For almost two thousand years, the Psalms have been at the heart of the devotion of the Christian Church, teaching the faithful to pray, in response to the God who reveals himself, a confession and glorification of the Triune God, creator, redeemer. and restorer. . . In this way, when we embrace the Psalms, we join a great group of people who for almost thirty centuries have based their praises and prayers on these ancient words. Kings and peasants, prophets and priests, apostles and martyrs, monks and reformers, paintings and housewives, teachers and popular singers? for all of these and a multitude of others, have the Psalms been spiritual life and encouragement? . 1 As Eugene Peterson writes, “There is no other place where the human dimension of biblical history can be seen in such detail and depth as in the Psalms. . Has the person who prays reacted to the totality of God’s presence, starting from the human condition, concrete and detailed? However, around the first half of the 19th century, with the emergence of critical methods of studying the Bible, the psalms lost their centrality in Christian devotion. They are no longer the school of prayer that shaped the prayer of the faithful, in their response to God who reveals himself. According to Peterson, they came to be seen as the deteriorated piety of a worn out religion.
The school that Israel and the Church used to learn to pray were the Psalms, which, together with Isaiah, were the most quoted book by Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament, even to support the central doctrines of the Christian faith. the first Christians, the order was: “Do you fill yourselves with the Spirit by talking to each other about psalms?(Eph 5:18-19). So they, like their Jewish ancestors, heard the word of God in these hymns, complaints, and instructions and made it the foundation of life and worship?. 3
- Psalms were statements of relations between the people and their Lord.
- They assumed the alliance between the two and the implications of providing.
- Protecting.
- And preserving this covenant.
- Their songs of worship.
- Their confessions of sin.
- Their protests of innocence.
- Their grievances of suffering.
- Their calls to deliverance.
- Their guarantees of being heard.
- Their requests before battles.
- And their gratitude after them are expressions of their unique relationship with the one true God.
- Fear and intimacy were combined in the Israelites’ understanding of this relationship.
- They feared the power and glory of God.
- His majesty and sovereignty.
- At the same time protesting in front of him.
- Discussing his decisions and asking for his intervention.
- Venerated him as Lord and recognized him as Father.
In the early church and during the Protestant Reformation, when a pastor wanted to teach his congregation to pray, he preached from the psalms. In the 4th and 5th centuries Athanasius of Alexandria pointed out that each psalm “is composed and pronounced by the Spirit”, being “a mirror in which emotions are reflected?” of our soul, where? Can we capture the movements of our soul and make ourselves say as coming from ourselves, as our words, so that by remembering our past emotions, we can reform our spiritual life? . 5 Ambrose of Milan, who introduced the singing of the psalms into public worship in the West, did he call them? a type of gym for all souls, a stage of virtue, where different exercises are practiced, from which one can you choose the most suitable training for if you reach the crown? . 6 Augustine of Hippo, who preached the entire book of Psalms to his congregation, did he call them “school”, “mirror”? and “ medicine ”, “ sung all over the world. 7 When his last illness brought him down, he asked his brothers to put large print copies of the penitential psalms on the walls of his cell (Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143), so that he could read them continuously .
In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther declared that the book of Psalms?It not only puts before us the word of the saints, (?) But we also reveal his heart and the intimate treasure of his soul, where do we learn?seriously in the midst of all kinds of gales?made such a clear promise about the death and resurrection of Christ and foreshadowed his kingdom, the condition and essence of all Christianity?and this in such a way that it could well be called a “little Bible. “He also said, “Is it very beneficial to have words prescribed by the Holy Ghost, which pious men can use in their afflictions?. 8 On his deathbed, I continually recited, “In your hands, I returned my mind; Have you redeemed me, Lord, God for real?(Salt 31. 5). For his part, John Calvin, who commented above all on the book of Psalms, wrote:
And I don’t think so incorrectly?An “anatomy of all parts of the soul” because there is not even an emotion in which someone participated that is not represented in it as in a mirror. , the Holy Spirit here removes from life all the pains, pains, fears, doubts, expectations, worries, perplexities, in short, all the disturbed emotions with which the human mind moves. (?) Authentic and fervent prayer comes first from a real sense of our need, and then from faith in God’s promises. It is through careful reading of these inspired compositions that men will more effectively awaken to the consciousness of their diseases and, at the same time, be assigned the task of seeking the antidote for their healing. In a word, everything that encourages us to begin to seek God in prayer is taught to us in this book.
In the 17th century, puritanical Lewis Bayly, in recommending the singing of psalms to Christian families, declared, “Sing to God in God’s own words. “And the use of the jumperion should have this goal: “And use them frequently, so that people can memorize them more easily. “He then proposes to use the following psalms to promote family piety in times of prayer and devotion:
In the morning, Psalms 3, 5, 16, 22, and 144; The night, Psalm 4, 127 and 141; Plead for mercy after committing sin, Psalms 51 and 103; Illness during periods of hard trial, Psalms 6, 13, 88, 90, 91, 137 and 146; When the believer is restored, Psalms 30 and 32; On the day of holy weekly rest, Psalm 19, 92 and 95; In times of joy, Psalms 80, 98, 107, 136, and 145. Before the sermon, Psalm 1, 12, 147, and the first and fifth part of Psalm 119; After the sermon, all Psalms relate to the main argument of the sermon; At the Lord’s Supper, Psalm 22, 23, 103, 111, and 116. To inspire comfort and spiritual tranquility, Psalms 15, 19, 25, 46, 67, 112, and 116. After the damage done and the shame received, Psalm 42, 69, 70, 140, and 145.
From the beginning, the Word of God always come first, we are called to respond to the Word of God, of all our being, and prayer is our response to God’s revelation in the scriptures, that is why Psalms are the school where Christians learn. to pray, because as Peterson says, “it is this fusion of God that speaks to us (the Bible) and we speak to him (prayer) that the Holy Ghost uses to form the life of Christ in us”. 11 Where, as Ambrose wrote, we speak to him, when we pray, hear him, when we read the divine oracles?. 12 And Bonhoeffer adds:? So, if the Bible also contains a prayer book, teach that the Word of God does not include only the word that God speaks to us Do you also understand the word God wants to hear from us?(?) What immeasurable grace: God tells us how we can speak and have fellowship with Him!And we can do this by praying in the name of Jesus Christ Were we given the Psalms to learn to pray in the name of Jesus Christ?
If we insist on learning to pray alone, without relying on the Psalms, our prayers will be poor, a repetition of prefabricated phrases: we appreciate meals, repent of certain sins, plead for blessings for our meetings, and even ask for counsel. On the other hand, our whole life must be involved in prayer, as Peterson illustrates with the book of the prophet Jonah, which revolves entirely around the relationship between God and the prophet. 14 These relationships were born of the prophetic call, to which Jonah tried to escape, but this character is not left to his fate. In the first part of history, God allows the prophet to go to the extreme of almost losing his own life, and then put him back in the position he was in before trying to avoid the Lord’s call.
At the center of the biblical account is the prayer that Jonah spoke after being swallowed by a large fish. His first reaction when he found himself in the fish’s belly was to say a prayer (see Jonah 2: 2-9), which is No wonder, since we often pray when we are in desperate situations. But there is something surprising about Jonah’s prayer. As Peterson points out, his prayer is neither original nor spontaneous: “Jonas learned to pray in school and prayed as he had learned. Was your school the Psalms? As the same author demonstrates, sentence after sentence, Jonah’s prayer is full of quotes from Psalms:
? My anguish? Psalm 18. 6 and 120. 1
Every word is derived from the book of Psalms. Generally we think that prayer is authentic when it is spontaneous, but Jonah’s prayer, in an extremely difficult state, is a erudite prayer, without any originality.
Peterson continues: “Having words ready for prayer is not just a matter of vocabulary. Over the past hundred years, theologians have paid special attention to the particular form of psalms (criticism of form) and divided them into two broad categories: regret and thanksgiving. “. The categories correspond to the two main conditions in which we find ourselves: anxiety and well-being?. Depending on the circumstances and how we felt, regret or appreciate. 15?Psalms reflect many and varied reactions to life: joy, sadness, gratitude and quiet meditation, to name a few. The Israelite worshipper had a prayer prepared for all the vicissitudes of life. (?) Psalms are prayers sung to God, so do they come to us as words of the congregation addressed to God, rather than the Word of God addressed to the people of Israel?. 16
As Peterson points out, “the most common form of prayer in the Psalms is lament. “This should come as no surprise, because it is our most common condition. “We have many difficulties, so we pray a lot in the form of a scholar of the School of Prayer of the Psalm would know this form better than anything else, simply because of repetition?Jonah was in the worst situation imaginable. It would be natural for him to repent. But does the opposite happen? A psalm of praise. That’s why Peterson writes, “Here comes an important lesson: Jonah studied to learn to pray and learned his lessons well, but he was not a student who simply memorized. His studies did not block his creativity. He was able to distinguish the forms and decided to pray in a way adapted to the circumstances he was facing. Circumstances required repentance. But prayer, though influenced by circumstances, is not determined by them. Jonah used his creativity to pray and decided to pray in the form of praise.
Therefore, it is not enough to express our feelings in prayer, in response to God: “We need a long learning of prayer”. Therefore, the best prayer school is the book of Psalms. “In his prayer,” Peterson continues, “Jonah proves that he was an applied student at psalm school. Your prayer comes from your situation, but it is not limited to it. Has your prayer led you to a world much greater than your immediate situation?He prayed appropriately to the greatness of God, who had called him, offering us a stark contrast to the current practice of prayer, our culture presents us with largely self-centered forms of prayer, but prayer that is an answer to God revealed in the Scriptures is dominated by the perception of his greatness.
1William S. LaSor, David A. Hubbard and Frederic W. Bush, Introduction to the Old Testament (São Paulo: Vida Nova, 2009), p. 465. 2 For a summary of this process, cf. Eugene Peterson, in A shepherd according to the heart of God (Rio de Janeiro: Textus, 2001), p. 21-40. 3William S. LaSor, David A. Hubbard, and Frederic W. Bush, Introduction to the Old Testament, p. 484. For an introduction to the study of the Psalms, cf. Carl J. Bosma, “Discerning voices in the psalms: a discussion of two problems in the interpretation of the psalter”, Fides Reformata IX, No. 2 (2004), p. 75-118 and N. H. Ridderbos and P. C. Craigie, “Psalms”, in G. W. Bromiley (ed. ), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, v. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman, 1986), p. 1030-1038. 4 William S. LaSor, David A. Hubbard, and Frederic W. Bush, Introduction to the Old Testament, p. 483. 5Cf. Letter to Marcellin on the interpretation of the psalms. 6cf. Ambrosio, Explanatio Psalmorum XII. 7cf. Saint Augustine, Commentary on the Psalms, 3 v. (São Paulo: Paulus, 1997). 8cf. ? Preface to the Book of Psalms 1545? Summaries of Psalms and reasons for translation? Works by Frei Martin Luther in the Psalms presented to Wittenberg theology students? and? The seven psalms of penance? Martin Luther? Selection of works, c. 8: biblical interpretation, principles (São Leopoldo: Sinodal & Porto Alegre: Concórdia, 2003), p. 33-37, 224-233, 331-492, 493-548. 9 Jean Calvin, The Book of Psalms, v. 1 (São José dos Campos: Fiel, 2009), p. 26-27. 10 Lewis Bayly, The practice of piety (São Paulo: PSE, 2010), p. 225-226. 11 Eugene Peterson, A long obedience in the same direction (São Paulo: Cultura Cristã, 2005), p. 150. 12 Ambrósio, De officiis ministrorum I, 20, 88: PL 16, 50, in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation. 13 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Praying with the Psalms (Curitiba: Encontrão, 1995), p. 14-15. 14 For this entire section, cf. Eugene Peterson, The spiritual vocation of the pastor (São Paulo: Mundo Cristão, 2006), p. 75-110. 15 For more information on the method of biblical studies known as form criticism (Formgeschichte), and its application to the study of the psalms, cf. William S. LaSor, David A. Hubbard, and Frederic W. Bush, Introduction to the Old Testament, p. 467-478 and Derek Kidner, Psalms: Introduction and Commentary, v. 1 (São Paulo: Vida Nova, 1992), p. 18-29. 16 Raymond B. Dillard and Tremper Longman III, Introduction to the Old Testament (São Paulo: Vida Nova, 2005), p. 207, 217.
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