Students Praying the Psalms: Intro
Intro
One of the things that Chapel Field strives to be is a place of prayer. We open the day in morning assembly in prayer. On Wednesday, Chapel opens and closes with prayer. Many classes do the same. For the most part, these prayers are extemporaneous. The vast majority of the modern evangelical West is familiar with almost nothing but extemporaneous prayers. Now there is nothing wrong with praying in this manner but the history of the Church is littered with the lovely and edifying practice of writing, reading, memorizing, and praying scripted or practiced prayers. Take for example the following prayer from St. Thomas Aquinas which I use to open many of my classes at Chapel Field:
“Ineffable Creator, Who out of the treasures of Your wisdom has appointed the hierarchies of Angels and set them in admirable order high above the heavens and has disposed the different portions of the universe in such marvelous array, You Who are called the True Source of Light and super-eminent Principle of Wisdom, be pleased to cast a beam of Your radiance upon the darkness of my mind and dispel from me the double darkness of sin and ignorance in which I have been born.
You Who makes eloquent the tongues of little children, fashion my words and pour upon my lips the grace of Your benediction. Grant me penetration to understand, capacity to retain, method and facility in study, subtlety in interpretation and abundant grace of expression.
Order the beginning, direct the progress and perfect the achievement of my work, You who are true God and Man and lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.”
It is hard to beat the beauty and luminosity of that prayer before one engages in a time of study.
Starting in the Fall of 2022 I started a project with my theology class. We were going to be extremely intentional in how we opened class in prayer. We were going to systematically and conscientiously pray through each and every one of the Psalms. Each day a student would open class in a scripted prayer that they had been working on and that prayer had to be structured around the Psalm that they were assigned.
The Psalms are the greatest prayer book, the greatest hymn book the Church has and we would all be served well to spend more time under their refining influence. So the assigned Psalm would have to be read and assimilated into the mind of the student so that they could use it as the skeletal backbone for their own prayer.
But the prayer assignment was more nuanced than that. My desire is to have students who begin to live in a sacramental manner. I want them to have eyes to see and ears to hear how the entire universe, although fallen, is shot through, pregnant with the mysterious, holy, burning love of the divine Triunity. So their prayers would be structured around a Psalm and they would need at least three references or allusions to the Psalm in their prayer. But they would also need to incorporate a reference or allusion to some other biblical text as well. Being that we are very much a singing school, each student had to include a reference or allusion to one of the great hymns of the Church. Lastly the prayer was required to include a reference or allusion to a piece of literature.
What follows then is Chapel Field’s first edition of Students Praying the Psalms. All 150 Psalms have been written, prayed in class, and now shared with you all—the broader Chapel Field community. I trust that they will be edifying and maybe even used in your own personal devotions.
In Christ, our intercessor and perfecter of our prayers,
Justin Chiarot, Theology Teacher
Prayer #1: Psalm 51
by Katherine Warner, 12th Grade
Heavenly Father, I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against You and You only have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight. 1 My soul feels empty by the absence of Your Spirit. My flesh tries to control my actions and my thoughts, and though I long for You, I grasp to man. “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” 2 But by Your forgiving grace and mercy I am made new.
O Lord, according to Your steadfast love and abundant mercy I ask You to blot out my transgressions. 3 Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. 4 I ask You to see the longing of my heart and hear the cries of my tongue. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. 5 Help me to watch and pray so that I may not enter into temptation, for the spirit indeed is willing, but my flesh is weak. 6 Although Satan should buffet and trials should come, Christ has regarded my helpless state and has shed His own blood for my soul. 7
O Lord, to “know myself is to know what I lack. It is to measure myself against truth and not the other way around.” 8 So help me to measure myself against Your truth, for by it I become whole. In Your holy name I pray, Amen.
1 Quotation from Psalm 51:3-4
2 Quotation from Psalm 51:5
3 Quotation from Psalm 51:1
4 Quotation from Psalm 51:7
5 Quotation from Psalm 51:12
6 Allusion to Matthew 26:41
7 Allusion to Hymn It Is Well with My Soul
8 Allusion to Flannery O'Conner, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
