Many years ago, I found a blog (whose name and address I have now sadly forgotten) where I encountered a fascinating and excellent devotion from the early 1500s: the “Jesus Psalter.”
Seemingly obscure today, it was said to have been very popular in late-Renaissance England and especially later among recusant Catholics during the English Reformation (no doubt owing to its being easily memorized with regular use, a very useful trait for times of persecution).
It seems to have been one of the many creative ways late-medieval Westerners adapted to the reality that joining the full Latin psalmody of the monastic and cathedral divine offices with understanding was a commitment increasingly harder to make between busier lifestyles and the eventually complete departure of the vernacular from the liturgical Latin. This development also coincided with an emphasis on the reverence due to the name of Jesus, “the name that is above every name” (also seen in the Byzantine East around this time with the growing importance of hesychastic spirituality and the Jesus Prayer).
In keeping with the symbolically significant number of 150 and its derivatives, the Jesus Psalter consists of three parts, totaling 15 “decades” of a tenfold repetition of “Jesu, Jesu, Jesu…” and a specific petition.
Thus, if one said a third of the devotion (five decades, much like the Rosary tradition) each day, one would repeat name name “Jesu” 150 times daily, corresponding to the 150 Psalms of David.
Considering its origin and role in England, the “Jesus Psalter” may be particularly (but by no means exclusively) apt for members of the Ordinariates established by Anglicanorum coetibus, English Catholics, other Christians affiliated with or attracted to the English Christian heritage, and anyone looking for particularly Western traditional expressions of the devotion to the name of Jesus, and the power of prayer in his holy name.
OPENING PRAYER:
In nomine Iesu omne genu flectatur, caelestium et terrestrium et infernorum et omnis lingua confiteatur, quia Dominus Iesus Christus in gloria est Dei Patris.
(“[A]t the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Phil. 2:10-11, RSV-CE)
THE FIFTEEN DECADES:
“Jesu, Jesu, Jesu…”
- “Have mercy.”
- “Help me.”
- “Strengthen me.”
- “Comfort me.”
- “Make me constant and stable.”
- “Enlighten me.”
- “Grant me grace to dread thee.”
- “Grant me grace to love thee.”
- “Grant me grace to remember my death.”
- “Send me here my purgatory.”
- “Grant me grace to fly evil company.”
- “Give me grace to call for help to thee.”
- “Make me to persevere in virtue acceptable to thee.”
- “Grant me grace to fix my mind on thee.”
- “Give me grace to order my life to thee.”
CLOSING PRAYERS:
Have mercy on all sinners, Jesu I beseech thee; turn their vices into virtues and make them true observers of thy law, and lovers of thee; bring them to bliss in everlasting glory.
Have mercy on all the souls in purgatory for thy bitter passion, I beseech thee, for thy glorious name Jesu. The holy Trinity, one very God, have mercy on me.
✠ Dominus noster Iesus Christus humiliavit semetipsum pro nobis, factus obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis.
(“Our Lord Jesus Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” cf. Phil. 2:8, RSV-CE)
Pater noster… (Our Father)
Ave Maria… (Hail Mary)
Credo in Deum… (Apostles’ Creed)
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