This Lent St. Jerome parishioners will have a chance to immerse themselves in the world of the Psalms. They are an ancient form of poetry used to create individual and communal prayers. They break open all our emotions and human experiences to leave room for the Lord to enter.  Back in October, I started reading the whole 150 Psalms from beginning to end. I am ashamed to say that I ranked each one on a scale from one to ten for personal impact. I then concentrated on those marked 7 or above and prayed over them. Next, I began reading commentaries on the psalms as a whole and on the individual psalms that I had marked. Then, to my surprise, once I had entered fully into the worldview of those ancient writers, which is different than ours, I found many more psalms moved up in my rankings. 

I think that what happened to me allowed me to see this truth from Martin Luther, who in his commentary on psalm 12 said this: “None of you can pray a psalm if you have not made the words of the psalm your own. But they will then be your own when you have the same feeling and the same spirit in which the words were said. If you pray without this, you resemble those who play a role in a comedy, where the action takes place with proper words, but with a reality that is artificial.” 

If you would like to learn to pray the psalms, sign up in the hallway for a small book of all 150 Psalms. It is free, but we will accept donations. Then starting on Friday February 23 and for the next five Fridays we will have a group study. The morning session will be after the 9am Mass and the evening session will be with our traditional Lenten Soup and Bread Suppers. Both sessions will offer the same material.

Next weekend we will welcome our new leader, Fr. Declan Creighton, who will be at all the Masses. This is a parish where the people love their priests. In no time at all, you will come to love him and he you.