Praying the Psalms

An ancient form of prayer in the Church, especially among monastics, has been the use of the psalms as prayers. Thomas Merton said, "the Church loves the Psalms because in them she sings of her experience of God, of her union with the incarnate word, of her contemplation of God in the mystery of Christ."

Perhaps it is the contemplation and meditation that attracts me to the Psalms. Using the Psalms in prayer is a new experience for me. But using them, as prayers themselves, has occurred to me before. I have not used them as such until quite recently. Here is one of my favorites:

Psalms 139 (RSV),

O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11 If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,"
12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them-- they are more than the sand; I come to the end-- I am still with you...
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.
Amen