Year of Prayer with Benedict XVI: Praise God with the Psalms

In the sixth of a series of articles on catecheses by the German pope, we learn how the Psalms can give us words to pray and can transform us.

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After focusing on the most prestigious figures of the Old Testament to illustrate his teachings on prayer (Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Elijah), Benedict XVI addresses the book of prayer par excellence in his audience of June 22, 2011: the Psalms.

The Pope begins by noting that this book deals with every situation encountered by human beings: suffering, longing for God, guilt, happiness, abandonment and trust in God, loneliness… No experience, no facet of existence—collective or personal—is ignored in the prayers of this book of the Bible. The diversity of situations to which its prayers refer makes it a companion for all people, without exception.

Supplication and praise

However, in the midst of this multiplicity, Benedict XVI points out that two major themes recur throughout the Psalter: supplication and praise. In countless psalms, the psalmist calls upon God for help. In other prayers, he praises the Lord for the salvation he has received, or for the beauty of creation, or for other reasons.

It’s not difficult to appropriate these two types of prayer for ourselves, for we too seek help from the Lord throughout our lives and, in other circumstances, feel the desire to offer thanks and praise to the One we know to be the bestower of blessings.

At a deeper level, Benedict XVI observes that supplication and praise, far from being opposed, lead to each other. Supplication implies the certainty that God will respond to our request for help, and this opens the door to praise. Praise, on the other hand, recalls the help received, and is a prayer in which the speaker acknowledges the precarious condition that was at the root of his or her supplication.

A school of prayer for all

Benedict XVI also argues that the psalms are a school of prayer for the simple reason that God himself inspired them. God teaches us to pray to him by giving us the words that will touch his heart!

What’s more, the Holy Father notes that the prayers of the psalms, because they are not inserted into a narrative and are not put into the mouth of a historical figure, can more easily become the prayer of everyone. With the Psalter, God teaches the art of prayer to all mankind!

Above all, the Pope points out that the psalms reveal to us who the Lord is to whom we address ourselves through them. Indeed, by teaching us to enter into a relationship with God through words, the inspired psalmist indirectly reveals to us the identity of the One who is his interlocutor, the One to whom he addresses his supplication or praise. The Psalter, the Word of God, is a book of revelation in the same way as the other writings of the Bible.

Praying the psalms with and in Jesus

Finally, Benedict XVI teaches us that the psalms enable us to get to know Jesus and his filial impulse towards the Father. Indeed, the New Testament contains many words from the psalms. This is hardly surprising, given that Jesus prayed them.

So 21st-century Christians who wish to make Jesus’ sentiments their own need only pray with the book of Psalms. They will be sure they are praying to the Father with and in Jesus. By doing so, believers will give a new depth to their supplications to God, while at the same time being revealed the depths of the filial being of the only-begotten Son of God, who addressed his Father in the very words of the Psalter.

More than a school of prayer, the Psalter is above all a propagator of spiritual fervor. By conforming us ever more closely to Christ, who prayed them before us, they also strengthen our impulse towards God, because they unite us ever more closely to the One who is the perfect Man of Prayer and Worshipper: Jesus Christ.

As such, the psalms, inspired by the Spirit of God, draw us into a never-ending spiritual dynamic. In this regard, Benedict XVI notes that the title given to the book of the Psalter by Jewish tradition is Tehillim, which translates as “Praises.” The Psalter, however diverse and multifaceted, is in fact a book of praise that teaches us to give thanks, to celebrate the greatness and goodness of the Lord.

That’s why, when believers enter the spiritual dynamic of the Psalms, they never leave it, because the Psalter has done more than teach them the words and practice of prayer: it has changed their being in such a way that prayer springs from within them.