Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends

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Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends

I know very little about art history, but I have a great little book called Signs and Symbols in Christian Art . 2 It explains that in Christian art, a pear usually represents Christ. This is significant. Ancient readers of the Psalms saw Christ as the primary voice in the Psalms. True, they were written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus. However, because God took on human flesh and joined us in the suffering of this world, Jesus could pray the Psalms along with us. He entered into our joys and sorrows, finding in the Psalms the language of prayer. If they were essential to Jesus’ faith, they are essential to ours as well. In these ancient prayers Christ identifies with our struggles and expresses dependence upon the Father. It is appropriate, then, to see Jesus as the center of the painting in my dream. By praying the Psalms, Christ demonstrates the life of faith, inviting us to pray with him. So I said yes to this project, and I have learned so much along the way. In the pages that follow, you will find a brief mediation on each psalm from believers in Jesus who lived long ago. These ancient voices will give us a sense of the sacred roots of our faith. Our primary teacher will be an African man named Augustine. Why Augustine? Augustine is one of history’s most influential Christian leaders. Among many other writings, he produced a commentary on the Psalms. His work is the fruit of thirty years of reflection and preaching on the Psalms in a North African context. His work was not done for scholars, but in and for the church. Augustine wrote as a pastor.

2 George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), 36.