Which Psalms Anchor Which Services

Each of the great services of the daily cycle is built around fixed “select” psalms chosen to fit the hour and its meaning. Psalm 103 opens Vespers as a hymn of creation at nightfall; “Lord, I have cried” (Ps 140 with 141, 129, 116) is the evening incense-psalm; the Six Psalms (3, 37, 62, 87, 102, 142) open Matins in darkness; Psalm 50 recurs at nearly every service; the Polyeleos (Pss 134–135) and the Praises (148–150) crown festal Matins. This file identifies each, with its place and reason, verified against the Horologion.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Psalm 103 — the Opening of Vespers

The liturgical day begins at evening, and evening begins with the psalm of creation. Vespers opens (after the initial blessing and the priest’s silent “Lamplighting Prayers”) with Psalm 103 (104), “Bless the Lord, O my soul… who coverest thyself with light as with a garment” — the great hymn to God the maker of heaven and earth, sea and living things, the sun that knows its going down and the night in which the beasts of the forest move (Horologion, the order of Vespers; The Psalter According to the Seventy; see Orthodoxy: The Daily Cycle). Its choice is exact: at the hour when the light fails, the Church sings the world’s creation and its dependence on God, recalling Paradise and the God who “sendest forth thy Spirit, and they shall be created; and thou shalt renew the face of the earth” (Ps 103:30). Because the psalm both opens the service and opens the liturgical day, it is often called the Proemial or Introductory Psalm (Greek proimiakos). The whole theology of Vespers — thanksgiving for the day past, the memory of creation and fall, the expectation of the Redeemer — is set by this psalm (see The Evening and Night Services).

“Lord, I Have Cried” — the Evening Incense-Psalms

After the opening psalm, the Great Litany, and the appointed kathisma, Vespers reaches its central psalmody: “Lord, I have cried unto thee” (Slavonic Gospodi vozzvakh), which frames Psalm 140 (141) together with Psalm 141 (142), Psalm 129 (130), and Psalm 116 (117) (Horologion, Vespers; hub, Orthodoxy: The Daily Cycle). Psalm 140 is the classic evening psalm of the ancient Church, chosen for a single verse: “Let my prayer be set forth as incense before thee, the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice” (Ps 140:2). During its singing the church is censed, the rising smoke enacting the psalm’s own image; this verse-and-incense pairing is one of the oldest fixed elements of the evening office, attested in the cathedral vespers of the fourth century (Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, 2nd ed., 1993, on the evening psalm and the lucernarium). Between the final verses of these psalms are inserted the changing stichera — the hymnody proper to the day or feast — so that the fixed evening psalm becomes the frame on which the movable hymnography is hung (the hymnody itself is treated in The Akathist & Orthodox Hymnography).

The Six Psalms — the Opening of Matins

Matins, the service of the dawn and of the Resurrection, opens after its brief introduction with the Six Psalms (Greek Hexapsalmos, Slavonic Shestopsalmiye): Psalms 3, 37 (38), 62 (63), 87 (88), 102 (103), and 142 (143) (Horologion, Matins; hub, Orthodoxy: The Daily Cycle). These six are read — not sung — in stillness and near-darkness, the lamps dimmed and the people standing motionless, the reader’s voice the only sound. Their sequence is a deliberate spiritual movement from night to morning: they open in the cry of one surrounded by enemies and awakening from sleep (“I laid me down and slept; I awaked, for the Lord will help me,” Ps 3:5), pass through penitence (Ps 37) and thirst for God “early in the morning” (Ps 62:1), descend into the darkest of all the psalms of desolation (Ps 87, “my soul is full of troubles… thou hast laid me in the lowest pit”), and rise into the confidence of God’s mercies (Ps 102, “Bless the Lord, O my soul”) and the plea for the morning light of grace (Ps 142, “cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning”). The tradition surrounds the Six Psalms with unusual solemnity — the priest reads the twelve Matins prayers before the icon of Christ during them, and it is said that Christ will come to judge the world during the Six Psalms, so that the worshipper stands as if before the judgment (Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 1966, on the shape of Matins). The first, third, and fifth are read together, then the “Glory… Alleluia,” then the remaining three — reproducing in miniature the stasis-structure of the Psalter itself.

Psalm 50 — Everywhere

No psalm recurs in the office like Psalm 50 (51), the Miserere, David’s great prayer of repentance after his sin: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy… Create in me a clean heart, O God.” It appears at Matins (immediately after the Gospel and before the Canon), at the Third Hour, at Compline, at the Midnight Office, in the morning and evening prayer rules, in the preparation for Communion, and at nearly every rite of blessing and repentance in the Church (Horologion; and see Orthodoxy: The Prayer Rule). Its ubiquity expresses a fundamental conviction: that the ground note of the Christian before God is repentance, and that every turning to God — morning, evening, before the Mysteries, before sleep — begins by asking mercy. Psalm 50 is, in a sense, the psalm the Church cannot stop praying.

The Polyeleos — the Psalms of Festal Splendour

On Sundays and feasts, Matins rises to its most brilliant moment, the Polyeleos (Greek polyeleos, “much mercy” — or, by a traditional play, “much oil,” from the lamps lit at this point): Psalms 134 (135) and 135 (136), “Praise ye the name of the Lord” and “O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good,” the latter with its unbroken refrain “for his mercy endureth for ever” (Horologion, festal Matins; hub, Orthodoxy: The Daily Cycle). At the Polyeleos the Royal Doors are opened, the church is fully illumined, and the clergy come out to cense; on Sundays the resurrectional troparia “Blessed art thou, O Lord, teach me thy statutes… The angelic host was amazed” follow, and on feasts the Magnification of the day is sung. On the three pre-Lenten Sundays a third psalm is added to the Polyeleos — Psalm 136 (137), “By the rivers of Babylon” — its note of exile sounding the coming of the Lenten spring (Lenten Triodion, the pre-Lenten Sundays; see The Imprecatory Psalms and the Honesty of Lament).

The Praises — the Psalms That Crown Matins

Matins moves toward its climax with the Praises or Lauds (Greek Ainoi, Slavonic Khvalitny): Psalms 148, 149, and 150, the great Hallelujah psalms that close the Psalter itself — “Praise ye the Lord from the heavens… Let every breath praise the Lord” (Horologion, Matins). These three are the ancient morning-praise psalms of the cathedral office, sung at dawn across the Christian world from the fourth century, and their place at the summit of Matins preserves that inheritance (Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, 1993, on the ainoi / laudes as the fixed morning praise). As at “Lord, I have cried,” the changing stichera are inserted among their final verses, and they lead directly into the Great Doxology, “Glory to God in the highest,” so that the whole service ends where the Psalter ends — in unqualified praise. Between the Six Psalms of penitent darkness and the Praises of full light, Matins traces the passage from night to resurrection morning that is its whole meaning.

The Pattern

Read together, the fixed psalmody reveals the logic of the office: a psalm of creation at the fall of night (103); the incense psalm of evening prayer (140); the passage through desolation to trust in the darkness before dawn (the Six Psalms); the ceaseless psalm of repentance (50); and the praise of the risen morning (134–135, 148–150). The Church did not distribute the psalms across the hours at random; she read the day itself — evening, night, dawn — in the psalms, and gave each hour the psalm that was already its prayer.

See Also

References

  • The Horologion (Book of Hours). Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery; and the Greek Horologion to Mega.
  • The Psalter According to the Seventy. Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1974; rev. ed.
  • Schmemann, Alexander. Introduction to Liturgical Theology. Trans. Asheleigh E. Moorhouse. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1966.
  • Taft, Robert F. The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West. 2nd rev. ed. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993.
  • The Lenten Triodion. Trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1978.