[Scriptum compendiosum Psalterii intentionem declarans]

Attend to the efficacy of this in the conferences of the fathers, in the conference of Abbot Isaac. It is said that this verse receives all the affections that can be inserted into human nature and is conveniently adapted to all incursions. For it has protection from divine invocation against all imminent dangers. It also has the perpetual vigilance of fear and solicitude; it has the consideration of our own fragility; it has the confidence of being heard. This verse is an impregnable wall for all suffering the infestations of demons, a most fortified shield defending us before all the impulses of vices. For in whatever tribulation or necessity one is constituted, he has to say: "O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me." And this invocation purges you from all vices and leads you to those celestial theories and to that ineffable ardor of prayer, snatched by few. So much for that. It must be known, however, that just as the blessed Augustine says on John, Homily 22: "If someone understands the psalm little, let him still believe it to be something good that he sings; it is not entirely without fruit." I believe the same if someone understands and holds it well, attending to it, and from fragility being distracted, does not actually attend to what he is singing. Example in the Vitas Patrum Lives of the Fathers: Abbot Poemen and many other holy

fathers said: "Just as those chanters who are accustomed to charm serpents often do not understand the words they speak, but the serpents, hearing them, understand the virtue of those words and grow quiet and obey them, so let us do. Although we are unable to understand the virtue of the divine scriptures, yet the demons, hearing the virtue of the divine word, are terrified and flee and depart from us, not sustaining the utterances of the Holy Spirit which He has spoken through His servants, the prophets and apostles." So much for the third point.

Fourth, we must see how one ought to prepare oneself for prayer. As Johannes Cassianus says in the Conference of the Fathers, in the Conference of Abbot Isaac: "Such as we wish to find ourselves in prayers, such we ought to prepare ourselves before the time of prayer. For the mind is formed in supplication from the preceding state, and for that reason, whatever we wish not to steal upon us while we are praying, we ought to tear out from our breast before prayer. Whatever, however, our mind conceives before the hour of prayer, it is necessary that this occur to us through memory while we are praying." Whence also Hugo in his exposition of the rule