My God, give me the grace to perform
this action with you
and through love for you.
In advance, I offer to you all the good
that I will do and accept
all the difficulty I may meet therein.
St. Ann, Pray for us.
St. Francis de Sales, Pray for us.
Overview
 June 5:
Introduction to the Book of Psalms
 June 12:
Psalms of Praise
 June 19: Psalms of Lamentation
 June 26:
 July 3:
 July 10:
 July 17:
 July 24:
No Session
No Session
Psalms of Thanksgiving
The Theology of the Psalms
Learning to Pray the Psalms –
 Liturgy of the Hours
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To express grief for or
about; mourn:
To regret deeply;
deplore
To grieve audibly; wail.
To express sorrow or
regret.
Psalms of Lamentation – Lament
An Overview
 The function of a Lament or Psalm of Petitionary
Praise
 To provide a structure for crisis, hurt, grief, or despair
 To move a worshipper from hurt to joy, from darkness to
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light, from desperation to hope.
This movement from hurt to joy is first and
foremost a spiritual movement
It may take the form of psychological or liturgical
experience
It is not necessarily a physical deliverance from the
crisis, although that is often anticipated.
The movement "out of the depths"
Psalm 13
Psalms of Lament
• General format of a Psalm of Lament
• An address to God; a complaint; a request
• Usually an expression of trust.
• Kinds of complaints include:
• Concerns with the psalmists own thoughts and actions
• Concerns with the actions of an enemy or prevailing
attitude
• Concerns with God's action or inaction
Types of Psalm of Lament
• Types of laments:
• Corporate Lament
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Expressing deep sorrow for
the travails of a nation and as
a group asking for God's
blessing or intervention.
Commonly found in printed
form following major natural
disasters, plague, or
oppression by surrounding
nations.
• Psalm 58
Types of Psalm of Lament
• Types of laments:
• Personal Lament
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•
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Spoken in the first person
Cries of despair, anger,
protest and doubt directed
toward God
Not something the biblical
writers or God himself
were ashamed to put into
Holy Scripture.
• Psalm 77
Types of Psalm of Lament
• Types of Laments:
• Lament of Repentance
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Express sorrow for personal sin
Repentance is where we start
our relationship with God
(message of John the Baptist
and Jesus)
7 Penitential Psalms - 6, 32,
38, 51, 102, 130, 143
The fifty-first Psalm
(Miserere) was recited at
the close of daily morning
service in the primitive
Church.
Psalm 51
Types of Psalm of Lament
• Types of Laments:
• Lament of Imprecation
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An appeal to some supernatural power to inflict evil on someone or
some group
If you really don't like someone you can shout out an imprecation at
them.
More than simply the use of bad language (although that can be
involved, too)
An imprecation is a damning curse wishing them nothing but ill.
• Psalms of Imprecation: 35,69, 83, 88, 109, 137, 140
• Psalm 137
• Psalm 140
• Selah (Hebrew: ‫ סֶ לָה‬,also transliterated as selāh) is a word used 74
times in the Hebrew Bible that means GOD HAS SPOKEN.
Psalms of Imprecation
 What are we to make of curses?
• There is constant tension in the Bible between love of
people and hatred of evil.
• Apathy about evil is worse thank ignorance of it.
• So what must we do about evil?
• We must uproot selfish vindictiveness (Gal.5:15, Ja.4:13-16)
• We must love the enemies of God (Isa.48:9; 2Pet.3:9; Col.1:21;
Rom.5:10)
• We must hate & resist evil (1Cor.10:3-5 & Eph.6:12) but trust
God to take care of any retribution
• In none of the Psalms of Imprecation does the author
hope to mete out retribution from his or her own hand.
Understanding the Psalms of Lament
 Suffering, pain, grief, loss, doubt, guilt, are part of the
human experience
 The psalmist does not reject or ignore suffering, but
faces it in faith and trust
 Recognize the role of anger in dealing with suffering.
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It is in these issues before God that true healing may begin.
 Psalms of Lament are not meant to be politically correct
but to express to God how life really is.
 Placing pain, sorrow, grief and anger before God is the
only place these things will ever make sense.
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It is only God who can transform them. (see: The Cross)