PSALMS: That Lead Us Into Lent

If we keep vigil in the Church, David comes first, last and central. If early in the morning we want songs and hymns, first, last and central is David again. If we are occupied with` funeral assemblies . . . or if virgins sit at home and spin, David is first, last and central. In cities and churches ... in village and market.... desert ... uninhabitable land ... In monasteries ... in convents . . ., David is first, last and central.  (St. John Chrysostom - On the Psalms)
These words of St. John Chrysostom demonstrate that the Psalms occupy a unique and all-encompassing place in the personal and churchly life of Christians. The Psalms are a record in verse and song of God's mighty acts in the creation and salvation of man and the world. They are a kind of personal prayer book and an instrument which the Christian, as Chrysostom says in another place, is to take up continuously, especially in his struggle against sin and evil: "You will find the book filled with countless blessings ... much comfort . . . many havens . . . much relief" (Homily XXVIII on Romans).
Psalms are used extensively in the worship of the Church, and their particular placement determines much in the Church's liturgical order. For example, the structures of Vespers and Matins, the principal offices in the Church's daily cycle of worship, are defined by the arrangement of certain appropriately selected Psalms in a permanently fixed order. In the forms of prokeimena, verses with Alleluia, antiphons and special verses chanted at the Little Entrance and the reception of Holy Communion during the Divine Liturgy, the Psalms introduce nearly every liturgical reading from the Bible and announce the central theme of almost every feastday of the liturgical year.
Our Saviour made the Psalms His own words as He uttered them from the Cross (cf. Psalms 22, 31 and 69), and within the liturgy of the Church they remain that "still small voice" (cf. 1 Kings 19:12) to this day: speaking to us from the tomb on Holy Saturday through the words of Psalm 119, burning within us at the Divine Liturgy "to open our minds to the understanding of the Gospel teaching" through the pre-Gospel Prokeimenon and Alleluia verses (cf. Prayer before the Gospel at the Divine Liturgy and also the conversation on the road to Emmaus, Luke 24:45), and proclaiming the saving realities which we enter into and celebrate in each fast and feast-"Blessed arethe people who know the festal shout" (Ps. 89:15).
Thus we begin to see the very special function which the Psalms have in the personal and churchly life of Christians. To those who have "ears to hear," they speak as the voice of Christ Himself, being "first, last and central," and lead them in all that they say and do. They serve as a means to the acquisition of that necessary singularity of vision of which Christ spoke when He said: "If your eye be single, your whole body shall be full of light" (Matt 6:22). The possessor of such a vision has a mind and heart which are alert to "the one thing needful" (Luke 10:42). He has gained ''Wisdom"; He knows the implications of the liturgical exclamation: "Let us attend!"
PSALM 137
Let us now "attend" and attempt to gain "wisdom" from those particular Psalms which are used by the Church to lead us into Great Lent: Psalm 137 and Psalm 69. The first of the two is popularly known by its initial words: "By the waters of Babylon." It is chanted at resurrectional Matins during a brief period of three Sundays immediately prior to the beginning of the Great Fast: from the Sunday of the Prodigal Son through the Sunday which commemorates the Expulsion of Adam from Paradise. The theme of both the period and the Psalm is the same - exile and the longing to return.
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our lyres.
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you.
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!
The great wisdom of the Church is shown in the fact that this one selected Psalm, when heard attentively, sets forth all the fundamental purposes and goals of Great Lent: recognition - of a condition of life which can only be described as exile and cursedness; remembrance - of an innocence, an ineffable beauty and goodness which have been squandered; longing - for a lost homeland which remains "above my highest joy," and which the liturgical hymns call the "homeland of my heart's desire." On the one hand there is Babylon, the city whose noise and incessant bustle are but a veneer covering a paralyzing disharmony, an impotence and dumbness, and on the other there is Jerusalem, the city where all the nations are brought together into a single household of faith, a living temple - Zion - for the living God, to glorify in one voice thejoyful presence in their midst of the incarnate Word of God Himself. Thesearethe Biblical symbolsof the ultimate choices which face man:
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live (Deut. 30:19).
A reawakening as from sleep, a coming to oneself and a powerful desire to return to one's true home- these are the simple and self-evident analogues which the Church uses to show us the way to complete the course of the Fast and see the holy day of Pascha.
But when he came to himself he said.... I will arise and go to my father... (the Prodigal Son, Luke 15:1718).
The last verses of Psalm 137 merit particular attention. They are frequently a source of confusion, and some even contend that they are inappropriate for use in the Church.
O daughter of Babylon, you wretched one!
Blessed is he who shall requite you for what you have done to us!
Blessed is he who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the stone! Alleluia!
The return from exile is not a smooth transition but a long and difficult pilgrimage. It is a life-or-death struggle not merely to overcome the weakness of flesh and blood (a little fasting, some prayer - the things with which we usually associate Lent), but "against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph. 6:12), i.e., against the wretched daughter of Babylon and all her demonic children - who contend for nothing less than the heavenly place, the divinely created soul of man himself. The warfare in this struggle is daily, and St. Paul instructs the Christians in Ephesus to "take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day.... and above all ... the shield of faith, with which you can quench the fiery darts of the evil one" (Eph. 6:13-16). Great Lent is the occasion for our re-entrance into this pilgrimage and struggle concerning our eternal destiny. It is also the time for the rekindling of faith in the advent of that final day of reckoning, when the daughter of Babylon and all her children ("the fiery darts of the evil one") shall be utterly annihilated ("dashed against the stone! Alleluia!). This day has already dawned in the victorious suffering, death and resurrection of Christ which, as we celebrate Pascha, is the culmination and crown of victory given by God to those who have "completed the course of the Fast." Thus the final verses of the Psalm become comprehensible within the vision of Christian life as pilgrimage, warfare, vigilance, faith and a joyful foretaste within the Church of that decisive victory over sin and death which God has won in Christ.
PSALM 69
The second Psalm used by the Church to lead us into Great Lent is Psalm 69: the Prokeimenon for the Vespers of Forgiveness (Cheesefare Sunday evening). It is chanted just before the lenten vestments, melodies, prostrations and other elements which set the atmosphere and tone of lenten worship are introduced. It is indeed the "festal shout" (in the early centuries of the Church there was a certain interchangeability in the use of the words "feast" and "fast"), the announcement of the beginning of Great Lent itself.
Turn not away thy face from thy child for I am afflicted, hear me, speedily draw near to my soul, and deliver it.

Thy salvation, O God, will encompass me. Let the poor see and be glad.
Seek God, and your soul shall live.
These are the selected verses of Psalm 69 contemporarily used as the Prokeimenon.
While reading the verses of the Psalm and meditating on them in solitude, one is struck by the similarity of their themes to the themes of the verses of Psalm 137 noted earlier. There is the prodigal child who is perishing, and the remembrance of the face of the father. There is the affirmation that life itself is found only in the seeking after God.
Something else, something very different, however, is heard when the Psalm is chanted liturgically in the Church - at the end of a long day, at the midpoint of a Sunday evening Vespers, in a church filled with much light and many pensive faces, on the threshold of a long lenten season which all know will surely be filled with innumerable trials and much pettiness and whose outcome in a personal sense remains unknown, and only minutes before plunging into a community rite of forgiveness whose staggering inplications yet free gift of overwhelming joy shatter every reduction of Christianity to the "helpful" and the "comfortable." A cry suddenly rings out: "I am afflicted." My plight, my fall and exile from our Father's house is an affliction: something so horrible and pervasive that it touches every aspect of my existence. I have done much more than fail to keep a "church rule" here or there. I am in dire need and misfortune, in grievous trial and suffering; in a state of calamity, persecution, pain and being lost. These are the meanings of affliction. And the affliction is my affliction, for in the uniqueness of my life and its possibilities, no one has sinned such as I have. No one but I can betray the special character of my vocation to serve God as He has created me to be in His plan "for us men and for our salvation."
Five times I join the others in this chant that "I am afflicted"; then the doors of the sanctuary are closed and the lights in the church are dimmed- Great Lent has begun. Then I begin to make the unsettling and discomforting realization that I am in need of much more than what is presented in the popular "spiritual schedule" for the lenten season: a little fasting, more prayer, some Bible reading, a trip to the confessional, increased Church attendance; perhaps a sacrificial offering or other good deed along the way. Before all this, I need a decisive and speedy deliverance. I am perishing. I need THE SAVIOR. "Out of the depths I cry to Thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my prayer" )Ps. 130:1). "Turn not away Thy face from Thy child . . ."
This realization and cry from the depths brings me to recognize further that I must join the ranks of the penitents. I must make a radical and all-encompassing change of mind and heart so that I may acquire the mind "which you have in ChristJesus" (Philip. 2:5) and be one in Spirit with the Father. In revaluating my attitude to all that I am and have, I know that I must reenter the holy community of the "poor (who) see and be glad", i.e., those who acknowledge that all that they are and all that they have is given to them as free gifts from God and who thereby live in that "glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom 8:21). It is by returning to such a fellowship - the Church - that I break out of the exile and self-imposed isolation which is Babylon. The broken, separated and isolated are delivered by being brought together in the one household of faith. This is the victory of Christ, Who in the Church has gathered together into one "the children of God that were scattered abroad" (John 11:52). Thus, the uniquely personal message of the verses from Psalm 69 ultimately points to a profound and repentful return to the fellowship of Church.
I will conclude this article with a reference to the one with whom I began: St. John Chrysostom. In yet another place on the previously cited Homily XXVIII in Romans he said: "Let the mouth sing, and the mind be instructed." And further on he adds: "Let us sing the Psalm of good deeds, that we may cast out the sin that is worse than the demon." He is instructing us that the singing of the Psalms, just like any of the other external lenten rituals we may perform, is not enough. In order that they may truly lead us into Lent, the Psalms must go from our mouth to our mind to our heart. They must be translated into deeds, into life itself, a life which finds its fulfillment in that inexhaustible abundance of joy and life which is given to us on that "day without evening of the Kingdom": Pascha.