Today’s Chapter: Praying the Gradual Psalms with Mary
Chapter 18: In what order the Psalms are to be said (vv. 7-11)
At Tierce, Sext and None on Monday are to be said the nine remaining parts of the hundred and eighteenth Psalm, three parts at each Hour. This Psalm having thus been said through in two days, that is, Sunday and Monday, let the nine Psalms from the hundred and nineteenth to the hundred and twenty-seventh be said on Tuesday at Tierce, Sext and None – three at each Hour. And these Psalms are to be repeated at the same Hours every day until Sunday; the arrangement, moreover, of hymns, lessons and versicles remaining the same throughout, so as always to begin on Sunday from the hundred and eighteenth Psalm.
Today Saint Benedict arranges for the Little Hours throughout the week. Psalm 118—said every day at the Little Hours in its entirety in the traditional Roman cursus—is given a privileged place on Sunday, spilling over into Monday. For the remainder of the week, Saint Benedict has the Little Hours repeat the first nine of the Gradual Psalms. They are a very practical choice for these hours, since they are all relatively brief, and they form a unit that can be easily repeated day after day. The reform of the Divine Office acknowledged this, for while the current Liturgy of the Hours only requires the recitation of one daytime hour, the Gradual Psalms are provided as a complementary psalmody to be said by those priests and faithful who wish to pray Terce, Sext, and None.
The appropriateness of the Gradual Psalms being said frequently during the day goes beyond simply their brevity. Taken as a whole, they depict the entire journey of the Christian through this world, with its foes and perils, to the heavenly Jerusalem. They are thus a fitting set of prayers as we go through the day’s work; they are also a very fitting set of prayers for the faithful departed—several of them appear in the Office of the Dead. Combining these purposes, there is a venerable tradition, included in the appendix of many Breviaries, of praying the Gradual Psalms as a whole—Psalms 119 through 133—in three groupings, concluding each with versicles and a Collect first for the Dead, and then for the Living, all of this often being done as a devotion early in the day before the Office began.
As we consider the Holy Rule with Our Lady, it is worth noting that two of the Gradual Psalms, Psalms 121 and 126, appear at Vespers in the Common of Our Lady. The first, Laetatus sum in his quae dicta sunt mihi [I rejoiced in these things which were said to me] speaks of our joy in going up to Jerusalem, and in this we express our love for Mary, who embodies the heavenly Jerusalem which is our mother. The second, Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum [Unless the Lord build the house] speaks of the primacy of God’s grace in all our endeavours, and praises God for giving ‘the fruit of the womb’ as an inheritance. We can hear Our Lady in this psalm giving thanks for the utterly unmerited grace of her Immaculate Conception, and for the gift of the blessed Fruit of her womb, Jesus. But in fact all of the Gradual Psalms, which she could have heard sung by pilgrims coming to the Temple in her childhood, and which she would have sung as she went up to the Temple with her husband Saint Joseph and her Divine Son, can be sung by us in union with her, as with her we cry to the Lord in our affliction amid the inhabitants of Cedar (Ps 119), sowing in tears, longing to return with joy (Ps 125) and to bless the Lord (Ps 133) in the peace of Jerusalem (Ps 121).