The Paraclete Psalter

Over the past few years, many of us from low-church traditions have been introduced to practices from our liturgical cousins.  For example, we’ve become more aware of the church calendar and have incorporated fixed-hour prayer into our devotional practices.  The challenge for those of us who are newer to these practices is knowing how to engage them in ways that both honor the tradition and authentically represent our faith.  The Paraclete Psalter is a wonderful resource for this very thing.

A Psalter refers to any collection of the Psalms that has been organized, and often illustrated, for the prayer life of the church.  The Paraclete Psalter is used by The Community of Jesus for the fixed-hour prayers of their community.  It is, as I understand it, unique for its use of the New International Version as its translation for the Psalms.

The introduction to the Psalter includes a quote from Athanasius about the significance of daily praying the Psalms.  “For I believe that the whole of human existence, both the dispositions of the soul and the movements of the thoughts, has been measured out and encompassed in those very words of the Psalter.”  Central to the practice of fixed-hour prayer is the conviction that Scripture often has better ways to pray- for ourselves even- than we can think up on our own.

The Paraclete Psalter organizes the Psalms into four sets of daily prayers over a four week cycle, ensuring the over the course of a month all of the Psalms are prayed at least once.  I’ve had the chance to use this book for the past four weeks- though I’ve often missed the midday prayers- and cannot recommend it to you highly enough.  While other books of fixed-hour prayer incorporate non-Biblical prayers and hymns, the Psalter is almost exclusively made up of the Psalms.  Praying over these ancient words adds a rhythm and depth to our prayer life that is difficult to come up with on our own.