Doors into the Psalms

by Patrick Henry Reardon

It appears to me that the Book of Psalms is a sort of palace, a large house of prayers, as it were. This lordly residence, moreover, is not only furnished with many rooms, many chapels, but is also provided with several portals of entry. While any one of the psalms, perhaps, may serve the latter purpose, some of them appear to do it in more obvious ways.

Such, for certain, is Psalm 1, the book's opening meditation on "the blessings of the man who strays not in the counsel of the ungodly," and so forth. Psalm 1, simply because it is first, seems a promising place at which to start. So let us knock and see if this is a door.

Our first point of inquiry, surely, should be the identity of this person of whom the Psalmist says, "his delight is in the Law of the Lord." Just who is this person? We ask, in the words of the Ethiopian pilgrim, "Of whom does the prophet say this?"

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Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).

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