Singing Psalms in the New Millennium By Lourdes Montgomery

handout prepared for that workshop. Why, at the dawn of the third millennium of Christian history, should we worry about singing the psalms? Either the psalms, which predate Christian history by as much as a thousand years, have nothing to say to our time, or they hold a kind of validity and truth that transcends their imagery and their original setting in the Jerusalem Temple. The apostle Paul encouraged the first faithful Christians to sing psalms (Col 3:16), and we have been singing them, one way and another, ever since. Issued just about thirty years ago (February 2, 1971), the church’s General Instruction for the Liturgy of the Hours (GILH) reminded us of the musical nature of psalmody: "The psalms are not readings or prose prayers, but poems of praise. All the psalms have a musical quality that determines their correct style of delivery " (GILH 103). "Especially the psalms... are lyrical in form and do not yield their fuller meaning unless they are sung " (GILH 269). Their rhythm must be clear, and "different psalms may be sung in different ways for a fuller grasp of their spiritual meaning and beauty " depending upon "language used and especially by the kind of celebration " (GILH 121). We have a very long tradition of singing the psalms, since "the Book of Psalms has served as a song book for the people of God for three thousand years " (Lenti, 1999)