WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO PRAY WITH THE PSALMS?

It is important because the Psalms:

• are God’s words addressed to man, and man’s words addressed to God

• are prayers of the People of God: Christ associates to Himself the Church His Bride; they are public prayers, in which the Church is especially involved

• contain the entire infinite range of questions and situations, in which people of every age and country find themselves

• are an expression of the varied feelings of the human soul: joy, recognition, thanksgiving, love, tenderness, enthusiasm, as well as intense suffering, recrimination, request for help and justice, which explode at times in anger and cursing. In the Psalms, the human being fully finds himself

• make one live the experience of God’s closeness in the daily situations of human existence, which produced them and are a reflection of them

• offer various intentions of prayer: to glorify God, to thank Him, to express confidence, to invoke His help, to ask for forgiveness, to implore Him to listen to one’s prayer

• offer expressions for the so-called “ejaculatory prayer” – which derives from the Latin word iaculum, that means ‘dart’ or ‘arrow’ – with which one indicates very brief psalmodic expressions that could be recited during the day, like brief but efficacious conversations with God, as well as being “launched” almost like burning, heated tips against temptation, for instance.

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