The Psalms have been prayed or recited throughout the history of the Church. Today many continue to pray them – especially, and almost exclusively, priests and religious. But over the past fifty years there has been a growing interest in new forms and methods of prayer and also in spontaneous prayer. Many want to relate their prayer more to the reality of their daily lives. They sometimes find it difficult to relate the Psalms to the realities of today's world.

Ancient prayers
The Psalms come to us as ancient prayers from a very different culture. At times their language and images are so different from those we use today, for example Psalm 75 (RSV Bible; the numbering of the Psalms in the RSV is folowed in this article). We are unfamiliar with the historical events to which they refer and also with the life situation of those who composed them. Thus it is not easy to identify with these prayers, to recognize our own selves and our world in them. Therefore, the challenge for us is: how can we relate our praying of the Psalms to the reality of our daily life in today's world? How can we pray them more fruitfully so that our prayer is not just a matter of reading words that do not come from our own hearts?

Authors
True prayer must be connected with the realities of our lives, that is, with the reality of our present experience of God and our relationships with others.

In order to identify more easily with the Psalms, it is necessary to understand how they were related to the situation of those who composed them and to the situation out of which the people of Israel prayed them. We have to come to see human life itself as the true source of all those prayers. There are excellent Psalms and also Psalms which are very difficult. It is good to select the Psalms we find helpful.

This book of Psalms was fashioned (in the Hebrew language) over a long period of time, beginning probably in the time of King David (around 1000 BC) and was completed about 300 BC. Also, they were composed by different people. Eighty-five of them are attributed to David. We cannot deny that David composed some of them. Just as Moses stands at the origin of Hebrew law and Solomon at the origin of Hebrew wisdom thinking, so David stands at the origin of the Hebrew prayer movement. He was an important figure who gave an impulse to the prayer life of the people. To attribute the authorship of a Psalm to David was to give it an official status, in the liturgical life of the people and to underline its value for the people's prayer life.

Prayer and human history
An important aspect of these prayers is that they were related to the history of the people. They reflect historical situations over a long period of time. For example, a frequent theme is the liberation of the people from Egypt; they also refer to the time of exile (e.g. Pss. 136, 137). They are based on the people's experience of God acting in their history as a people over a long period of time as well as in their own personal history as individuals (e.g. Ps. 23).

Besides, the Psalms are related to the people's experience of God in worship or liturgy, especially in the temple which was a special place of God's presence among the people. It is in the liturgy that they also experienced ('saw') God. Their temple liturgy was a bridge between God and people. Great events in the life of the nation were celebrated in Psalms during their liturgy, along with processions and sacrifices (e.g. Pss 11, 26).

The Psalms are also poetry and music. They are the prayers in song of God's people. Sometimes they were accompanied by dancing. Many of them have brief explanatory titles that indicate their origin and the way in which they were sung. Ps 150 mentions a variety of musical instruments which were used for popular music. The people often joined in with a simple phrase such as 'Amen' ('So be it' or 'That's right, true') or 'Alleluia' ('Praise God').

The Hebrews often adopted the melody of a popular song for a Psalm (e.g. Ps. 22). Also, the Psalms were linked with surrounding cultures; we have examples of Babylonian and Egyptian prayers of the 14th century BC similar in form to some Psalms.

Link with our lives
Therefore, in order to identify better with the Psalms, we need to know something about their general background. The Psalms reveal their roots in the life of the Hebrew people as they experienced it over a long period of time. They focus on the living concerns of God's people.

At the same time they reflect the people's slow ascent towards God over the centuries and they preserve both the perfections and imperfections of that ascent. The imperfections C e.g. sentiments of self-sufficiency, vengeance and hatred) tend to diminish over the course of time, since they are more evident in the older Psalms.

Hence it is important to read the Psalms in the light of the New Testament. The view of life and
the image of God presented in them need to be purified sometimes in the light of the example and teachings of Jesus. Strange as they may appear to us at times, the Psalms grew out of the same kind of situations and experiences that confront us today.

We share the same feelings of joy, gratitude, sadness, despair, anguish and frustration that they often express. We must face the same problems: violence, war, betrayal, lack of understanding, pain and suffering. We experience, too, the seeming contradictions of life and its lack of meaning that these Psalms sometimes express. If we do not face up to situations like these in our own life then we will find it very difficult to pray the Psalms as our prayers.

Basic attitudes
When we reflect on our own life of faith, we become aware that it embraces three central areas, all equally important: a) our own personal relationship with God; b) the interpersonal aspect of our lives, that is, our relationships with others; and c) our relationship with society, that is, the social dimension of our faith – love working through justice, creating a more just society, our concern for the poor and the marginalized groups of our society. God is at work in all these three areas of our lives.

The Psalms have much to say to us about these three areas. Since they were composed and prayed over a long period of time, they also form a kind of summary of the theology/spirituality of the Old Testament which developed over centuries. They are a kind of summary of the complete Old Testament in the sense that they present the most basic attitudes of the Old Testament in every conceivable form.

Our relationship with God
The Psalms have much to say to us about our relationship with God. They are the prayers of people who are searching for God like ourselves. Today it seems that for many people God has become superfluous. They may still believe that God exists but they cannot determine God's relevance for human life. Of what use is God? What value or meaning does God have in concrete living? We find the same problem expressed in the Bible.

The Hebrew people believed in God's existence, but the divine presence was hard to discover. They sometimes felt abandoned: 'How long will you hide your face from me? Now you have rejected and humbled us'. The state of abandonment to which they were reduced at times seemed to prove that God was absent. It gave rise to crises of faith: 'I will say to God, my rock, Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about like a mourner? My enemies taunt me, jeering at my misfortunes. They ask me all day long, Where is your God?' (Pss. 13, 42). 'Where is your God?' – this is an ever recurring question in the Psalms. The Hebrews, like us, often found it hard to answer. The Psalms are a response to that question that is still ours today.

Many come to the conclusion that 'there is no God' (Ps. 14). But something tells the loyal believers that this line of thinking will not solve anything and that this God, who at times feels distant, does indeed have something to do with human life. Without God life would have no further meaning and therefore the Hebrews search for and experience the presence of God in their lives.

Security and support
Every human being looks for security in life, and the author of Ps. 73 has found in God a source of security so solid that he seems to be able to live peacefully in the midst of life's turmoil: 'For me it is good to be near God. I have made the Lord God my refuge. Though heart and body fail, yet God is my possession forever.'

We find support in God when everything else seems to fail. 'I cry to you, O Lord, and say: 'You are my refuge, you are all that 1 have in the land of the living' (Ps 142). To know this God and share one's life with him is the most precious gift one can receive. Our life is a continuing journey towards God.

We are invited to have firm confidence in this God, knowing that God's strength can get us through any crisis: 'Your true love is better than life. Whom have I in heaven but you? And having you, I desire nothing else on earth. My chief good is to be near you, O God; I have chosen you, Lord God, to be my refuge. I wait for the Lord with all my soul, I hope for the fulfilment of his word. I know that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living' (Pss. 63, 130)