Sing a New Psalm:
Communicating with God Through
the Prayers of the Church

Volume I: Lauds & Vespers

Lesson 27 The LORD Remembers Us
Psalm 115, Psalm 116:1–9, and Psalm 139
Friday Vespers (Week II)

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)*
New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE)*
Catechism of the Catholic Church
ex libris (in our library)
next lesson: The Just One Will Flourish

This material coordinates with Lesson 27, “The LORD Remembers Us,” on pages 112–115 in Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume I: Lauds & Vespers. Our Catholic Bible study is based on The Abbey Psalms and Canticles, a psalms translation prepared by the monks at Conception Abbey in 2010 and first published as The Revised Grail Psalms. The Abbey Psalms and Canticles is a revision of that work, finished in 2020 and now owned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Wording and numbering of some psalms in other translations may differ. This translation is being added to all English-language Liturgy of the Hours books used in the United States.

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“Unlike other prayers in sacred Scripture, the prayers contained in the psalms are not inserted into a narrative story that specifies their meaning and function. Instead, the psalms are given to the believer precisely as a text of prayer. Since they are the Word of God, the believer who prays the psalms speaks to God using the very words that God himself has given to us. Thus, in praying the psalms we learn to pray. The psalms are a school of prayer.”—Pope Benedict XVI

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welcome to our in-depth study of the psalms
We invite groups and individuals to check out the sample Introduction and Lesson 1 from this 28-lesson Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study. Our online study pages include additional questions, commentary, and prayers based on the psalm texts. Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume I: Lauds & Vespers has been granted an imprimatur. A digital version of can be purchased from our website shop. Volume II covers psalms prayed at Vigils, Day Prayer, and Compline. If you have a Bible-related question or comment, click on one of the “ask us your question” or “what do you think” buttons on any online study page.

open with prayer
It’s always wise to begin any Bible study with prayer, whether reading the Scriptures alone or meeting with others in a discussion study group. You can pray using your own words, pray one of the psalms in this lesson, or use one of the opening prayers on our website. We especially like the following:

Lord Jesus, you promised to send your Holy Spirit
to teach us all things.
As we read and study your word today,
allow it to touch our hearts and change our lives. Amen.

about the psalms in this lesson**
During Ordinary Time, the monks at Conception Abbey pray the following psalms for Friday Vespers Week II: Psalm 115, a hymn of trust by an unknown composer; Psalm 116:1–9, a portion of a psalm of thanksgiving by an anonymous composer; and Psalm 139, an unclassified psalm attributed to David. (The remaining verses in Psalm 116 are covered in Lesson 15, “Let My Prayer Be As Incense.”)

a passage omitted from Liturgy of the Hours books
A difficulty for Christians who wish to incorporate the psalms into their prayers is that in some of these ancient hymns the Psalmists blatantly curse their enemies and ask the LORD to deal harshly with those enemies. This is disturbing enough that the editors compiling the four-week Liturgy of the Hours books chose to leave out a few problematic verses. Omitted from psalms for this lesson (Friday Vespers Week II prayed by the monks at Conception Abbey) is Psalm 139:19–22. Consider why the editors of Liturgy of the Hours books might have felt that this verse shouldn’t be included.

all omissions are noted in this study
Omissions in the four-week Liturgy of the Hours books are addressed in Volume I and Volume II. For a complete list, click on this link, which includes a comparison of the two-week cursus (schedule) used at Conception Abbey and in both volumes of our study with the four-week Roman cursus followed by current Liturgy of the Hours books.

a pro-life prayer from thousands of years ago
For this lesson, Turning to God’s Word co-founder Tami Palladino has drawn an infant in the womb, reflecting David’s understanding of God’s omniscience described in Psalm 139:13: “For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb.” God is in charge of every detail of our existence, and he rules over all life and death. Even though men and women are unable to remember anything about our time in our mother’s womb, David is confident that our existence was willed by God—and that God continues to protect us all of our lives. Consider whether you share David’s confidence in God’s loving care and protection. Click on Tami’s  illustration to enlarge it. The illustration also is printed on page 111 in Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume I: Lauds & Vespers.

read the Catechism—how idolatry threatens our relationship with God
Paragraph 2113 and paragraph 2114 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church address the inherent dangers associated with worshiping anyone or anything other than God.

2113     Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” Many martyrs died for not adoring “the Beast,” refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.

2114     Human life finds its unity in the adoration of the one God. The commandment to worship the Lord alone integrates man and saves him from an endless disintegration. Idolatry is a perversion of man’s innate religious sense. An idolater is someone who “transfers his indestructible notion of God to anything other than God.”

Letter to the Philippians—you could look it up in our archives
In the Letter to the Philippians, Paul writes that Jesus didn’t grasp at equality with God, a frequently quoted biblical passage. Paragraph 705 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains why it’s important for Christians to be able to distinguish between image and likeness. To learn more about Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, read Lost in Translation, an online column in which Turning to God’s Word author Matthew Phelps helps readers connect with ideas expressed in the original languages of the Scriptures. New Lost in Translation entries are posted on Mondays, and past entries are archived on our website. Contact us if you’d like to receive Lost in Translation by email every week.

705     Disfigured by sin and death, man remains “in the image of God,” in the image of the Son, but is deprived “of the glory of God,” of his likeness. The promise made to Abraham inaugurates the economy of salvation, at the culmination of which the Son himself will assume that “image” and restore it in the Father’s “likeness” by giving it again its Glory, the Spirit who is “the giver of life.”

what do you think about the connection between memory & worship?
Because we know God to be omniscient, the idea that God has a memory comes as no surprise. A more radical concept, however, is the connection made throughout the Scriptures between the human memory and liturgy. Take a few minutes to read “How God Remembers His People” on page 112 in Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume I: Lauds & Vespers. All of our significant worship practices are founded on memories of the ways in which God has shown his love for his people. Indeed, it’s impossible for us to worship God without relying on such memories, which represent an important way in which men and women can share God’s own attribute of memory.

?  What are some of your most important memories of God’s loving care at work in your own life?
?  What other divine attributes has God given to his people?
?  What’s one thing that you can do today tied to a memory of your relationship to Jesus Christ?

Q&A—reading difficult passages in Scripture
Even without looking for them, it’s easy to find many conflicting interpretations of challenging Bible passages. All of them can’t be right, and the Church makes only a very rare few pronouncements on the meaning of specific verses in the Bible. The rest of the time it’s up to us to use our common sense when deciding whether an interpretation makes sense. The Church does offer this guidance—an interpretation of a specific Bible passage cannot disagree with Church teaching and it cannot contradict anything else written in the Scriptures.

Q: A participant in one of our Bible studies is concerned about an article that appeared in her local diocesan newspaper. The author of that piece argues that Old Testament texts in which God comes across as arbitrary, heartless, and violent aren’t intended to be taken literally. (The specific texts mentioned in the article are from the twenty-fourth chapter in the Second Book of Samuel, the sixth chapter in the Book of Joshua, and the eleventh chapter in the Book of Judges.) Concerning such difficult passages, the author of the diocesan article writes: “Whenever they are read, they could be preceded by the kind of disclaimer we now often see at movies where we’re told: No real animals died while making this film. So too, no real people die in these texts.”

A: Our questioner can understand that some biblical texts may be exaggerated to make a point, but she has a hard time believing that no one was harmed. Turning to God’s Word author Matthew Phelps’ response appears below. Also of interest is this week’s Lost in Translation, a related discussion about the difference between exegesis & eisegesis, two methods of approaching Bible study.

what Matthew says: This question centers around a few basic struggles we all have to work through as we learn to read and study the Scriptures. First, is everything we read in Scripture literal? This diocesan article lands on what I think is the only defensible position—that no, ultimately not every word of Scripture is factual in the same way that we might expect a newspaper or magazine article to be factual. The Bible is the living Word of God, which makes it unlike any other book or writing. This can be a hard thing for some people to wrap their minds around, especially when they’ve been catechized to accept the opposite.

Once we accept that not every word is literal, we’re left with the problem of trying to figure out what to make of more difficult passages. Basically the whole of scholarship on the Scriptures concerns itself with a number of questions relevant to this point, such as—When was a book written? By whom? For whom? What type of literature was it intended to be?

the text must be primary
As with all Scripture study, when addressing these questions, the text must be our primary concern. The author of that diocesan article certainly overstates when he asserts that God killed no one in the Old Testament. That position contradicts way too much of Scripture to be plausible. God created a world in which he allowed death to exist and to come to all people. What’s the death of 70,000 in that context? What’s the difference for God whether someone dies at age 30 or at age 80?

the Catholic faith has evolved
The other key question or understanding we all have to come to terms with in reading the Scriptures is that our faith as we know it has evolved. There are terrible things that happened in our past that paved the way for the coming of Christ, and God was involved through them all. Taken as a whole, the Scriptures show an evolution, and the things that happen always ultimately serve a purpose. True understanding of the Scriptures involves understanding this development and learning to see the same God in the Old Testament that we see revealed by Jesus Christ.

The thinking behind the diocesan article reflects an easy mistake to make. When we read something in the Bible that’s incompatible with our understanding of God, one or the other has to change. The author of the diocesan article chose, by convoluted means, to change the text. Many others throughout history have made the same decision. Martin Luther went so far as to try to remove passages in Scripture that weren’t consistent with his view of God. The greater and more rewarding challenge is to be able to adapt our view of God to accommodate and exist harmoniously with the Scriptures. This changing and expanding of our understanding of God is, I think, the primary purpose of Bible study and should be our goal whenever we read Scripture.

read the Catechism—the transcendent nature of God
Paragraph 239 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church cautions men and women against thinking of God in strictly human terms.

239     By calling God “Father,” the language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which emphasizes God’s immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. The language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a way the first representatives of God for man. But this experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: He is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is Father as God is Father.

ex libris—hallowed be God’s name
While the Our Father is recited at every celebration of Mass—with the assembly calling on God as Father—not very many Catholics seem to give much thought to what that means. The language can be especially challenging to people who might not have had a very positive experience with their own earthly fathers. For people who want to know more about what’s behind Jesus asking his disciples to address God as Father, we continue to recommend Gerhard Lohfink’s excellent book, The Our Father: A New Reading. You can read excerpts and learn more about The Our Father: A New Reading and other works related to in-depth Bible study at ex libris—main bookshelf.

a translation difference: children of Adam vs. children of men
The Abbey Psalms and Canticles translates Psalm 115:16: “The heavens, the heavens belong to the LORD, but to the children of Adam, he has given the earth.” The Revised Grail Psalms translates the same verse: “The heavens, the heavens belong to the LORD, but to the children of men, he has given the earth.” Both versions appear to be referring to humanity. It seems unlikely that editors at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) would change “men” to “Adam” if the main point was to incorporate more inclusive language into the Scripture. Can you suggest a different reason for the change? (Note that it is not possible to link to either The Abbey Psalms and Canticles or The Revised Grail Psalms; all links on the online pages are to the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition [RSVCE]).

a translation difference: Sheol vs. the grave 
The Abbey Psalms and Canticles translates Psalm 116:3: “They surrounded me, the snares of death; the anguish of Sheol has found me; anguish and sorrow I found.” The Revised Grail Psalms translates the same verse: “They surrounded me, the snares of death; the anguish of the grave has found me; anguish and sorrow I found.” A similar translation change affecting the word “Sheol” occurs in Psalm 139:8. Editors at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) may have made this change from “the grave” to “Sheol” in order to reflect Hebrew thinking at the time Psalm 116 was written. Can you think of a different reason?

a translation difference: speak vs. rebel 
The Abbey Psalms and Canticles translates Psalm 139:20: “With deceit they speak against you, and against you, they exalt themselves in vain.” The Revised Grail Psalms translates the same verse: “With deceit they rebel against you, and set your designs at naught.” The Abbey Psalms and Canticles seems to be referencing the sin of pride, while The Revised Grail Psalms does not. Which version do you prefer?

the best Catholic commentary about Scripture
To find out more about how Church teaching is supported by passages in Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume I: Lauds & Vespers, check out the Index of Citations in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Links to the primary Scripture passages in the lesson (Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition [RSVCE*]) and relevant paragraphs in the Catechism are provided here. Not every passage in the biblical text for this study is referenced in a Catechism paragraph, however, including Psalm 116:1–9 in this lesson.

Psalm 115:3—paragraphs 268, 303
Psalm 115:4–5—paragraph 2112
Psalm 115:8—paragraph 2112
Psalm 115:15—paragraphs 216, 287
Psalm 115:16—paragraph 326
Psalm 139:15—paragraph 2270

don’t forget about our indexes & extra online material
If you’re trying to locate information about a specific Scripture passage, you can look it up in the index at the back of the study book. If you want to find a particular commentary, you can look up its title in the topics index. To learn more about another book of the Bible for which there’s a Turning to God’s Word study, visit the online study directories to read the commentaries and watch any accompanying videos. Finally, if you have a question or would like to make a comment about any of our studies, you can use one of the “ask us your question” or “what do you think” buttons to email our authors.

ex libris—Church documents & books about religious topics
Link to magisterial documents referred to in our Bible studies at ex libris—magisterial documents. This listing includes significant recent encyclicals as well as a number of historical Church documents. Recommended books related to Scripture study can be found at ex libris—main bookshelf.

wondering how to pronounce some of these words?
The following links are to readings from the New International Version (NIV) Bible. To listen, open one of the links and click on the audio icon above the printed text. Although not taken from the translations used in our study materials, the NIV readings provide an audio guide to pronunciation of many words in this lesson’s primary biblical texts. A close online version of the translation of the Bible used in Catholic liturgy in the United States as well as an audio guide for daily Mass readings for the current month can be found on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Psalm 115 (NIV)
Psalm 116:1–9 (NIV)
Psalm 139 (NIV)

Many of our Catholic study groups like to conclude their discussions with a prayer based on the scriptural focus of their lesson. If you’re uncomfortable composing your own Bible-based prayers, you can follow our four easy steps. If you prefer, you can pray any of the psalms in this lesson, or you can use the following short prayer.

O God, you remember all things.
Help us so to value our relationship with you
that we become incapable of forgetting
the marvelous ways in which you demonstrate your love.
Teach us always to be conscious of your kindness and mercy
that we may worship you in spirit and truth
as directed by your Son, Jesus Christ,
in whose name we pray. Amen.

Lesson 28 The Just One Will Flourish, Saturday Lauds (Week II)—Psalm 92 and Psalm 135
Lesson 26 Create a Pure Heart for Me, Friday Lauds (Week II)—Psalm 51, Psalm 108, and Psalm 147:12–20

you also may like our study of the Letter to the Hebrews (digital only)
Many Christians struggle to understand one of the central mysteries of our faith: how Jesus can be both human and divine at the same time. The Letter to the Hebrews: An Explanation of the Mechanism of Our Salvation, an 18-lesson Catholic Bible study with an imprimatur, offers an in-depth look at the way in which Jesus’ dual nature allows for the salvation of humanity. The Letter to the Hebrews is designed to provide information that will encourage Christians to remain faithful. Click here to view a sample of the first lesson.

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start a Turning to God’s Word Bible study
Thank you for your interest in Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume I: Lauds & Vespers. More information about beginning a Turning to God’s Word Bible study can be found on this website at start a Bible study, and Tami, Matthew, and I are available to answer questions or discuss concerns. Contact us to start this or one of our other studies or to have your schedule listed with other TtGW study groups on our website. —Jennifer

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*There are seven deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament—Baruch, Judith, Sirach, Tobit, Wisdom, and First and Second Maccabees—and there are some deuterocanonical passages in the Books of Daniel and Esther. Protestants usually refer to these works as “apocryphal,” a word that means “outside the (Protestant) canon” because they’re excluded from most Protestant Bibles. Deuterocanonical means “second canon”; Catholics use that word to refer to any section of the Catholic Old Testament for which there are no extant, or existing, Hebrew manuscripts. All of the deuterocanonical books appear in the Septuagint, the earliest remaining versions of which date to the 1st century B.C. This Greek translation of the Old Testament was in common use by Jews at the time of Jesus. Learn more by reading How Do Catholic & Protestant Bibles Differ?

**You can learn more about the psalms by viewing a sample lesson from the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church. The first volume covers psalms prayed at Lauds and Vespers; the second covers psalms prayed at Vigils, Day Prayer, and Compline. Numbering of psalms and verses may vary in different translations.

Turning to God’s Word printed Bible studies use the 2006 Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition (RSV2CE) translation for all Scripture references except those to the psalms, which are taken from The Abbey Psalms and Canticles, prepared by the Benedictine monks of Conception Abbey and published in 2020 by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). All Scripture links for the online study pages for Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume I: Lauds & Vespers are to the 1966 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE) translation. The New International Version (NIV) audio recordings follow the same chapter and verse numbering as the RSV Catholic translations, but the NIV translation doesn’t include the deuterocanonical books and passages.

The 1966 RSVCE uses archaic pronouns and verb forms such as “thee,” “thou,” and “didst” in the psalms and in direct quotations attributed to God. The 2006 RSV2CE replaces these with more accessible English. The few significant translation changes in the RSV2CE include rendering almah as “virgin” in the Book of Isaiah 7:14 and restoring the term “begotten” in the Gospel According to John 3:16.

Numbering varies for some passages in this Bible study. Turning to God’s Word studies (print and digital) follow the numbering in the Revised Standard Version Catholic translations (RSV2CE and RSVCE). Discrepancies in the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) are noted in the Index of Scripture Citations in the study book.