This past week we had a network-wide clergy retreat for Diocesan clergy and aspirants (people in the discernment process towards ordination). The guest teacher was my good friend Fr. Ben Jefferies. He taught on the importance of the inner life, using the rule of St. Romuald as the syllabus and the Psalter as the application. I want briefly only to reflect on one point of his instruction, namely the dictum of Romuald that “in the Psalter there is one way only.”
“What does this mean?” we may ask. For although we inhabit the culture which produced and very much enjoyed Disney’s The Mandolorian and its similar-sounding refrain of “this is the way…” we are still very much confounded by such a notion.
The Psalter presents us a way, the way, of growing in communion with God. We take the songs of God on our lips, He sings in us and we sing in Him. His songs become our songs. Our lips, our imaginations, our words, are shaped by the Psalter.
In it the Lord teaches us to sing in joy, in truth, in lament, in rapture, in prophetic unction, in imprecation, in unity, in struggle, etc. No moment of the human life is left out of the scope of the Psalms. The Psalter therefore not only presents us a way of being holy, it gives us the way of being human.
When in the darkness of the night, we gather and softly chant the Psalms we keep watch with many late ages of Christianity, we are keeping the song alive. When we rise and chant them in the morning, we are those who awaken the dawn with our praise.
When we sing the Psalter we grow to know, understand, and love the Law of God. We find, following this way, that God is writing his law in us… not on stoney tables but on hearts of flesh —hearts softened by the Psalter.
We are out-of-tune, sin disharmonizes us. The Psalter tunes us to the music of Deep Heaven.
This is the way. Let us follow after the paths of the sheep who have come before us, and find along its meandering route green grass and good water. This is the way of the Shepherd of Israel. His sheep hear his voice, let us sing with him.