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On the other hand, another participant in the discussion said that he had, from personal experience, found the psalm-prayers helpful, and a good way of avoiding the “horse race” effect of consecutive psalms, in which the sense of “one down, two to go”, “two down, one to go, nearly there” squeezes out any opportunity for real prayer. Some of the people charged with the revision of the Divine Office felt that the psalm-prayers were “burdensome and contrived” and should not be included in the Breviary: the more texts you put into an Hour, the more it seems as if the point of the Hour is to get through those texts, and the presence of an imminent psalm-prayer may discourage rather than encourage proper reflection and meditation on the psalm itself – like a hurried Mass without pauses, which stops one from praying because there is always another thing to be said or done, and then another. They can, if wished, be added to the Office, following an ancient tradition – that is, the psalm having been completed and a certain period of silence having been observed, to bring together the thoughts and feelings of those who have recited the psalm, and to bring them to a conclusion.”

“Prayers on the psalms, to help those who recite the psalms to interpret them in a particularly Christian sense, are offered for each psalm in the Supplement to the Liturgy of the Hours.

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Orationes super psalmos, quae recitantes adiuvent in eorum interpretatione praecipue christiana, in Supplemento libri Liturgiae Horarum pro singulis psalmis proponuntur et possunt ad libitum adhiberi ad normam veteris traditionis, ita scilicet ut, absoluto psalmo et aliquo silentii spatio observato, oratio psallentium affectus colligat et concludat. As §112 of the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours puts it: In the revision and renewal of the Liturgy of the Hours that was completed in the early 1970s, one of the important and interesting changes was the addition of “psalm-prayers”, collects that are inserted after each psalm and canticle.

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