Monday, January 30, 2012

Chevra Tehillim

So good it is to have returned after a long absence to reading the whole Breviary daily! Strange to say, I seem always to best do this on holiday: all but part of Matins on Thursday, and all on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and now Monday, Deo gratias.

I love the psalms, old friends as they seem to me, and it is great to have the opportunity to recite all one hundred and fifty of them in a week.

Having just bought and read a book on Jewish liturgy, I was delighted to learn of a pious custom whereby Jews would meet together to pray the Tehillim or Psalms in a society called a Chevra Tehillim. Jewish prayer-books, to accommodate such needs, customarily divide the Psalter into seven portions, that such societies may recite the Psalter once a week, completing one division a day.

What a great idea, thought I - then I realized that, through my perseverance in the Breviary, I join with many many members of the new Israel of God the world over in a real spiritual union reciting the Psalms, inspired compositions of the Holy Ghost, whereby the Church, Christ's Body and Bride, praises God in the very words He has given us wherewith to praise Him, to the praise of His glory.

Hallelu-Jah: Alleluia! Praise the Lord!

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