Transcript

DiscerningHearts.com in cooperation with the Oblates of the Virgin Mary presents Praying the Liturgy of the Hours with Father Timothy Gallagher.

Father Gallagher was ordained in 1979 as a member of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary.

He obtained his doctorate from Gregorian University and has dedicated many years to an extensive ministry of retreats, spiritual direction, and teaching about the spiritual life.

Father Gallagher has numerous books published by the Crossroad Publishing Company on the spiritual teachings of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and on the life of the venerable Bruno Lantieri, founder of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, as well as Praying the Liturgy of the Hours: A Personal Journey.

Father Gallagher is featured on the EWTN series Living the Discerning Life and Finding God in All Things.

Praying the Liturgy of the Hours with Father Timothy Gallagher.

I'm your host, Chris McGreggor.

Now, what I'd like to do next is just choose one of the 150 Psalms and look at it as we pray it in the Liturgy of the Hours, just to give a feel of what it can mean to, to pray a psalm.

And I've chosen Psalm 57, which is the, a psalm also for morning prayer.

This is Thursday in week one of the breakdown over the four-week cycle of the Liturgy of the Hours.

Now, when the church in the Liturgy of the Hours invites us to pray a psalm, she gives us a number of helps.

We, we get more than just the simple text of the psalm itself.

Actually, I suppose I should say that, um, it would be helpful for any who are, are listening to actually read the text of Psalm 57.

If the format in which we're listening permits, you could even put the podcast or whatever it might be on pause for a moment, get the Bible or online and read the text of Psalms 6- 57, or otherwise maybe after we've finished, you just pick it up and read it.

Would be helpful to do.

But the church gives us three very brief but very rich helps to introduce us into the psalm.

Now, you know that feeling we have at times when we wanna pray with a text in scripture, let's say the raising of Lazarus in the New Testament, that there are elements there that some of which we understand and others that we're not quite sure of, of the meaning.

And so, it helps to have someone explain a little bit to us, not pages and pages of, uh, academic kinds of reflections, but short and simple spiritual introductions into the scripture.

And the church provides that in the Liturgy of the Hours, and there are always three of them.

So the first is an antiphon.

There's, the, the church pulls out something from the text of the psalm and puts it at the beginning before we even begin the text of the psalm, which gives us an insight into why we're praying this psalm.

And in this particular case, the antiphon is this, Awake lyre and harp.

With praise, let us awake the dawn.

So you can see again the morning quality of the, of this hour of the Liturgy of the Hours.

And this is actually from a verse toward the end of this psalm which reads, Awake my soul.

Awake lyre and harp, harp.

I will awake the dawn.

So the church is letting us know that the reason we're praying this psalm, this particular psalm, um, this morning is because it's a, it's a prayer at dawn.

It's a morning prayer, an invitation to praise God as the day begins.

Then we get a title for the psalm, and the title this, in this particular case reads Morning Prayer and Affliction.

The title of the psalm always gives us the literal original meaning of the psalm.

The person who wrote this prayer, who prayed this prayer, prayed this as a prayer in the morning as the darkness of night and all the heaviness of heart spiritually associated in this case with that for him breaks as dawn just begins.

The sun begins to rise and this becomes a time of new hope for him.

But this is a morning prayer for in affliction.

This is a person whose heart is heavily weighed down as the day is beginning.

Can you see why it can be so helpful to praise the, pray these prayers as the day starts?

And then the third very short, um, help is the application to the New Testament of the psalm that we are about to pray.

And in this case, it's a very brief sentence from Saint Augustine who says, This psalm, Psalm 57, tells us of our Lord's passion.

Now, what's at work here as I've said before is always that in, in the New Testament we find the fulfillment of the Old.

And this is why we as Christians pray these prayers from the Old Testament so that, for example, in the Old Testament we have the, um, Passover lamb which finds its fulfillment in Christ who is the lamb whose blood is shed for our sins and through whose sacrifice on the cross our life is saved.

So, everything in the Old Testament, it has a richness in itself.

It's God's word.

It's God's action in the life of its, of His people but it all looks toward its fulfillment in the New Testament so that when we're praying the psalms, we always have that perspective on them as well.

And in this particular case, Saint Augustine invites us to see in this psalm as we pray it the sentiments and the prayer in the heart of Jesus on the eve of his passion.

So this would be a Holy Thursday evening prayer, for example, something like what have, might have been in the heart of Jesus when he prayed in the garden which now gives us a whole new richness as we go through this psalm.

So the psalm begins, Have mercy on me.

God, have mercy.

This, this is the cry of the heart immediately.

This is the first thing.

Have mercy on me.

Bring me your saving help.

My heart is crushed.

It, it's bowed down.

It's weighed .

come and have mercy on me, for in you, my soul has taken refuge.

In the shadow of your wings, I take refuge.

And m- the scriptures are filled with this, the hide me in the shelter of your wings, or as the mother hen protects her chicks in the safety under her outstretched wings.

So the person who is so oppressed and in such affliction cries out to God, I, I'm taking refuge in the shelter of your wings.

Have mercy on me.

In the shelter, shadow of your wings I take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by.

I call to God the Most High.

This is the God who is the Lord of the universe, for whom all things are possible.

I call to God the Most High, to God who has always been my help.

You've always been there before me, for me before in my life, Lord.

Be with me now.

May He send from heaven and save me and shame those who assail me.

And then he asks for two things.

May God send His truth, the light, the strength, the power of His word.

May God sp- send His truth and His love.

That is, that word become action, the saving intervention of God in my life.

My soul lies down among lions.

And it, it's an image of utter helplessness.

So the, his enemies who are oppressing him are figured here as, as lions.

These are ravening wild beasts who, who surround him.

My soul lies down.

He's helpless.

He has no energy to resist them.

And so he f- falls prostrate on the ground, surrounded by the ravening beasts who want to take his life.

Spiritually, it's the image of the person who is utterly overwhelmed by the burden, by the oppression, by the struggle, and feels completely helpless and can only turn to God.

My soul lies down among lions who would devour the sons of men.

And the image is filled out, their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongue a sharpened sword.

And then for the first time now, we have the refrain, and it's a cry from the heart.

O God, arise above the heavens.

You see the dawning sun as the sun rises at the beginning of the day.

And, and the rising of the sun becomes for him the image and the prayer that God will arise in, above the heavens in his own life.

May your glory shine on earth.

Uh, for him, the glory of the Lord is the Lord's saving intervention in his life.

As the sun is rising, as we're making this prayer in the morning, Lord, in the same way, let your glory shine on the earth.

Let your glory, your saving love, and help come to me as I lie so helpless here, oppressed by my enemies.

They laid a snare for my steps.

My soul was bowed down.

They dug a pit in my path.

So we have a second image of the oppression of his enemies.

Now they're hunters, and they've laid snares.

They've dug pits for him to fall into and be lost.

But this, this is the point now where everything changes in the Psalm.

They dug a pit in my path, but fell in it themselves.

Their own snares have caught them.

God's saving intervention has now come into his life.

Now, as he prays this Psalm, it's hard to know whether he is praying this because God has already intervened or whether he is so confident now that God is going to hear this prayer that he can already rejoice in God's saving intervention even before it's happened.

It makes me think of the phrase that, uh, Venerable Solanus Casey would say so often, Thank God ahead of time.

You know, it might be something like that.

But his heart now lifts up as he experiences or in great confidence now knows God is going to intervene on his behalf.

My heart is ready, O God.

My heart is ready.

I will sing your praise.

He's no longer prostrate, helpless on the ground.

He's standing on his feet and his heart is filled with joy and ready to praise God.

Awake my soul.

Awake lyre and harp.

I will awake the dawn.

This was the antiphon that the church pulled out and wanted us to see in this morning prayer.

I will thank you, Lord, among the peoples.

Among the nations, I will praise you.

I want all the people in the world to know about your saving intervention in my life and to join me in praising you.

For your love reaches to the heavens and your truth to the skies.

Those two things that he asked for have been given, God's truth and God's love.

And then the Psalm finishes with the repetition of the refrain, O God, arise above the heavens.

May your glory shine on earth.

And then we have little transitional helps at the end of the Psalm as well.

We pray the Glory Be so that all prayers of praise are lifted up into the praise of the Trinity.

There is what i- what's called a Psalm prayer.

This is a personal prayer that we can choose to pray if we want at the end of the Psalm.

Lord, send your mercy and your truth to rescue us from the snares of the devil.

There's our enemy.

That's what we ask to be freed from as the day begins, and we will praise you among the peoples, and so on.

Now, that's the Psalm as the church presents it to us as a prayer at the beginning of the day.

Now, I've already alluded to the fact that the Psalm can be prayed on various levels, and I wanna specify that now.

There are three different levels on which we can pray any one of these Psalms, and we can choose one or the other freely as we feel the desire or the need as we're praying this Psalm.

So on a first level, we can pray this Psalm as Saint Augustine indicated to us, as an expression of Christ's prayer in his passion.

So I could, if I chose, let's say it's a, maybe it's during Lent and I'm a little more aware of this at this particular time.

Just maybe my heart is moved to want to enter into the heart of Jesus as He prays in his affliction.

So I could pray this entire psalm .

with Jesus as a window into the heart of Jesus, as something that brings me close to Jesus.

And so my soul lies down among lions.

Their teeth are spears and arrows.

We can see the arrest of Jesus.

We can see the trials.

They dug a pit in my path.

They laid a snare for my steps.

And then we also see the joy of the resurrection.

Awake my soul.

Awake lyre and harp.

I will awake the dawn.

I will thank You, Lord, among the people.

So this could be prayed very much, uh, as a prayer in Jesus, with Jesus, as an insight into the prayer of Jesus.

Secondly, we can pray this for the church on the level of the church and the world.

So we could pray this psalm for those who are suffering in the church, whose morning as they arise is filled with affliction, who do feel like they are lying down among lions and people whose tongue is a sharpened sword and snares are being laid for their steps.

So we could think, for example, of Christians who are oppressed for their faith and whose life may be in danger this day for their fidelity to Christ in different parts of the world.

And we can lift up this prayer on their behalf.

They are our brothers and sisters.

We're all members of the church, the mystical body of Christ.

And so I can pray this psalm, maybe something was in the news yesterday, you know, and it's very much on my heart of sufferings of Christians in one part or another of the world.

And so I may want to pray this psalm to the Lord on their behalf.

And so I give expression to the sentiments of their hearts and their desperate need, praying to the Lord on, on, on their behalf.

Oh God, arise above the heavens.

May Your glory shine on earth this day.

Defend them.

Lift them up from the pit.

Save them.

This could also be people that I know.

Maybe there's a family member who is going through a real trial right now, or several family mem- uh, members, or just friends, parishioners that I know whose lives are filled with struggle and burden right now.

And so I bring them into my prayer and I pray this psalm as a morning prayer in affliction, and a cry for God's help and His mercy and saving intervention with these people, this person or these people.

Maybe it's, uh, a spouse.

Maybe it's, uh, a son or a daughter, a parent, a cousin, an uncle, a fellow worker on, on my job, or someone in the parish, and so forth.

Or it could simply be for the world, suffering people throughout the world, so many people who will go hungry today, who will be abandoned and left alone.

And I lift up the Again, I think as we say this, we can see the power of liturgical prayer and what it means to pray this together with the church and the world and for the church and the world.

So this is a second level on which I may choose to pray this psalm.

And then the third level would be personal.

It may be that as I rise this morning, there is affliction in my heart and burden, and I feel like my soul is lying down among lions, and I feel like a pit has been laid before my steps in some way, and I feel helpless, unable to, to carry the burden.

And so this becomes my morning prayer and affliction to the Lord.

Oh God, arise above the heavens.

Let Your glory shine on earth.

Intervene in my life as I will need You today.

So any psalm that we pray can be prayed on any one of those three levels, and we have the freedom within the liturgy to pray it as our heart desires.

So this is just a short window by looking at one psalm into what it can mean to pray the psalms, these psalms that are the, the real heart and center of the Liturgy of the Hours.

We go back to, uh, a phrase that we encountered in a previous conversation in which the church and the Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy called the faithful to a full and active participation.

And when you had just g- gone over the three different levels, I couldn't help but thinking of what I've heard in, in the Liturgy of the Eucharist so often throughout my life, through Him, with Him, and in Him.

And those three manners of which you spoke of, they kind of brought it to life because it's You can pray it through Christ as He sees it, you can pray it with Him as He intercedes for the world, and you can pray it in Him as I turn over wherever my heart might be to allow Him to minister to that through this, His sacred Word.

I think that's a lovely connection between, uh, a prayer in the Mass and the prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours.

They're both liturgy.

And so those connections and bonds are gonna be there.

We're gonna see them over and over again.

But that's a lovely link to these specifically three, uh, ways of praying or approaches to praying any one of the psalms.

And it does point out what you've just said, both as that prayer is prayed in the Mass or the application, you know, just made now to the Liturgy of the Hours, that all prayer is through Christ and in Christ and with Christ.

He is our mediator to the Father.

As I said earlier, the, the, the Spirit who comes to the aid of our weakness when we pray because we don't know how to pray as we ought.

In Romans 8, Paul tells us, Everyone who prays knows the truth of that.

I don't As much For all the years of prayer in my life, for all the instruction in prayer, still on some deep level, I don't really know how to pray as I ought.

I don't know what I should pray for.

But I'm not alone.

The Spirit comes to the aid of my weakness, and we know that too by experience when we pray faithfully day by day.

And what the Spirit does then is to take our prayer with all its limitations to the, the one mediator with the Father, to Christ, who then enriches our prayer by integrating it with the beauty and richness and power of his own, and brings it to the Father.

So that is always happening whenever we're praying, but that's a lovely way to see it explicitly in the Liturgy of the Hours.

There are so many of us who have a desire to go deeper into our prayer, and we want to seek out another resource here, another resource there, maybe this book or maybe that book.

But yet, there is something that i- i- the church right here in front of us has provided.

You're- you're seeking, it can be found right here.

Well, that's why I've called the Liturgy of the Hours before a sleeping giant.

We have this marvelous, marvelous resource in the church, quietly, but since the Council over and over again says, Think about this, consider this.

Consider saying a part or two of it, yes, in a way that fits with the circumstances of your life.

But consider it because there is such unique richness in the Liturgy of the Hours.

All forms of prayer are beautiful.

There's never any competition among forms of prayer.

People have become even great saints with all forms of prayer.

So thank God for every s- every devotion, for the rosary, for every form of prayer we can ever imagine.

But having said that, the church's heart always willingly looks toward liturgical prayer because of the kind of richness that we've just seen, you know, as we go through praying from the Word of God and in harmony with the whole of the church and for the church, uh, as we have it in the Liturgy of the Hours.

It, as you were talking about imagining at one point that Christ in reflecting, in pondering, in praying with the Psalms, also it could be said that even the Blessed Virgin Mary, E- E- Saint Paul.

I mean, just, there's an infinite variety of ways to enter into this.

In those times when we may feel, This h- holds nothing more for me, or, This is dry, i- i- wa- isn't it Saint Ignatius who taught us that's the time you pray with more fervor?

Don't stop, keep going.

Well, I think it's helpful that you raise that, Chris, because in praying the Liturgy of the Hours, just like in any other prayer that, um, be it the rosary or a daily Mass, um, any kind of prayer, Lectio Divina, Ignatian contemplation, there will always be on the affective level, the emotional level, there- there will always be ups and downs.

Some days our hearts will be warmly and richly engaged, and will feel the nourishment of the prayer, and at other times will feel it less.

What is important, as, uh, Teresa of Avila once said, that there's only finally one thing necessary to have a growing life of prayer.

And this after the wealth of counsel that she gives.

But only fin- finally it comes down to one thing, and that is just be faithful to prayer.

Just never stop praying.

And if you do that, what we experience is that through the tapestry of these ups and downs of prayer, something really grows and deepens, and our relationship with God is nourished and we grow closer to God.

We grow more able to live the Gospel of Jesus in the world, to live our vocations and love and serve the Lord.

Well, the same thing's going to be true of the Liturgy of the Hours.

So there'll be days, I mean, if I'm honest, there are days when I pray the Liturgy of the Hours that, um, I'm distracted.

It's a bit of an effort even to pick up the book and- and, uh, pray the next part of it.

Um, there may be little flashes of things that catch me.

And then other days, my heart is right there with a lot of it, you know, and really sees it and consciously takes something from it.

But I also know very much by experience that just doing this day after day, year after year, something very, uh, rich and solid grows out of this.

So I think it's good for us to be realistic about this.

There's also a- a learning curve in any form of prayer.

People who pray the rosary, for example, who have prayed it for decades in their lives, 30 years after they began, pray it very differently from when they first prayed it.

It probably becomes increasingly simplified and more and more contemplative, and draws them in more and more.

The same thing will happen with the Liturgy of the Hours, uh, as we pray it, yeah.

And also, uh, the crafting of the insertion of an antiphon or a reflection or how even the Psalm is broken up, it's not done, and I think it maybe needs to be said by an editor somewhere in a- in a office building, but it's done through careful reflection and prayer of the church.

I mean, you've mentioned that the church gives us this.

It goes through so much discernment and time before it's actually presented to the people of God.

That's been true throughout the centuries of the church, as the church has renewed the form of the Liturgy of the Hours down through the centuries.

For example, the Council of Trent did that, um, in a lovely way.

We're blessed, uniquely I'd say, after 1,500 years, to live in a time when a council has done that again, and done it, uh, very, very beautifully, at the cost of immense labors of those who were chosen to be a part of, uh, the- the process.

A great many were involved, and you had, um, people who were deeply knowledgeable about Scripture, about, uh, the church fathers, about the liturgy, theology, and they came together over a number of years.

This was completed, I think, in 1970 .

and the council concluded in 1965.

So over those years a, an enormous amount of work went into this and we have now this very accessible form of the Liturgy of the Hours.

When I first entered the seminary, uh, I entered in '72 and it was in that period the, the, the new form of the Liturgy of the Hours was complete in the original Latin, but it was not yet translated and available in the various languages.

In English, we only finally had the complete Liturgy of the Hours in 1976.

The volumes were coming out kind of year by year.

So I entered in that little space betw- when the old was no longer in place, but the new was not yet really available.

So for my first two years in the seminary, we used the only English version we had, which was the, the English translation of the old divine office before the council.

And I've always been glad that I had the experience of praying the office in the way that it was before the council, because it shows me the richness, th- that was beautiful obviously, but it shows me the richness of what's been done in the, uh, renewal of the Liturgy of the Hours.

We're, we're very, very blessed now to live in a time when we have a very accessible, and if you, if this word exists, a very prayable -

Mm-hmm.

form of the Liturgy of the Hours.

It's a little shorter now than it was, uh, before the council.

So for example, morning prayer before the council had five Psalms, and now it has the three that we just mentioned.

And the council consciously did that aware of the conditions of, of life in the modern world today.

And also by making it a, a little shorter to allow us to spend a little more time in contemplation and meditation of the content because we wouldn't be just rushing.

You know, there's still four more Psalms to get through, you know?

So I've always been very grateful for that, that we really have a very, very accessible form.

I, I, I would say, I think beyond doubt if we look at the Liturgy of the Hours over the past 15 centuries, this is by far the most accessible form of it.

There's still so much more to have conversations about and to break open.

But in closing this particular segment, uh, a-a-any final thoughts, Father Gallagher?

Well, let me invite, uh, those who have shared this with us to take Psalm 57, to pick up the Bible or look it up online.

And in the light of the presentation the Liturgy of the Hours makes of this Psalm and what we've said about it, not just to pray it.

And maybe if we feel so motivated to take another Psalm, maybe Psalm 27, The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom should I fear?

Or the lovely Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want, and just taste what it can mean to pray the Psalms.

Thank you so much, Father Gallagher.

Thank you, Chris.

You've been listening to Praying the Liturgy of the Hours with Father Timothy Gallagher.

To hear and/or to download this discussion along with many others, go to discerninghearts.com.

This has been a production of discerninghearts.com.

I'm your host, Chris McGregor.

Join us next time for Praying the Liturgy of the Hours with Father Timothy Gallagher.