“Indeed the Psalms teach how to pray. In them, the word of God becomes a word of prayer — and they are the words of the inspired Psalmist — which also becomes the word of the person who prays the Psalms.” (from General Audience, 22 June 2011, Pope Benedict XVI)

Nineteen years ago I walked through the doors of St. Patrick Seminary to begin my formation to the priesthood. One of the items we were asked to bring with us was the “Liturgy of the Hours” which is also known sometimes as “The Psalter” and as a book is called the Breviary. It was a daunting set of four books with ribbons and numbered weeks, with saint days and special prayers and the instructions were a bizarre set of words that left me ever confused as I looked at them.
The joy of the Liturgy of the Hours over the past nineteen years as I have learned (and continue to learn) the rhythm and the words of the Psalms is that, as Pope Benedict points out in the above quote, to pray in the Word of God and with the Word of God in these inspired prayers.
The Liturgy of the Hours is also called the “prayer of the Church” and while all priests, deacons and consecrated religious women and men are obligated to pray the hours daily the Catholic Church also invites all members to join in this wonderful and beautiful prayer.
“Since they are a word of God, anyone who prays the Psalms speaks to God using the very words that God has given to us, addresses him with the words that he himself has given us. So it is that in praying the Psalms we learn to pray. They are a school of prayer.”(Benedict XVI) Learning to speak the words God has given us is like all learning we do in family, school and life. At times the task at hand may seem boring and fruitless and at other times difficult and almost impossible but we discover the fruits and the possibilities in the learning repetition where our mind and body conform themselves to the thoughts and actions shared.
This is why prayer is always fruitful in the end…it forms us into the image of God and we then begin not simply to parrot the words spoken but become living witnesses very Word of God, Jesus Christ, is the center of our actions, our thoughts and our dreams in life. Prayer is the point where we speak and act in the way of God. We are able to do this because we begin to experience the true presence of God in all aspects of our lives. God, Our Father, isn’t a distant and alien presence rather he is intimately present in all moments of our lives and especially through the gift of Jesus Christ. In the Book of Psalms, which makes up the majority of the Liturgy of the Hours, we enter into the conversations of life that animate our relationship with God. As Pope Benedict notes, “In the Psalms are expressed and interwoven with joy and suffering, the longing for God and the perception of our own unworthiness, happiness and the feeling of abandonment, trust in God and sorrowful loneliness, fullness of life and fear of death. The whole reality of the believer converges in these prayers. (Pope Benedict XVI)
This is the ultimate fruitfulness of prayer—not that we somehow change God’s mind or bribe him into an action—it is how prayer conforms us to God in serving and caring for one another. The vow to pray the Liturgy of the Hours is a vow to allow our lives to be molded to the life of Jesus Christ. It is what obedience to prayer finally does—it makes us anew.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

“By teaching us to pray, the Psalms teach us that even in desolation, even in sorrow, God’s presence endures, it is a source of wonder and of solace; we can weep, implore, intercede and complain, but in the awareness that we are walking toward the light, where praise can be definitive.” (Pope Benedict XVI)

“Christians, therefore, in praying the Psalms pray to the Father in Christ and with Christ, assuming those hymns in a new perspective which has in the paschal mystery the ultimate key to its interpretation. The horizon of the person praying thus opens to unexpected realities, every Psalm acquires a new light in Christ and the Psalter can shine out in its full infinite richness.” (Pope Benedict XVI)