The Monthly Psalter: A Rookie Anglican Guide
One of Anglicanism’s most important contributions to Christian liturgy is the inclusion of the Book of Psalms, or Psalter, in the Book of Common Prayer. In the Prayer Book, the Psalter follows a 30-day cycle, assigning Psalms for both morning and evening each day. Every Anglican should try the discipline of praying through the Psalter each month, as it immerses us in both our liturgical heritage and a spiritual formation technique rooted in Scripture’s own worship book.
Indeed, my own experience is that the monthly recitation of the Psalter has been the biggest boon to my spiritual life as an adult. Every day, I encounter something that either mirrors my own situation or the situations of those for whom I am praying. Every month, the Psalms are further written in my mind and heart, cementing their eternal wisdom on my soul. I am a better Anglican, a better Christian, and a better man because of the Prayer Book’s monthly discipline of reciting the entire Psalter.
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What is the Psalter?
The Book of Psalms has often been called the hymnbook of God’s people. The Psalter consists of 150 poems or songs that cover a wide variety of topics and emotions, all within the context of worship. Psalms is the largest book in the Bible, and it sits at the center of most printed editions. The Swiss Reformer John Calvin called the Psalms “An Anatomy of All Parts of the Soul.” The Psalter is, both physically and figuratively, the heart of the Old Testament.
Furthermore, the Psalter has always been valued by the Church. The New Testament contains more quotations from the Book of Psalms than any other Old Testament book. St. Paul urges us to “be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19). And, as our Provincial Prayer Book notes, “Recitation of the Psalms is central to daily worship throughout the Christian Tradition.”
A Brief History of Christian Recitation of the Psalms
In his introduction to the Psalter from The Annotated Book of Common Prayer, 19th-century Anglican priest John Henry Blunt says that by Jesus’ day, the Temple was singing all 150 Psalms. While we don’t know exactly how the earliest Christians used the Psalms in their regular worship, different Christian communities soon developed various customs for dividing the Psalter into systems for regular recitation. By the early medieval period, the norm in the Latin-speaking West was to recite the Psalter each week, largely in monastic communities. They rarely kept this systematic ideal perfectly, however, as special selections for the Church’s many festivals often interrupted the order. Indeed, Blunt says that on most weeks, worshipers would have recited less than half the Psalms.
In the years leading up to the Reformation, various plans for simplifying the arrangement of the Psalms were proposed. By the publication of the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, Archbishop Cranmer had introduced a monthly arrangement of the Psalter, which has appeared in most editions of the Prayer Book ever since.
The Benefits of a Monthly Psalter
In his Preface to the first Book of Common Prayer, Archbishop Cranmer points to the regular, systematic reading of Scripture as the main point of his liturgical revisions. Public worship in the Daily Offices would provide the context for this regular and systematic reading of the Bible. Worshipers would read through most of the Old Testament each year. They were to read the New Testament (excluding Revelation) three times a year and recite the Psalter each month. While later editions of the Prayer Book often modified the Daily Office Lectionary readings, the monthly Psalter has remained a constant element of Prayer Book worship.
This monthly arrangement was designed to be more user-friendly for normal Christians than the weekly ideal from the medieval monastery. That is, since most of us are not monks or nuns living apart from the world, a monthly cycle of the Psalms is more practical for general use. Furthermore, splitting each day into morning and evening Psalms makes them even more bite-sized.
Why So Much of the Psalms?
But why would we want to recite through the Psalter so much more frequently than we read through the other books of the Bible? First, the Psalms are often directly applicable to us, personally. Because the Psalter covers such a wide variety of emotions, by reciting the Psalms every month, we are never more than a day or two from reciting a Psalm that fits our own situations. Again, Calvin’s analysis is insightful:
…for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to the life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated.
Second, the Psalms also teach us about our Lord Jesus. In his introduction to the Psalter, Blunt quotes St. Jerome as saying, “All the Psalms appertain to the Person of Christ.” He continues by quoting several other Church Fathers who say much of the same thing. The Christological interpretation of the Psalms has been the historic norm throughout the Church. Indeed, the main use of the many New Testament quotations of the Psalms is as prophecy or typology about Christ. So, not only do the Psalms meet us in our own emotional states, but they also point us to Jesus.
My Life in the Psalter
Since I was a child, the Psalms have been important to my Christian life. When I was a child, my parents bought me a cassette with some of the Psalms arranged and paraphrased as kids’ music. When I began learning guitar and writing music as a teenager, the Psalms were an immediate source of lyrical content. But it wasn’t until around fifteen years ago, when I adopted the Prayer Book’s monthly Psalm cycle as part of my daily devotions, that I really learned to love and understand the Psalms.
There are many days when I worry about personal or professional problems, and one of the Psalms of Lament pops up to help me express those frustrations to God and to assure me that God is listening. Many are the days when I’m thankful for an unexpected blessing, and a Psalm of Thanksgiving happens to be in my scheduled morning portion of Psalms. Many are the times when I’m praying for a suffering family member or parishioner and find that the Psalmists’ sufferings give voice to my prayers.
Part of the Greater Story
More importantly, through the Psalms, I find myself to be part of the great story of God’s people. When the Psalmists sing of Israel’s history, they frame it as their own story, not just that of their ancestors. And as I pray those same Psalms, God gives me a profound sense of being part of that same story. Indeed, that sense of belonging to the Commonwealth of Israel is far stronger through the monthly Psalms cycle than it was when I celebrated the Levitical Feasts and strove to keep the Law of Moses as a young adult in the Messianic Jewish movement.
This sense of belonging becomes stronger when I intentionally connect the Psalms to the life and ministry of Jesus, the True Israelite. Sometimes this connection is through meditating on the Psalms’ New Testament application, such as Psalm 22 foreshadowing the Cross and indeed being upon Jesus’ lips as he hung there. Other times, the connection is through seeing the ultimate fulfillment of the Psalms in the person and work of Jesus, such as Psalm 23 pointing to Christ as our Good Shepherd, or as Psalm 1 pointing to Christ as the ultimate Righteous Man.
How to Use the Monthly Psalter
The basic use of the Monthly Psalter is straightforward when using the Book of Common Prayer. Each section indicates the day of the month it is assigned to and whether it is for Morning or Evening Prayer. For example, the heading before Psalm 1 in the 2019 Book of Common Prayer says, “Day 1: Morning Prayer.” Before Psalm 6, we read, “Day 1: Evening Prayer.” Psalm 9 has the preface “Day 2: Morning Prayer.” And so on. This indicates that on the first day of the month, one would recite Psalms 1–5 for Morning Prayer and Psalms 6–8 for Evening Prayer. Furthermore, the footer on the odd-numbered pages in the Psalter section of the Prayer Book indicates the day of the month and the service the page refers to. Note: Midday Prayer and Compline have fixed selections of Psalms and are not part of the monthly cycle.
Longer and Shorter Months
Since the Psalter is divided into 30 days, people often wonder what to do in longer months or in February. For February, the answer is simply that we skip the additional days. For longer months, the 2019 Book of Common Prayer provides this rubric:
If there is a 31st day of the month, psalms are chosen from among the Songs of Ascents (120 to 134).
Book of Common Prayer (2019), pg. 735
Another custom is to either repeat the Psalms for the 30th day or the first day on the 31st day of the month.
Beginner Recommendations
Because the Psalms are the heart of the Daily Offices, I usually recommend that people recite the Psalms in their daily prayers, even if they cannot manage to pray the rest of the Office. In my experience, the Psalms (followed by the Scripture lessons) should be the primary focus of daily prayer. However, if you skip an Office, a day, or even several days, I do not recommend going back to catch up; just pick up from the current day and try to do better the next month!
Finally, for those who find the 30-day cycle too daunting, the 2019 Book of Common Prayer also includes an optional 60-day cycle for the Psalter in its Daily Office Lectionary tables (pages 734-763). While this is a good place to start, I strongly recommend working up to the 30-day cycle.
Conclusion
As I said above, I have found the regular recitation of the Psalms using the Prayer Book’s 30-day cycle to be the most beneficial spiritual practice of my adult life. It has shaped me as a Christian and as a man more than I can say. If you approach the Psalms from a perspective of using them to pray for yourself and others and as a tool to teach you about the Person of Christ, I believe you will find them to be a spiritual boon as well. I highly encourage you to give it a few months of practice and see what God does!
Image: photo by AlanMBarr from Getty Images, courtesy of Canva. Digitally edited by Jacob Davis.
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