Meditatio psalmorum: Spiritual practice spotlight.
Years ago, I listened to an Old Testament professor and Anglican priest narrate his journey from dismissing to embracing and integrating the psalms into his life. He remembered his rector cautioning him as a young minister, “My boy, one day you’ll need the psalms.” “And he was absolutely right.” As he told the story, the remembered words of his rector addressed me as well—and perhaps many of us—for whom the psalms are just bits of old poetry and questionable theology. Yet they stand ready to become our prayer book, if only we can approach them as such.
Meditatio psalmorum is one way that we can read the psalms not merely as Scripture but as living prayers for us today, now, in the place where we are.
What is meditatio psalmorum?
Meditatio psalmorum is Latin for “meditation on the Psalms.” So why not just say that? It’s because if we talk about meditating on Scripture, we can mean a lot of things—most probably we’d have in mind thinking about Scripture. But when meditating on the Psalms, something very particular can happen. Unlike reading and meditating on a Gospel story or an exhortation from St Paul, we can make any of the psalms our very own prayer—not just read rote and parroted back but, rather, prayed out in a deep and authentic way.
It’s not just a matter of reciting the psalms prayerfully. Benedictine monk, activist and writer Thomas Merton describes the practice as entering into ourselves to “plant” the Word of God in our innermost being. In it, he says, the intellect, the memory and the will work together to create a spiritual activity that none of them could accomplish on their own. Let’s break that down:
The intellect is involved because we need to understand something of what’s going on in the psalm. These aren’t magic words, this isn’t an incantation; our mind needs to be engaged in understanding: what’s being prayed here?
The memory is involved because the more we can unfocus our eyes and relax our attention off the page, and the more we’re recalling rather than reading, the more our attention can look beyond the words on the page to what the spirit of the prayer behind them is.
Finally, the will is involved to the extent we choose this prayer as our own. To pray Psalm 50, “Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin,” I have to want to be cleansed. But even more, beyond what just the words say, I have to want what David wants in the spirit of the psalm: to be utterly lost to my adulterous heart, to be unrecognizable from the past, to be transformed and made completely new.
So it’s not just reading (intellect), not just learning (memory) and it’s not just adopting the theology (will) of the psalms. It’s all of it working together in a coordinated spiritual exercise.
How to practice meditatio psalmorum.
Meditatio psalmorum is a well-established practice of monastic communities, and doubtless a Benedictine or other practitioner might instruct and direct you in a particular manner. However, here’s how I’ve found a deeply rewarding way to do it each morning in my rhythm of life.
1. Enter.
First, as Merton suggests, we enter into ourselves. Personally, I sit in a firm but comfortable chair, in a good relaxed posture, two feet on the floor. I breathe deeply from my diaphragm (not from my chest). And I do this until I find myself aware of how God is present to me, gazing lovingly on me. But I also want to be aware of what’s going on in me.
If I’m going to plant something in the soil of my heart, how’s my soil? If there’s some anxiousness there, that’s OK. Am I frustrated about something? That’s fine. That might want to become a part of my prayer later. I don’t want to ignore those things. If I’m going to enter into myself, to pray from my heart, I have to go down to the bottom—not stop short of the stuff I don’t want to look at or that I imagine God doesn’t want to see. I must enter into my whole self, to plant the Word into my whole self.
2. Read.
Second, I begin slowly and carefully reading the psalm, as though hanging on each word, to become familiar with what it’s saying. I may read it aloud or silently or mouth the words, whatever’s useful and doesn’t take up my concentration—play with whatever works for you. The exact speed isn’t important either—although you might try to follow the pace of your breath: long and measured, just like when you were entering in and noticing the presence of God at the beginning. We want to read it with a complete absence of hurry, as though you have no next place to be, no next thing to do, only the present and absolute moment you’re in.
3. Hear.
Third, I want to move from merely reading the words to hearing what it’s saying. I’ll usually begin closing my eyes at this point, to whatever extent I can—fully or just partially—so I can reflect on what I hear the psalmist praying. If I notice I’m having to concentrate on my memory, I continue with my eyes at least partway open so I can see the words I need to. But knowing the exact words isn’t important; this isn’t about memorizing. What I want is to get the sense or the spirit of the prayer, gradually coming away from the physical page and physical print, taking it more into my interior world.
Because I don’t have a great memory, unless it’s a really short psalm I’ve become very familiar with, I usually just go back and forth between reading and hearing, in an ebb and flow. I take just a couple of verses or morsels at a time, feeling them, noticing how the sentiment behind prayer—joy, lament, whatever—is starting to penetrate me and move me like an impassioned song. If it works better for you to read the whole psalm from start to finish two or three times, until you feel it familiar and very close to you, you might do that instead.
4. Notice.
However I find myself able to truly hear the song and the prayer within the psalm, I next want to notice where this is connecting for me. Maybe David’s words in Psalm 50, for example, wouldn’t be my words— but can I find the place in me that longs for the cleansing and renewal he longs for? Can I find that place beneath any words? What is that place? we’ll want to wonder. What, and Who, is there? It’s that place where I’ve let the psalm lead me, which is where I might pray from my “innermost being.”
5. Pray.
That inward place where the prayer of the psalm might meet with my own capacity for prayer is where I can now choose to plant the seed Merton writes of. There I consent to desire what the David desires, or to be as vulnerable before God as the Psalmist who confesses their doubts and their fears and their anger to God. In this, and only by an act of devotion and will, I might move beyond the reading of prayerful words, even beyond the prayerful reading of words, and begin to experience the psalm as my own prayer—not as though it were my prayer, but truly and genuinely as my own, from me to God.
This can be true even as I practice meditatio psalmorum over a psalm of praise when I feel no joy or thanks—or when I practice with a lament psalm with only joy at this hour in my life—for I might always be able to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep,” as I find I can pray for them as much as from my own experience.
Concluding my practice.
As I let the prayer of the psalm work its way into my heart, my eyes might be still washing up and down the text of the psalm as I refresh my meditation with key or significant words or phrases—or I might have been keeping my eyes closed, holding the general impression of the psalm—but at the end, I usually want to take some unhurried time now with my eyes closed and relaxed, to essentially “hold” this prayer before an unhurried God, unhurried with God.
That last lingering minute or so itself might occasion a conversation with God and some additional, spontaneous prayer. Or it may be enough for me just to spend those two to 10 minutes letting prayer enter into me and plant something that will grow in my heart and my imagination throughout the rest of the day.