The Common Wild

Common prayer, wild ground.

Praying the Thirty-Day Psalter

The Daily Office Lectionary at p. 934 is not the only way to pray through the psalms - prior to the 1979 BCP revision, there was a 30-day psalm cycle that was in use, and is still available as an alternative. Open the Psalter at p. 585 and you will find the psalms already divided by day.

You will see First Day: Morning Prayer, then several Psalms (1 through 5). Above Psalm 6 you see First Day: Evening Prayer.

It's as easy as it seems

First Day, is literal - it's the first day of whatever month we're in. Tenth Day, is day 10 on your normal calendar. There are only a couple of snags: Some months have 31 days, and one month has fewer than 30. In February, you just pray days 1 through 28 (or 29) - the last day or two simply never comes up that month, and nothing is lost by it. On months with 31 days, you pray the 30th day again on the 31st day. Psalm 119 is long, so it's divided across several days, but the headings in your BCP tell you what day the sections belong to.

Praying it

When you pray the Daily Office, the 30-day cycle simply replaces the psalms the lectionary appoints. Everything else about the Office stays the same. That's the most direct way to "pray it" - sub the day's psalms at p. 585 for what the seven-week cycle gives you at p. 934.

As always, there is more than one way to do it. You may not want to pray the Daily Office. Perhaps what you're called to do is to pray just the psalms, as part of your own daily devotional. Maybe you have your own "Office".

The simplest approach is this:

That's it!

Now, what does "Pray" mean? That's a topic worthy of lengthy discussion. Rather than get into that here, I will give what I typically do, if I'm considering this psalm cycle as a standalone devotional:

The rubric

For some reason, in the American BCP for both 1928 and 1979, there is no printed rubric for this prayer cycle, apart from the clues in the headings of the Psalter itself. The seven-week cycle was introduced in 1979, which is probably the reason for not explaining the 30-day cycle, and presumably, for the 1928 BCP, it was considered implicit - The psalm days were labeled, and the tradition carried the memory. The older books do spell it out, though:

The 1662 book, under its own heading, The Order how the Psalter is appointed to be read:

The Psalter shall be read through once every Month, as it is there appointed, both for Morning and Evening Prayer. But in February it shall be read only to the twenty-eighth, or twenty-ninth day of the Month.

It goes on to give the one-and-thirty-day rule and the division of Psalm 119.

The 1892 American book carries the same heading and a shorter rubric:

The Psalter shall be read through once every month, as it is there appointed, both for Morning and for Evening Prayer. And when a month hath one-and-thirty days, it is ordered that the same Psalms shall be read on the last day of the said month which are appointed for the day before.

Two American changes are visible there. February is gone, and so is the guidance on Psalm 119. The 1892 rubric then adds something the English book does not have: on days without Proper Psalms the minister may read one of the Selections instead of the Psalter as divided for the day.

Sources

The 1979 text:

The rubrics, in the older books:

In print:

Related here: