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Kingdom songbook app windows7/2/2023 Now, there is indeed something of Aquinas in the Psalms, for we could distill a theology of God from them and there is indeed something of Kolbe in them, for we could tease from them a moral program but there is in them, above all, the aching, longing, and delight of the heart. The Responsorial Psalms at Mass are just that: the privileged manner in which we speak back to God who has spoken to us. The mind revels in God’s truth (think of the writings of Thomas Aquinas) the will responds to God’s infinite goodness (think of the dedication of Maximilian Kolbe or the Little Flower) and the heart overflows in the presence of his splendor (think of the words and gestures of the liturgy). And it occurs, par excellence, with respect to the supreme value of God. This multivalent “value response” occurs in relation to, say, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, a pristine winter morning, a lovely face, or an elegant mathematical equation. In the presence of a value, he says, the entire person responds, the mind appreciating what is true in it, the will seeking what is good in it, and the heart delighting in its beauty. Von Hildebrand complained that the Catholic intellectual tradition gives ample attention to the mind and to the will but that it painfully neglects the heart-which is to say, the seat of the passions and emotions. It was, at the same time, demanding and deeply prayerful-and it compelled me to see the Psalms with fresh eyes.Īs I pronounced these poems from the Church’s privileged book of prayer, I thought frequently of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s musings on the heart. Though I have been regularly praying the Psalms as part of the Liturgy of the Hours for the past roughly forty years, I had never before simply read them through aloud, one after another. Over the course of several sittings, sequestered in a tiny studio, I endeavored to communicate the intelligence, passion, and devotion of the person (more likely persons) who wrote these ancient poems. I had the extraordinary experience last month of recording all one hundred and fifty Psalms for the new Catholic Hallow App. Home › Articles › Bishop Barron › The Psalms: The Church’s Song Book
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