The secret of the psalter is that when we apply ourselves to it it transforms us into the poor, the anawim. It was the anawim who wrote it, adding one collection of psalms to another on their return from Exile. The communities of the poor have handed it down through the centuries. Only the truly poor are able to pray it for their whole lives. The psalter is not only a school of prayer, it is also a school of poverty. It carves out a space in us where all suffering under the sun comes to rest and turns towards the Only One, who alone can save us. The more unbearable world news becomes because of the insanity of man’s unbridled violence, the more the monk throws himself into the great centuries-old psalmody and cries out: “It is indecent to pray for oneself.” (E. Levinas). The psalmody opens up our hearts to the point where we no longer know who is imploring whom. We call out as much for God (that he may be saved), as for humanity (that it may not be destroyed). We realize that God’s suffering is infinitely greater precisely because of human suffering. We cry “from the depths” (Ps.130) that are in the first place our own misery, but also the depths of his mercy – the depths here on earth as well as the depths of heaven, as the Jewish mystical tradition of the Middle Ages taught. The psalms become this mysterious place where God and the human person, creator and created, exchange attributes and pray one in the other, one for the Other. The word of the psalm, initially grasped, memorized, stored, is revealed as a constantly new ferment at the heart of interior life. It takes the form of a continuous divine revelation, clarifying the history that we are still in the process of living, opening up time to an unsuspected hope, penetrating the whole existence of an indestructible Messianic seed…
Benoît Standaert, OSB
