Bellarmine's Preface : Part 1 Their Excellence

 Preface

Before we come to the commentaries on each of the Psalms, a few words of explanation would seem to be in order. Firstly, on the excellence of the Psalms; secondly on the words Psalm and Psaltery; thirdly, on the division and ordering of the Psalms; and fourthly, on the Author. 

Their excellence may be understood both from the subject matter and from the form and kind of the writing used. The book of Psalms is like a compendium and summation of the entire Old Testament : for whatever Moses handed on about history, or gave as a commandment of the law, and whatever the other Prophets wrote, either exhorting men to virtue or prophesying future things, all this is contained in a very summary form in the Psalms of David. 

In Psalms VIII, LXXVII, CIII, CIV, CXXXIV and others, he  sets forth very clearly the creation of the world, the doings of the Patriarchs, the Egyptian captivity, the plagues in Egypt, the wanderings of the people in the wilderness, the entry into the Promised Land, and such like. In Psalm CXVIII he sets out with wondrous praises the divinely inspired law handed down by God and fervently urges all to keep it. 

In Psalms II, XV, XXI, XLIV, LXVIII, LXXI and others, he openly prophesies the kingdom of Christ, His origins, preaching, miracles, His passion, Resurrection, Ascension, and the growth of the Church, in such a way that David seems to have been an Evangelist rather than a Prophet. 

Finally, in Psalm I and practically all those that follow, he exhorts to virtues, restrains from vices, invites, attracts, warns, frightens; and all these things are not simply presented in a simple narrative but in various kinds of song, with poetic phrasing, and with most numerous and admirable metaphors, so that in the end, by a new kind of speech, he so enraptures souls with love and praise for God, that nothing sweeter or more salutary could be sung or heard. St. Basil rightly says in his commentary on the first Psalm that David’s Psalms could elicit tears from a heart of stone; St. John Chrysostom too, in his commentary of Psalm CXXXVII, affirms that those who sing the Psalms fittingly lead choirs with the Angels and rival them, as it were, in their praises and love.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.