PSALM 119 AND THE WORK OF PRAYER: CONTEMPLATION (PART 4)
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Editor’s Note: For the month of October, in the Spirituality & Practice of Faith section we will be enjoying meditations from Fr. Richard Peers SMMS on Psalm 119. We encourage you to read Psalm 119 throughout the month alongside this study.
C. S. Lewis in describing Psalm 119 writes, “It is a pattern, a thing done like embroidery, stitch by stitch, through long quiet hours, for love of the subject and for the delight in leisurely, disciplined craftsmanship.” (Lewis 1961, p.119).
This psalm is not one for searching out in moments of intense devotion, joy or desperation; it is a palm for every day, a psalm of ordinary daily life - one of the reasons why it is so suitable for praying during the day.
John Eaton sums up the contemplative quality of the psalm in a magnificent manner rarely found in the dry world of biblical scholarship:
“Apart from the introductory vv.1-3 and from v.115 the rest of the 176 verses directly address God. Meditation, involving recitation of sacred words and the name of God is mentioned frequently (vv. 15, 27, 48, 55, 9 and 108). It is a pervasive orientation, a way of life, day and night (5,62, 97, 147-148 and 164). the rapturous delight it brings (14, 16 and 24) is the mystical awe and delight of contact with the Lord (120 and 131-132). It is the Lord himself who is the worshipper’s shelter and shield (114), and it is the Lord he would praise (175) and the Lord he asks to seek and save him (176). As in psalm 19, the closing words are especially significant. Brought near in the holy presence through the long meditation, the psalmist must speak of his frailty and forlornness: may the Lord seek and bring home his wandering sheep.
The alphabetic scheme and the rotation of synonyms take on more meaning from the contemplative purpose. The aid to memory, the sense of order and completeness, the dedicated skill here are valid appreciations of the acrostic. But there is more. From the letters which are the primal element of al utterance unfolds a yet richer alphabet of communion – from each letter in turn eight sayings that draw to God. It is precisely the ‘disjointed’ nature of the saying that is their strength, intentionally so. Each has its own completeness as a link to God, spokes in a wheel of communion. The various names for God’s healing word are told over and over again like beads on a rosary. They reveal new facets, like stones ever moved to new settings.” (Eaton 1997, p.51-52)
Contemplation and meditation are much sought after in our time of endless busy-ness. The Jesus Prayer, mantras, breathing techniques are all used by Christians as means of prayer. And here at the heart of the Bible is already a way of contemplation hallowed by tradition for drawing near to God, “A rosary of love” (Foster 1947, p. 25).
My plea is that Catholic Anglicans need to rediscover a serious discipline of prayer if our stream of the church is to be renewed in our time. That is why a group of us in the UK founded the Sodality of Mary, Mother of Priests in 2016, and which is now growing throughout the Communion. We will only attract many to Jesus by holy living. The Sodality makes no demands to any particular form of the liturgy. However, I would suggest that we should look to the great, holy, pioneers of the Catholic Renewal in the Church of England and imitate their forms of prayer. It worked for them. Human nature is not so different now.
From my desk in the Sub Deanery at Christ Church I can see the Canonry where Pusey spent most of his life. I walk across his grave every time I enter the Cathedral; Richard Benson studied here while Keble was here. They would all have prayed Psalm 119 daily, as Newman did. I suggest that we all adopt a pattern of daily prayer that distributes it in the traditional way over the Hours of Prime (the first four sections), Terce, Sext and None (six sections at each). And add that to the praying of Matins and Evensong of our respective Provinces.or For those who use the Roman Catholic Divine Office / Liturgy of the Hours (more common among Anglicans in the UK), use the psalmody of Mid-Day Prayer as a second nocturn at the Office of Readings (omitting the sections of Psalm 119) and pray the Little Hours daily with Psalm 119.
Fr Jonathan Graham was a member of the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield; he died tragically young in the 1960s, but wrote in his book on Psalm 119, With My Whole Heart: A Devotional Commentary on Psalm 119, DLT, 1962
“Psalm 119 is a love song.
Not a passionate love song; certainly not.
It is not the song of love at first sight,
nor of the bitter sweet of emotion and desire.
It is the song of happy married life.
That is not to say that it is, literally, the song of a poet happily wedded;
but it breathes all the way through
the charmed monotony of a life vowed to another;
it repeats with endless variety and sweet restraint
the simple inexpressible truth that can never grow weary or stale
– I love thee. Thou, thee, thine;
every verse of the poem, except the three which introduce it,
contains thou, thee or thine.
And a very large number of them echo: I, me, mine.
Well might its author find the sum total of his song in the high priestly prayer of Jesus:
All mine are thine and thine are mine.”
“Charmed monotony of a life vowed to another” is stunning. Those of us who are called and ordained to the sacred priesthood are vowed to another, to Jesus. The joy of the priesthood is that it is a love story. Well might we find the daily recitation of Psalm 119 drawing us ever more close to Jesus, wearing away our rocky hearts, and finding in it the reflection of the high priestly prayer of Jesus:
All mine are thine, and thine are mine.
