Emerging in the 1500’s as a Protestant and Reformed Catholic Church, the Anglican Church sought to renew the piety of the parishes.
In light of the spiritual poverty of the average parish priest, this was no small task.
Part of the remedy was to inaugurate daily times of morning and evening prayer in the parish.
The reading schedule provided for this commanded the monthly reading of the Psalms (they had been read weekly in the monasteries) and the reading of the Old Testament approximately annually and the New Testament (except for the Book of Revelation) approximately three times annually.
Reading and praying through the Psalms monthly coupled with other systematic Bible reading is still a worthy practice that keeps our lives centered on our Sovereign God instead of ourselves.
In the Church, the Psalms have always been particularly read as Christ’s own words of prayer which we appropriate for ourselves in and through Jesus. Surely we are not able to commend ourselves to God in prayer as “blameless” as the Psalms do unless Jesus has forgiven our sins! (And just as surely the original authors and singers of the Psalms knew themselves to be “blameless” only because God, in mercy, had provided atonement for them in anticipation of and through the saving work of Jesus Christ.)
Neither are we able to pray the imprecations of the Psalms (such as Psalm 109) without reference to Jesus who has told us to love our enemies and pray for them. Our undestanding of the imprecatory Psalms though is not complete until we understand that even God’s chastisements against evil people have an ultimate redemptive purpose as made clear in Psalm 83:16 “Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O LORD.” (ESV)
The enemies of God who persist in their rebellion will at the Last Day - if not in history - see judgment fall upon them. The Apostles, for example, understood Judas’ demise in terms of the fulfillment of such imprecatory Psalms (see Acts 1:20). Prayed redemptively in and through Jesus Christ, the imprecations of the Psalms are faithful prayers of the kingdom and not, as some have vainly imagined, “sub Christian”. But in our sinfulness we pray them to further our own vendettas only at the risk of calling the Lord’s chastisement down upon ourselves.
So let us be set free from our subjective, all too self-serving prayers, to pray with Jesus as He prays in the Psalms. We read through them quickly at the risk of failing to see our prayers inspired by them. If while you’re praying the Psalms your heart is fixated on the glory of God and you are lead to pour out your heart in prayer over a particular subject prompted by your reading, consider yourself the fortunate recipient of the instruction of the Holy Spirit as Martin Luther said and pray on instead of slavishly seeking to fit the Holy Spirit’s leading into your rigid schedule.
Day Morning Evening
1 1-5 6-8
2 9-11 12-14
3 15-17 18
4 19-21 22-23
5 24-26 27-29
6 30-31 32-34
7 35-36 37
8 38-40 41-43
9 44-46 47-49
10 50-52 53-55
11 56-58 59-61
12 62-64 65-67
13 68 69-70
14 71-72 73-74
15 75-77 78
16 79-81 82-85
17 86-88 89
18 90-92 93-94
19 95-97 98-101
20 102-103 104
21 105 106
22 107 108-109
23 110-113 114-115
24 116-118 119:1-32
25 119:33-72 119:73-104
26 119:105-144 119:145-176
27 120-125 126-131
28 132-135 136-138
29 139-141 142-143
30 144-146 147-150
From The Book of Common Prayer 1662
Related Link: Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible
