).  

Short psalm summaries

Over the next few weeks I plan on posting a series of short summaries of the psalms by various authors, starting with the psalms of Compline and Prime.

These aren't meant to be substitutes for the in depth study of the psalms.

Rather they are meant to provide a 'first look' view to help people learn what the psalms are about in a general sense (particularly focusing on the spiritual and Christological meanings of the psalms) as they start praying the Office.

I'll try and provide a couple fo different summaries - pick the one's that most appeal to you!

Augustine on Christ in the psalms

In the City of God St Augustine provides commentaries on several psalms, explaining that they are prophesies relating to Christ and the Church.  Here is a key extract summarising his position:

Now David was a man skilled in songs, who dearly loved musical harmony, not with a vulgar delight, but with a believing disposition, and by it served his God, who is the true God, by the mystical representation of a great thing. For the rational and well-ordered concord of diverse sounds in harmonious variety suggests the compact unity of the well-ordered city...

... Let him then who will, or can, read these volumes, and he will find out how many and great things David, at once king and prophet, has prophesied concerning Christ and His Church, to wit, concerning the King and the city which He has built.

In his commentaries on individual psalms (the Enarrations), he makes this connection even more explicit.  On the first line of Psalm 1, Blessed is the man that has not gone away in the counsel of the ungodly, for example, he says:

This is to be understood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Man. 

Blessed is the man that has not gone away in the counsel of the ungodly, as the man of earth did, who consented to his wife deceived by the serpent, to the transgressing the commandment of God. 

Nor stood in the way of sinners. For He came indeed in the way of sinners, by being born as sinners are; but He stood not therein, for that the enticements of the world held Him not. 

And has not sat in the seat of pestilence. He willed not an earthly kingdom, with pride, which is well taken for the seat of pestilence; for that there is hardly any one who is free from the love of rule, and craves not human glory. For a pestilence is disease widely spread, and involving all or nearly all. Yet the seat of pestilence may be more appropriately understood of hurtful doctrine; whose word spreads as a canker...

Seeing Christ in the Psalms 1: Athanasius

The Fathers take a range of views about the extent to which Christ can be seen in the psalms, ranging from seeing him prophesied in a few individual psalms, to him being the main subject of the entire psalter.  To illustrate this, I want to start with St Athanasius, again from his famous letter to Marcellinus:

And, so far from being ignorant of the coming of Messiah, he makes mention of it first and foremost in Psalm 44, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever, a scepter of justice is the sceptre of Thy kingdom. Thou has loved righteousness and hated lawlessness: wherefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. 

Further, lest any one should think this coming was in appearance only, Psalm 86 shows that He Who was to come should both come as man and at the same time be He by Whom all things were made. Mother Sion shall say, A man, a man indeed is born in her: and He himself, the Most Highest, founded her, it says; and that is equivalent to saying The Word was God, all things were made by Him, and the Word became flesh. 

Neither is the Psalmist silent about the fact that He should be born of a virgin - no, he underlines it straight away in 44, which we were quoting, but a moment since. Harken, O daughter, he says, and see and incline thine ear, and forget thine own people and thy fathers's house. For the King has desired thy beauty, and He is thy Lord. Is not this like what Gabriel said, Hail, thou that art full of grace, the Lord is with thee?  For the Psalmist, having called Him the Anointed One, that is Messiah or Christ, forthwith declares His human birth by saying, Harken, O daughter, and see; the only difference being that Gabriel addresses Mary by an epithet, because he is of another race from her, while David fitly calls her his own daughter, because it was from him that she should spring.

Having thus shown that Christ should come in human form, the Psalter goes on to show that He can suffer in the flesh He has assumed. It is as foreseeing how the Jews would plot against Him that Psalm 2 sings, Why do the heathen rage and peoples meditate vain things? The kings of the earth stood up and their rulers took counsel together against the Lord and against His Christ. 

And Psalm 21, speaking in the Saviour's own person, describes the manner of His death. Thou has brought me into the dust of death, for many dogs have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked have laid siege to me. They peirced my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones, they gazed and stared at me, they parted my garments among them and cast lots for my vesture. They pierced my hands and my feet- what else can that mean except the cross? and Psalms 87 and 68, again speaking in the Lord's own person, tell us further that He suffered these things, not for His own sake but for ours. Thou has made Thy wrath to rest upon me, says the one; and the other adds, I paid them things I never took. For He did not die as being Himself liable to death: He suffered for us, and bore in Himself the wrath that was the penalty of our transgression, even as Isaiah says, Himself bore our weaknesses. So in Psalm 137 we say, The Lord will make requital for me; and in the 71st the Spirit says, He shall save the children of the poor and bring the slanderer low, for from the hand of the mighty He has set the poor man free, the needy man whom there was none to help.

Nor is this all. The Psalter further indicates beforehand the bodily Ascension of the Saviour into heaven, saying in Psalm 23, Lift up your gates, ye princes, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in! And again in 46, God is gone up with a merry noise, the Lord with the voice of the trumpet. 

The Session also it proclaims, saying in Psalm 109, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on My right hand, until I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet.And Psalm 8 mentions also the coming destruction of the devil, crying, Thou satest on Thy throne, Thou that judgest righteousness, Thou hast rebuked the heathen and the wicked one is destroyed. And that He should receive all judgement from the Father, this also the Psalter does not hide from us, but foreshows Him as coming to be the judge of all in 71, Give the King Thy judgements, O God, and Thy righteousness unto the King's Son, that He may judge Thy people in righteousness and Thy poor with justice. In Psalm 49 too we read, He shall call the heaven from above, and the earth, that He may judge His people. And the heavens shall declare His righteousness, that God is judge indeed. The 81st like-wise says, God standeth in the assembly of gods, in the midst He judges gods. The calling of the Gentiles also is to be learnt from many passages in this same book, especially in these words of Psalm 46, O clap your hands together, all ye Gentiles, shout unto God with the voice of triumph; and again in the 71st, The Ethiopians shall fall down before Him, His enemies shall lick the dust. The kings of Tarsis and of the islands shall bring presents, the kings of Arabia and Saba shall offer gifts. All these things are sung of in the Psalter; and they are shown forth separately in the other books as well.

My old friend made rather a point of this, that the things we find in the Psalms about the Saviour are stated in the other books of Scripture too; he stressed the fact that one interpretation is common to them all, and that they have but one voice in the Holy Spirit.

St Ephraim: Protecting the vineyard of your life with psalms

Get ready to go forth to thy work, and gird thyself to cultivate thy field.

The field is your present life, and for a hoe take with you the Old together with the New Testament.

Put a hedge of thorns about your field and your soil, by prayer and fasting together with instruction.

If you are protected by this enclosure, the wild beast shall not invade thee, by which I mean the devil.

Tend thy soul after the manner of a beautiful vineyard.

And as the guardians of the vineyard strike at the thieves with their fists, and call out to them with warnings, and keep them at a distance with stones, so you cry out in prayer, and shout with the song of psalmody, and put to flight the thieving fox, that is the devil of whom Scripture says: catch the little foxes that destroy the vines (Cant ii15).

(St Ephraim: On Patience, the Second Coming and the Last Judgment, Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, vol 1, Advent 1).

Athanasius/4 - Why we should sing the psalms

Athanasius insists that the psalms be sung, not said:

But we must not omit to explain the reason why words of this kind should be not merely said, but rendered with melody and song; for there are actually some simple folk among us who, though they believe the words to be inspired, yet think the reason for singing them is just to make them more pleasing to the ear! 

This is by no means so; Holy Scripture is not designed to tickle the aesthetic palate, and it is rather for the soul's own profit that the Psalms are sung. This is so chiefly for two reasons. In the first place, it is fitting that the sacred writings should praise God in poetry as well as prose, because the freer, less restricted form of verse, in which the Psalms, together with the Canticles and Odes, are cast, ensures that by them men should express their love to God with all the strength and power they possess. And, secondly, the reason lies in the unifying effect which chanting the Psalms has upon the singer. 

For to sing the Psalms demands such concentration of a man's whole being on them that, in doing it, his usual disharmony of mind and corresponding bodily confusion is resolved, just as the notes of several flutes are brought by harmony to one effect; and he is thus no longer to be found thinking good and doing evil, as Pilate did when, though saying I find no crime in Him, he yet allowed the Jews to have their way; nor desiring evil though unable to achieve it, as did the elders in their sin against Susanna - or, for that matter, as does any man who abstains from one sin and yet desires another every bit as bad. And it is in order that the melody may thus express our inner spiritual harmony, just as the words voice our thoughts, that the Lord Himself has ordained that the Psalms be sung and recited to a chant.

Moreover, to do this beautifully is the heart's desire and joy, as it is written, Is any among you happy? Let him sing!  And if there is in the words anything harsh, irregular or rough, the tune will smoothe it out, as in our own souls also sadness is lightened as we chant, Why then art thou so heavy, O my soul, why dost thou trouble me? and failure is acknowledged as one sings, My feet were almost gone, and fear is braced by hope in singing, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man can do to me.

Well, then, they who do not read the Scriptures in this way, that is to say, who do not chant the divine Songs intelligently but simply please themselves, most surely are to blame, for praise is not befitting in a sinner's mouth.  But those who do sing as I have indicated, so that the melody of the words springs naturally from the rhythm of the soul and her own union with the Spirit, they sing with the tongue and with the understanding also, and greatly benefit not themselves alone but also those who want to listen to them. So was it with the blessed David when he played to Saul: he pleased God and, at the same time, he drove from Saul his madness and his anger and gave back peace to his distracted spirit. In like manner, the priests by their singing contributed towards the calming of the people's spirits and helped to unite them with those who lead the heavenly choir. 

When, therefore, the Psalms are chanted, it is not from any mere desire for sweet music but as the outward expression of the inward harmony obtaining in the soul, because such harmonious recitation is in itself the index of a peaceful and well-ordered heart. To praise God tunefully upon an instrument, such as well-tuned cymbals, cithara, or ten-stringed psaltery, is, as we know, an outward token that the members of the body and the thoughts of the heart are, like the instruments themselves, in proper order and control, all of them together living and moving by the Spirit's cry and breath. 

And similarly, as it is written that By the Spirit a man lives and mortifies his bodily actions, so he who sings well puts his soul in tune, correcting by degrees its faulty rhythm so that at last, being truly natural and integrated, it has fear of nothing, but in peaceful freedom from all vain imaginings may apply itself with greater longing to the good things to come. For a soul rightly ordered by chanting the sacred words forgets its own afflictions and contemplates with joy the things of Christ alone.

St Athansius/ 3: The psalms as a mirror of the soul

Athanasius' letter to Marvellinus continues:

And herein is yet another strange thing about the Psalms. In the other books of Scripture we read or hear the words of holy men as belonging only to those who spoke them, not at all as though they were our own; and in the same way the doings there narrated are to us material for wonder and examples to be followed, but not in any sense things we have done ourselves. 

With this book, however, though one does read the prophecies about the Saviour in that way, with reverence and with awe, in the case of all the other Psalms it is as though it were one's own words that one read; and anyone who hears them is moved at heart, as though they voiced for him his deepest thoughts...the marvel with the Psalter is that, barring those prophecies about the Saviour and some about the Gentiles, the reader takes all its words upon his lips as though they were his own, and each one sings the Psalms as though they had been written for his special benefit, and takes them and recites them, not as though someone else were speaking or another person's feelings being described, but as himself speaking of himself, offering the words to God as his own heart's utterance, just as though he himself had made them up. Not as the words of the patriarchs or of Moses and the other prophets will he reverence these: no, he is bold to take them as his own and written for his very self. Whether he has kept the Law or whether he has broken it, it is his own doings that the Psalms describe; every one is bound to find his very self in them and, be he faithful soul or be he sinner, each reads in them descriptions of himself.

 It seems to me, moreover, that because the Psalms thus serve him who sings them as a mirror, wherein he sees himself and his own soul, he cannot help but render them in such a manner that their words go home with equal force to those who hear him sing, and stir them also to a like reaction. 

Sometimes it is repentance that is generated in this way, as by the conscience-stirring words of Psalm 50; another time, hearing how God helps those who hope and trust in Him, the listener too rejoices and begins to render thanks, as though that gracious help already were his own. Psalm 3, to take another instance, a man will sing, bearing his own afflictions in his mind; Psalms 10 and 11 he will use as the expression of his own faith and prayer; and singing the 53th, the 55th, the 56th, and the 141nd, it is not as though someone else were being persecuted but out of his own experience that he renders praise to God. 

And every other Psalm is spoken and composed by the Spirit in the selfsame way: just as in a mirror, the movements of our own souls are reflected in them and the words are indeed our very own, given us to serve both as a reminder of our changes of condition and as a pattern and model for the amendment of our lives.