ANSWER: In the affirmative to both parts.
On May 1, 1910, in an audience graciously granted to both Most Reverend Consultors Secretaries His Holiness approved the foregoing answers and ordered that they be published.
Rome, May 1, 1910.
PULCRANUS VIGOUROUX, P.S.S.
LAURENTIUS JANSSENS, O.S.B.
Consultors Secretaries.
The Psalms were always dear to the hearts of Christians. Our Lord died with the words of a psalm on His sacred lips: "Into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Psalm 30, v. 6). Millions of dying Christians have repeated His great prayer. On the Church's very birthday, when St. Peter preached the first Christian sermon, he had three texts and two of them were from the Psalms (Acts II.). To an educated and rigid Pharisee like St. Paul they were a treasure house of teaching. To the early Christians the Psalms were a prayer book, for there was no Christian literature. It was twenty-five years after the Ascension before the first books of the New Testament were written. Hence St. Paul and St. James tell their fellow Christians to use the Psalms in worship (Ephesians, v. 19; Colos. iii. 16; I. St. James 5-13). Some of the greatest of the early Christian writers and saints, Origen, St. Athanasius, Hilary of Poitiers, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, Bede, and St. Augustine all studied the psalms deeply and wrote learned commentaries on them. The works of later saints abound in happy and beautiful quotations from these religious poems. With them, too, as with those holy people of whom St. Chrysostom wrote, "David is first, last and midst." For many years no priest was ordained who could not recite the whole Psalter without the aid of a book, This veneration of the inspired words deserves respect and imitation. The learned Calmet (1672-1757) writing of the universal esteem and study of the Psalms, said that then there existed more than a thousand commentaries on them. Since then, the number has been doubled; so great and universal is the reverence and esteem in which this book of Scripture is held. To conclude this very long note on the Psalms I quote the quaint words of a mediaeval poet. It shows how the saints of old found their Master in the songs of His great ancestor:—
Rithmis et sensu verborum consociatum
Psalterium Jesu, sic est opus hoc vocitatum,
Qui legit intente, quocunque dolore prematur,
Sentiet inde bonum, dolor ejus et alleviatur;
Ergo pius legat hoc ejus sub amore libenter,
Cujus ibi Nomen scriptum videt esse frequenter.
Versicle and respond are placed after the psalms and before the lessons to rouse the attention which is necessary before all prayer, and the lessons are a noble form of prayer. These little prayers are of very ancient origin and were dealt with by Alcuin (735-804) in his recension of the Gregorian books for use in Gaul. His pupil, Amalare, also studied them, so that a meaning should be found in what was sung, and that the truncated repetitions should be avoided. He retained what was traditional and ancient, introduced versicles and responds taken from ancient Roman books and from books belonging to Metz, selected passages from the Gospels which seem to fit in with the antiphons and added them to what he found in the Roman books, made alterations in the order here and there and gave completion to the whole by adding some offices for saints' days proper to the Church of Metz (Baudot, The Roman Breviary, p. 88). Amalare had been administrator of the diocese of Lyons during the exile of Agobard the Archbishop. The latter, with learning and bitterness, attacked the reforms of Amalare, but, "in spite of all, the reform of Amalare held its ground in Metz, and then in the greater number of the churches north of the Alps" (Baudot, op. cit.). Much of the work of Amalare stands in our Breviary.
Pater Noster is said to beg from God, light and grace to understand the doctrine contained in the lessons. In choir, a part of the Pater Noster is said in common and in a loud voice to recall the Communion of saints.