The Psalter in Orthodox Piety
Beyond the public office, the Psalter has been the private book of Orthodox Christians — read whole in the weekly kathisma cycle and twice weekly in Lent, prayed as the monastic cell rule alongside the Jesus Prayer, read continuously over the departed, and made the very primer from which Slavic children learned to read. This section follows the Psalter out of the choir and into the cell, the deathbed, and the schoolroom.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (with Russian Orthodox emphases)
Overview
The daily office is served in church, but the Psalter has never stayed there. It is the one book of Scripture that ordinary Orthodox Christians, and above all monastics, have read through — whole and continuously, again and again — as a personal rule of prayer; the book read beside the body of the dead until burial; and, in the Slavic lands, the book from which the faithful first learned their letters. This section treats that life of the Psalter in personal piety. The first file follows the reading of the whole Psalter in the kathisma cycle, the monastic cell rule, and the relationship of psalmody to the Jesus Prayer in the Paisian tradition. The second follows the Psalter over the departed and the Slavonic Psalter in Russian devotion.
Files
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| reading-the-whole-psalter-and-the-cell-rule.md | The weekly and twice-weekly Lenten kathisma cycle; the monastic cell rule; memorizing the Psalter; psalmody and the Jesus Prayer in the Paisian revival |
| the-psalter-for-the-departed-and-the-slavonic-psalter.md | Reading the Psalter over the dead; the “unsleeping Psalter”; the Slavonic Psalter as prayer book and reading-primer in Russian piety |
See Also
- The Orthodox Psalter — the kathismata and structure prayed here
- Praying the Psalms — how the tradition reads what it prays
- The Jesus Prayer — the prayer of the cell alongside the Psalter
- Orthodoxy: The Prayer Rule — the personal rule of prayer