Christmas in prison is often a poignant and testing experience. The Book of Psalms can be a source of strength, comfort and reassurance in the difficult circumstances of incarceration.
I know this from being a prisoner at Christmas 24 years ago. I also know it from being on duty as a prison chaplain in HMP Pentonville for the last five Christmases. During both experiences I have often read the Psalms, originally alone in my cell, and now with prisoners in their cells.
This year, the liturgy highlights for Christmastide Psalms 95-97.
I shall particularly enjoy sharing King Henry VIII’s favourite, Psalm 95, known as the Venite, with its resounding opening summons:
“O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving: and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.”
It’s not easy to feel glad or in the mood for thanksgiving behind bars. But the psalms can be important signposts in all the changing scenes of life, as I discovered after arriving as a prisoner in HMP Belmarsh in June 1999.
A friend sent me a two-volume commentary on the psalms by Derek Kidner. As I started to read, I realised that I was largely oblivious of their poetic beauty and spiritual power.
So, when prison life offered me the unexpected bonus of huge amounts of unoccupied time banged up in my cell – often for as much as 22 or 23 hours each day – I became interested in searching for some of the spiritual paths I had ignored for too long.
As I began reading them, I soon found that the psalms contained many gold seams of holy inspiration.
The greatest revelation was the discovery that the ancient Hebrew psalms are songs of experience, often highly relevant to modern life.
The penitential psalm known as De Profundis (No 129 in the Catholic psalter) became an early favourite of mine with its haunting cry:
“Out of the depths have I called to you O Lord! Lord hear my voice.”
Many prisoners, from John Bunyan to Oscar Wilde, have found solace in this short psalm which focuses on climbing out of life’s depths, with prayer, forgiveness, patience and redtion.
As time moved on, I learned to pray as well as read the psalms, which were the prayer book of Jesus. Their poetry is beautiful but challenging.
Soon after coming out of prison, I served a three-year sentence at an institution which had worse food and more uncomfortable beds than a prison. This was an Anglican theological college: Wycliffe Hall, in Oxford. There I made the psalms my special subject and wrote a book, Psalms for People Under Pressure, which is still in print two decades later.
Now, as a clergyman and prison chaplain, I start and end my day by reading from the Book of Psalms. It is the rock on which my spiritual life is founded.
Why are the psalms so special? Why do they have such a universality of appeal which ranges from popes to prisoners?
If, in the manner of a castaway on Desert Island Discs, I was asked to pick only one psalm, my choice would be Psalm 139, sometimes called “the Crown of Psalms”. It helps to answer one of the most searching questions of all time: who is God?
Writing some 2,700 years ago, the psalmist gave his answer in sublime poetry. He is a God we cannot escape from, as these verses show:
“Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit: or whither shall I go then from thy presence? If I climb up into heaven, thou art there: if I go down to hell, thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning: and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there also shall thy hand lead me: and thy right hand shall hold me.”
The thought that God is our only reality and security recurs in psalm after psalm. The psalter caters for every mood from deep depression (Psalms 42, 43 and 83) to abject penitence (Psalm 51) to heartfelt gratitude (Psalm 16) and to soaring confidence in God’s goodness (Psalm 23).
Returning to those Christmastide psalms recommended in the Catholic liturgy, although they have no historical linkage to the birth of Christ (which occurred at least 700 years after the psalms were written) what better clarion call to a carol service, in prison and anywhere else, could there be than the verses of Psalm 96, Cantate Domino.
We will do our best to emulate this psalm at our Carol Service at HMP Pentonville.
The Revd Jonathan Aitken was formerly Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
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