Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

This morning’s readings include several sections of Psalm 119—Qoph, Resh, Shin and Taw. These sections contain words about prayer that have been of great importance to the Christian tradition:

“Early in the morning I cry out to you.”

“My eyes are open in the night watches.”

“Seven times a day do I praise you.”

These texts have been taken as inspiration for specific prayer practices in monastic orders, which have developed elaborate systems of daily “offices,” including night vigils, that allow a community to organize their lives around prayer.

We, too, as secular folk, living as we do in the world, also take our cues from this language, along with St. Paul’s admonition to “pray without ceasing.”

These segments raise the question, how are we supposed to read these psalms?

It’s difficult to read Psalm 119, for instance, straight through and “claim it” as your own.

Do I really love God’s law? Will I always obey that law “forever and ever?” Do I “hate every false way?”

These and many other phrases in the psalms make it difficult to own the psalm as one’s own prayer—at least they do for me, because I know I’m not blameless. I sin frequently, am often ambivalent in my intention to follow God’s law, and I certainly cannot claim to be ready for God’s judgment, as the psalmist sometimes seems to be.

So, how do we read these prayers?

I find it rather unsatisfying to simply look at these from a historical-critical perspective, to say these psalms express strong human emotions, some of which are laudable and others of which should actually be avoided, and that all of this has to do with a specific context and time—which is to say, in the deep past.

Rather, the Church has a tradition of reading the Psalms in such a way that we “enter into the mind of Christ.”

This and every other Scriptural passage become for us opportunities to look to Christ as the one in whom the law of God is fulfilled. Thus, every intention in the psalm becomes for us a way to express our hope that, as we learn to pray the words, we will grow in God’s grace and become the kind of people that love, pray, and obey.

Here is a choral setting of the Taw section by Robert White (c. 1538-1574).

Yours in Christ,

—Justin