XII Kalendas Ianuarii (21 December) Anno Incarnationis MMXXIII
The Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle
Laudate Dominum de caelis, laudate eum in excelcis. Praise the Lord from the heavens! Praise Him in the heights!
These are the first words of Psalm 148 that begin a long series of ‘laudates‘ and ‘laudents’ that offer praise to the Lord God from one end of Creation to the other and run through this psalm and the following two up until the close of Psalm 150 and the final words of the entire Psalter: omnis spiritus laudet Dominum! Let every spirit (or breath?) praise the Lord!
It has been the custom of the Catholic Church, both and East and West, literally since time immemorial to recite these particular Psalms joined together as one hymn where human beings who are the crown of God’s creation invite, nay demand, that the rest of the created universe cry out together in praise of the Lord God. In the West, both in the Benedictine and the Roman Psalter, the custom was established1 in some epoch so far back that the hills don’t even remember it to daily close the cycle of Laudes with these psalms (148-150) being recited together and no Gloria Patri intervening save at the close of Psalm 150. So of course and perfectly in line with the abject stupidity of the age in which we live this custom that is unfathomably ancient, perfectly appropriate, incredibly beautiful, and as we shall see universal in both East and West just had to be ripped out2 wholesale from the clerical breviary in the so called ‘reform’ of 1911.
The Content
The content of these psalms is tailor made to be recited as one crosses the termination line of night and leaps into the day. The Latin here is rhythmic and beautiful and rolls off of one’s tongue like honey dripping from the comb. The words produce their own melody along the way that needs no accompaniment.
In Psalm 148 all of creation from the highest heavens to the darkest abysses is called upon to praise God Almighty and give Him thanks for bringing them into being. In this psalm alone the word laudate is used nine times and laudent a single time.
Psalm 149 takes a break from the ‘laudates’ with the word laudent only being found a single time. But what it does do is describe the song that is produced by the saints with all of those ‘laudates’, or rather its effect:
The praises of God in their throats and a sharp two-edged sword in their hands: to take vengeance upon the nations and chastise the peoples, to bind their kings in chains and their nobles in fetters of iron: to inflict on them the judgement that has been decreed. This glory is for all his saints.
One can sense immediately how vividly this worldview contrasts with the way of thinking that dominates most Catholic circles in 2023. And it becomes equally clear more than a few people who hold great power in a great many Catholic institutions at the present moment just might prefer to see these lines permanently forgotten and never again sung by the Church than to see them restored to the office of the priests. Or am I just being cynical?
So let those with a faithful heart take up this practice once again and bind the lords of this world i.e. the devil and his earthly minions in chains of iron with the brutal weapons of prayer and self-sacrifice.3
With Psalm 150 the ‘laudates’ return. In this extremely short psalm of barely six verses in the modern division the word laudate appears a full ten times. How could the hour where these psalms are sung be called anything but Laudes?
The East
(Psalms 148-150 chanted in the Coptic language by the choir of the Martyr Abu Fam at the close of Tasbeha which is more or less the end of their midnight prayer as the day is drawing near)
Praying these psalms, 148-150, around the hour of first light seems very much to be the universal custom in the East. The Church of Alexandria prays them at the close of Tasbeha4 which seems to be a sort of bridge between the midnight prayer and the first hour of the day. Curiously enough this seems as well to be how Laudes started in the West.
The Laudate Psalms are found as well in the Syrian Shehimo5 near the close of the midnight hour of Lilio sung once again as day approaches.
In the Greek Horologion6 they are found again at the close of the hour of Orthros which is similar to the Western Laudes though longer.
So there we have it. Infinitely more can and should be (and has been) written on the subject of these Psalms and the custom of reciting them at the dawn but my purpose here is simply to point out the beauty and the antiquity and the universality of this practice and the absolute stupidity of removing them from the clerical office.
Just for fun here is an image of the Hebrew text of the close of Psalm 149 and the entirety of Psalm 150 from the oldest manuscript of the Psalms that has ever been found: the Psalms scroll of Cave 11 at Qumran that has been dated7 by script analysis to the Herodian period i.e. the first half of the first century A.D. i.e. the very years that saw Our Lord walking on this earth and the beginnings of the Catholic Church.
Saint Benedict in his Rule (ch. xii) written in the early sixth century calls the Office itself ‘Matutinis’, a name which in later times was transferred to the night Office, and Psalms 148-150 are simply referred to as ‘Laudes’. Mabillon in his study of the Gallican Office seems to find references to this practice in a pair of fifth and sixth century regional councils (PL vol 72 col. 405-06)
Psalm 148, like Psalm 62, was retained in a place of prominence being recited on its own as the final Psalm of Sunday and Festal Laudes but Psalms 149 and 150 were banished to Saturday Laudes with curiously enough Psalm 149 being the first Psalm and Psalm 150 being the last Psalm with Psalms 91 and 63 plus the canticle intervening. Somebody really didn’t want these recited together…
Mark 9:28
Untitled-1 (tasbeha.org) p. 48 of PDF
LRD App produced by the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church Diocese of Southwest America
liturgy.io - Orthodox Horologion
J.A. Sanders, Discoveries in the Judean Desert of Jordan IV: The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave 11, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1965, p. 9