Praying the Scriptures sets a number of biblical prayers in the context of biblical revelation so that they are seen as celebrations of God's great saving deeds of the Exodus and the Resurrection. Thus they bring us into the very heart of the experience of salvation in that ultimate prayer-event that is the Eucharist. In this context prayers of petition become acts of trust in the goodness of the God who entered our world definitively in the person of Jesus Christ, while prayers of gratitude convert the lives of believers from fear and guilt to courage and joy.
Demetrius Dumm, OSB, PhD, is a monk of St. Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania. A professor of New Testament for almost fifty years, he is the author of A Mystical Portrait of Jesus and editor and contributor to The Collegeville Pastoral Dictionary of Biblical Theology. He has given numerous retreats and workshops designed to allow scholarship to bear fruit in the spiritual life of the nonscholar.
