Journey: Lesson 20 - The Praise Of The People

By Marcel Gervais

This is lesson 20 of the Journey Bible Study program series.The object of this lesson is to see in the psalms a summary of the faith of the People of God in the Covenant made through Moses.Chapter 1 gives us the origins of the book of Psalms. Chapter 2 describes how the ritual of the Temple influenced the development of the Psalms. Chapter 3 gives us a description of the types of psalms as well as a commentary on selected Psalms.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marcel Gervais
• Release date: Jan 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781927766231

Marcel Gervais

About the Author Archbishop Gervais was born in Elie Manitoba on September 21 1931. He is the ninth of fourteen children. His family came from Manitoba to the Sparta area near St. Thomas Ontario when he was just a teenager. He went to Sparta Continuation School and took his final year at Saint Joseph`s High School in St. Thomas. After high school he went to study for the priesthood at St. Peter’s Seminary in London , Ontario. He was ordained in 1958. He was sent to study in Rome. This was followed by studies at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. He returned to London to teach scripture to the seminarians at St. Peter’s Seminary. In 1974 he was asked by Bishop Emmett Carter to take over as director of the Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education. This Centre had been founded by Bishop Carter to provide a resource for adult education in the spirit of Vatican II. This Centre involved sessions of one or two weeks with many of the best scholars of the time. Students came not only from Canada and the United States but from all over the globe, Australia, Africa, Asia and Europe. By the time Father Gervais became the director Divine Word Centre was already a course dominated by the study of scripture to which he added social justice. This aspect of the course of studies was presented by people from every part of the “third world”; among which were Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez and Cardinal Dery of Ghana. In 1976 the Conference of Ontario Bishops along with the Canadian conference of Religious Women approached Father Gervais to provide a written course of studies in Sacred Scripture for the Church at large, but especially for priests and religious women. This is when Fr. Gervais began to write Journey, a set of forty lessons on the Bible. He was armed with a treasure of information from all the teachers and witnesses to the faith that had lectured at Devine Word. He was assisted by a large number of enthusiastic collaborators: all the people who had made presentations at Divine Word and provided materials and a team of great assistants, also at Divine Word Centre. The work was finished just as Father Gervais was ordained an auxiliary bishop of London (1980). He subsequently was made Bishop of Sault Saint Marie Diocese, and after four years, Archbishop of Ottawa (1989). He retired in 2007, and at the time of this writing, he is enjoying retirement.

Book preview

Journey-Lesson 20- Praise Of The People

by Marcel Gervais, Emeritus Archbishop of the diocese of Ottawa, Canada

Nihil Obstat: Michael T. Ryan, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

Imprimatur: + John M. Sherlock, Bishop of London

London, March 31, 1980

This content of this book was first published in 1977 as part of the JOURNEY Series By Guided Study Programs in the Catholic Faith and is now being republished in Smashwords by Emmaus Publications, 99 Fifth Avenue, Suite 103, Ottawa,ON, K1S 5P5, Canada on Smashwords

Cover: . Let Everything That Breaths Praise The Lord. (Psalm 150.6)

COPYRIGHT © Guided Study Programs in the Catholic Faith, a division of The Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education 1977. Reproduction in whole or in part is Prohibited.

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Origins of the of Psalms

Chapter 2 The, Psalms of worship

Chapter 3 Commentary on selected Psalms

Appendix

Recommendation for group meeting on Lesson Twenty

About The Author

Introduction

Prayer is the expression of a relationship to God. How one prays, what one prays, depends on the understanding of the relationship. The prayer of a community is determined by the opinion it has of God and of itself in relationship to God. Knowledge, understanding and experience of the relationship between God and the ones praying, is the stuff out of which prayer is made.

The history of the People of God is a history of a growing and maturing understanding of the relationship between them and their Lord. The Exodus and the Covenant were the foundations of all later growth in knowledge; these events coloured everything else. The memories of the patriarchs, Abraham. Isaac and Jacob developed their understanding further. Occupation of the land of promise, the struggles in the time of the kingship of David, the first Temple and the prophets. The Exile and the return the second Temple, the traditions of the wise men, the scribes and their devotion to the Law, all of these events and developments brought the People to a deeper and clearer knowledge of the Lord and of their relationship Through all of this the necessary contact with the nations among whom the People lived, from the Egyptians and Canaanites to the Persians and Greeks, forced them to sharpen their understanding of themselves and their Lord.

Out of all these experiences came prayer, thousands of prayers over the centuries. The Bible contains hundreds of them. Almost every book contains at least one prayer. The Book of Psalms, however, represents a special collection of prayers. It is what we might call today a collection of all-time favourite songs to the Lord. The Book of Psalms is a collection of sacred songs which stood the test of generations of use, In this collection we have the voice of the People of God, not of one generation, not of one movement or tendency within the People, but of the whole People.

The Book of Psalms is therefore a summary of the faith of the People: it gives us an overview of the People's understanding of themselves and of their God. All that is most important to the faith of the People of God finds expression in the Psalms. The psalms are a record of revelation that caught on, revelation that succeeded in penetrating the very heart of the People. The greatness of the sentiments expressed in the psalms is witness to the fact that the history of the People of God under the Covenant made through Moses is a history of the Lord's success in forming a People like unto himself, holy and distinctive as he is holy.

Because the psalms present a summary of the whole faith and experience of the People, what they say has already been said and commented upon in the previous nineteen les-sons. The explanation of the psalms which we will give is basically a summary of what you have already seen. For this reason we have omitted all practice questions and the self-test from this lesson.

Lesson Objective : To see in the psalms a summary of the faith of the People of God in the Covenant made