NOVEMBER 18, 2017 - PSALM 116 FROM OUR DIVINE OFFICE

It is our joy and privilege to sing the public prayer of the Church throughout the day in the Divine Office. Composed of psalms, canticles and readings from throughout the Scriptures, the Divine Office has its roots in the earliest Christian communities, who continued the Jewish custom of sanctifying certain hours of the day (and, thus, the whole day) with prayer. The Desert Fathers and Mothers took this tradition of praying the psalms into the Scetis desert of Egypt, forming the foundations of what would later grow to be cenobitic monastic life.

Over 1700 years later, we still pray in their footsteps: "I will walk in the presence of the Lord in the land of the living."