Lectionaries

I have never prayed the Pslam and I don't know how to do it.

 

You have a beautiful journey ahead My road to Anglicanism included learning to pray the psalms and it was a wonderful thing.

Brief practical advice to get started turning reading in praying:
1. Read the Psalm(s) out loud.
2. Once you're used to the content of the Psalm(s) in question, imagine you and Jesus are reading them together.
3. Imagine you and Jesus are reading them together to God the Father.
4. Imagine you and Jesus and the entire Church are reading them together to God the Father.

The key realizations that will click over time (not necessarily in this order) are:
1. that sometimes the content of the psalm will give voice to the cry of your own heart and sometimes it will not
2. that there are many "voices" in the Psalms, and if it isn't yours personally it may be those of Jesus, or of the Church, or of the martyrs, etc.
3. that the psalms are incredibly influential in the writing of many other prayers, collects, suffrages, litanies, and so forth.

Perhaps even your own extemporaneous prayers will start to use psalm-like language after a couple years.

Remember the goal is not memorization. If some of that happens along the way, that's awesome. But the goal is to be familiar with the psalms so they can work through your heart as you read them, not just process their information like in a bible study.

 

Thanks. I will give it a try.

 

I like the idea around what I think is called (Correct me if I'm wrong) Lectio Divino. where you read a passage three times from three differant perspectives. I've been meaning to take it up in some way shape or form. But I have been struggling to get back into a daily prayer/meditation/bible study routine.