Pope Francis advises reading the psalms in every situation of life

In the General Audience this Wednesday, June 19, Pope Francis advised the faithful to pray the Psalms every day and assured that “for each of the situations that we experience in life, we find a Psalm that gives us an answer.”

Before the pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, the Holy Father recalled that, in preparation for the Jubilee of Hope 2025, this year is dedicated to prayer.

He explained along these lines that there are several types of prayer, such as “praise, thanksgiving, supplication, lament, narration, wisdom reflection and others.”

These, according to Pope Francis, “are the songs that the Spirit himself has placed on the lips of his Bride, his Church.” All the books of the Bible, he stressed, “are inspired by the Holy Spirit.”

He then encouraged reading the Psalms every day and recalled that he has on his desk a book with the New Testament and the Psalms that belonged to a Ukrainian soldier who died in the war.

He also pointed out that the Psalms were “the prayer of Jesus, of Mary, of the Apostles and of all the Christian generations that preceded us.”

What to do when we feel sadness for having sinned?

However, he specified that these books are not a thing of the past, but continue to be current. “I wonder: Do you ever pray with the psalms? “Take the Bible or the New Testament and pray a Psalm,” the Holy Father invited.

Specifically, Pope Francis advised praying Psalm 50 (Mercy, My God), when one feels sadness for having sinned. “There are many psalms that help us move forward, get into the habit of praying the Psalms and I assure you that you will be happy.”

Furthermore, Pope Francis invited that when “a verse reaches your heart, keep it and repeat it throughout the day.”

He stressed that “it is necessary that we make the psalms our prayer”, making them ours “and praying with them”.

In this sense, he expressed that they are “prayers for all seasons: there is no state of mind or need that does not find in them the best words to turn them into prayer.”

“Unlike all other prayers, the Psalms do not lose their effectiveness through repetition; On the contrary, they increase it. Because? Because they are inspired by God and ‘breathe out’ God every time they are read with faith,” he noted.

He also advised reading Psalm 51:3 if “we feel oppressed by remorse and guilt” or Psalm 63:2 if we wish to “express a strong personal bond with God.”

“If fear and anguish assail us, these wonderful words come to our rescue: ‘The Lord is my shepherd (…). Even though he passes through a dark valley, / I fear no evil’ (Ps 23,1.4)”.

For the Holy Father, these books “allow us not to impoverish our prayer by reducing it only to requests, to a continuous ‘give me, give us’.”

“The Psalms help us open ourselves to a less self-centered prayer: a prayer of praise, of blessing, of thanksgiving; and they also help us to become the voice of all creation, making it a participant in our praise,” he stressed.

Finally, he asked that the Holy Spirit, “who gave the Bride Church the words to pray to her divine Spouse, help us to make them resonate today in the Church of today and to make this preparatory year for the Jubilee a symphony of prayer.”

“War is always a defeat from the beginning”

During his greeting to the pilgrims, Pope Francis asked to pray especially for young people. He recalled that the day after tomorrow we celebrated Saint Louis Gonzaga and prayed that it would help them “to rediscover the vocation to holiness.”

Later, he encouraged people to continue praying every day for the end of wars, especially in Ukraine, the Holy Land, Sudan and Myanmar. “War is always a defeat, from the beginning,” stated the Holy Father.