Summa Minutiae

A summary of Advent

Advent begins tonight with evening prayer from the liturgy of the hours. The Introit for Mass tomorrow is taken from the first verses of Psalm 25[24] - "To Thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul". If you continue reading the entire Psalm, you'll find a summary of Advent, the life of Christ, and our Christian life, all the way from the mission of John the Baptist with the Psalm's "make me to know Thy ways, O Lord; teach me Thy paths," echoed by St Matthew's quotation of Isaiah, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."

To thee, O LORD, I lift up my soul.
O my God, in thee I trust,
let me not be put to shame;
let not my enemies exult over me.
Yea, let none that wait for thee be put to shame;
let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

Make me to know thy ways, O LORD;
teach me thy paths.
Lead me in thy truth, and teach me,
for thou art the God of my salvation;
for thee I wait all the day long.
Be mindful of thy mercy, O LORD, and of thy steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.
Remember not the sins of my youth, or my transgressions;
according to thy steadfast love remember me,
for thy goodness' sake, O LORD!

Good and upright is the LORD;
therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
He leads the humble in what is right,
and teaches the humble his way.
All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness,
for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.

For thy name's sake, O LORD,
pardon my guilt, for it is great.
Who is the man that fears the LORD?
Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose.
He himself shall abide in prosperity,
and his children shall possess the land.
The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him,
and he makes known to them his covenant.
My eyes are ever toward the LORD,
for he will pluck my feet out of the net.

Turn thou to me, and be gracious to me;
for I am lonely and afflicted.
Relieve the troubles of my heart,
and bring me out of my distresses.
Consider my affliction and my trouble,
and forgive all my sins.

Consider how many are my foes,
and with what violent hatred they hate me.
Oh guard my life, and deliver me;
let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in thee.
May integrity and uprightness preserve me,
for I wait for thee.
Redeem Israel, O God,
out of all his troubles.

--Psalm 25[24]

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Psalms and the Our Father

Lisa is part of a Lenten bible study in our parish that's following this book by Kevin Perrotta. In it he looks at the phrases of the Our Father and chooses two Psalms to accompany each one. I haven't looked at his choices, but it's an interesting approach.

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12th century Latin-Hebrew psalter

Ain't this beautiful?

Even more old manuscript Bibles here.

Uh oh - I've gone manuscript crazy. Have you ever seen such beautiful books? Here are some from the Bodleian Library collection.

And here you may page through a 15th-century psalter. Now I'll stop for the night.

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In praise of the compositors of the Computensian Polyglot

Check out this post about a Bible typeset in Latin, Greek and Hebrew around 1515 A. D. As the poster says,

This is scholarship and typesetting that was going on in the early 1500s. I am continually amazed at what was accomplished just in this edition (let alone other typesetting and scholarship from the era), and that in just a few years (1514-1517? By hand? Whoa!). Here we are today, with our computers and our desktop publishing systems ... and we couldn't set something like the above without a whole lot of complaining, grudging and whining, once we got past the Hebrew font issue and figured out a hack around the interlinear portion.

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Our vulgate?

I recently decided against buying Benedictine Daily Prayer for two reasons: less importantly, it's Yet Another Psalm Arrangement to learn; more importantly, it's all-inclusive, all the time: new Grail inclusive Psalms and the NRSV. On further reflection, perhaps this new fad of gender-inclusive and number-challenged language is our new vulgate - the vulgar language of the masses parallel to that which Jerome, that agonizingly tasteful Ciceronian, used in his translation of the scriptures.

I'm still not buying it, though :-)

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Bono on the Psalms

Not bad! Psalms as the first blues songs is the catchiest insight I've read in a while.

Bono makes the case that the Psalms were the first blues songs. “Abandonment and displacement are the stuff of my favorite psalms. The Psalter may be a font of gospel music, but for me it’s despair that the psalmist really reveals the nature of his special relationship with God. Honesty, even to the point of anger. ‘How long, Lord? Wilt thou hide thyself forever?’ (Psalm 89), or ‘Answer me when I call’(Psalm 5).� Bono also noted his affection for the psalmist David, who he referred to as the “Elvis of the Bible.� The singer writes, “That the Scriptures are brim full of hustlers, murderers, cowards, adulterers and mercenaries used to shock me. Now it is a source of great comfort.�

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Merton on Augustine on the Psalms

Here's an excerpt from Fr Louis Merton's little book on the Psalms:

St. Augustine adds that God has taught us to praise Him, in the Psalms, not in order that He may get something out of this praise, but in order that we may be made better by it. Praising God in the words of the Psalms, we can come to know Him better. Knowing Him better we love Him better, loving Him better we find our happiness in Him. ... In them we learn to know God, not by analyzing various concepts of His divinity, but by praising and loving Him. ... Hence, St. Augustine concludes, our eternal life of praise must begin here on earth in time. All our thoughts, our "meditation" in this life should center on the praise of God "because the eternal exultation of our future life will be the praise of God, and no one can be fitted for that future life who has not exercised himself in praise in this present life." (pp. 12-14)

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In a nutshell

Have you noticed how the first phrase of the first verse of the first Psalm sets up the essential story of salvation history from Adam to Christ?

Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum...

Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly...

From Augustine's commentary on Psalm 1:

1. “Blessed is the man that hath not gone away in the counsel of the ungodly� (ver. 1). This is to be understood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Man. “Blessed is the man that hath not gone away in the counsel of the ungodly,� as “the man of earth did,� (1 Corinthians 15:47) who consented to his wife deceived by the serpent, to the transgressing the commandment of God.

Posted by Bill White at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ouch

Kathleen Norris, in her marvelous Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, takes a hard swipe at the Revised Standard Version, noting its "Star Wars talk" in Gabriel's greeting of Mary: "Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!". This really does compare poorly with Mr. Riddle's beloved King James: "Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women." Now that's how you talk to a queen.

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Commentaries on the Psalms have been updated

here, and given a lengthy descriptive title, "The Commentaries of John Paul II and Benedict XVI on the Psalms and Canticles of Lauds (Morning Prayer) and Vespers (Evening Prayer) from the Liturgy of the Hours".

As I mention here, if you know of any other commentaries on the Psalms that are available on the net, please let me know so I can list them.

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