Christ in the Psalms Quotes

“The habit of prayer, this incessant meditation on God’s Law, is not supposed to be something immediately useful. Trees do not bear fruit right away. They first must eat amply of the earth and drink deeply of its water. Such nourishment must serve first to build up the tree. The fruit will come later on, when it is supposed to. The life of Christian prayer and meditation knows nothing of instant holiness; it is all a matter of perseverance and patience. Some trees do not even begin to bear fruit for many years.”
― Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms

“To enter into the prayer of this book is not merely to share the sentiments of King David, or Asaph, or one of the other inspired poets. Indeed, in a theological sense the voices of these men are secondary, hardly more important than our own. The foundational voice of the Psalms, the underlying bass line of its harmony is, rather, the voice of Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man. The correct theological principle for praying the psalms is the Hypostatic Union, the ontological and irreversible coalescence of the human and the divine, “the synthesis achieved by God, which carries the name of Jesus Christ” (Hans Urs von Balthasar). It”
― Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms

“death is the enemy; indeed, it is the “last enemy,” says 1 Corinthians 15:26. When the psalmist, then, prays for deliverance from death, he is talking about a great deal more than a physical phenomenon. Death is the “last enemy,” the physical symbol of our sinful alienation from God: “For in death there is no memory of You; in the grave, who will give You thanks?” Sin”
― Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms

“The divine wrath is not some sort of irritation; God does not become peeved or annoyed. The wrath of God is infinitely more serious than a temper tantrum. It is a deliberate resolve in response to a specific state of the human soul. In Romans, where the expression appears twelve times, the anger of God describes His activity toward the hard of heart, the unrepentant, those sinners who turn their backs and deliberately refuse His grace, and it is surely in this sense that our psalm asks to be delivered from God’s wrath. It is important to make such a prayer, because hardness of heart remains a possibility for all of us to the very day we die. Perhaps”
― Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms

“But there is a great deal more here. Just who is this “blessed man” of whom the psalmist speaks? It is not man in general. In truth, it really is not simply a “human being.” The underlying words, here translated as “man,” are emphatically masculine—that is, gender specific—in the original Hebrew (ish), as well as the Greek (aner) and Latin (vir) versions. They are not the Hebrew (adam) and Greek (anthropos) nouns accurately translated as “human being.” The “man” of reference here is a particular man. According to the Fathers of the Church, he is the one Mediator between God and man, the Man Jesus Christ. The Law of the Lord, which is to be our delight and meditation day and night, finds its meaning only in Him. Christ is the one who fulfills it, and He is the key to its understanding.”
― Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms

“The Divine Word, said Justin, “sometimes speaks as from the person [apo prosopou] of God, the Ruler and Father of all, sometimes as from the person [apo prosopou] of Christ, sometimes from the person [apo prosopou] of the peoples answering the Lord or His Father.”
― Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms

“When we pray the Psalter, then, the words are not spoken in our own voice. We put on, rather, what St. Paul called “the mind of Christ.”
― Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms

“Through Christ, their history becomes our history; we are engrafted into the Bible’s ongoing chronology. The Hebrew Scriptures become our own family narrative. The history of the Bible and the history of the Church form a single story, of which our lives—and our worship—are an integral part.”
― Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms

“The Christ proclaimed in the Gospel brings the Old Testament with Him in the proclamation. Indeed, the barest preaching of the Gospel includes the Old Testament, in the sense that what Jesus accomplished for our redemption was “according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:1–4).”
― Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms

“As Christians, we only go to the Old Testament because it pertains to Jesus. Otherwise the Old Testament is, for us non-Jews, just another ancient book.”
― Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms

“we don’t begin with the Old Testament; we begin with Christ. Christ is not only the Mediator between God and man; He is also the Mediator between the Old Testament and the Church.”
― Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms