What Is the Responsorial Psalm at Mass? Why We Sing the Psalms

After the First Reading, the Church sings the Responsorial Psalm, the people answering with a repeated refrain — "an integral part of the Liturgy of the Word" (GIRM 61). In this session of The Mass Explained, Dr. Brant Pitre traces the sung, "responsorial" psalm back to King David, who put the Levites "in charge of the service of song" before the tabernacle (1 Chronicles 6:31–32), and to the very form of the psalms themselves — as in Psalm 118, where the people answer, "His mercy endures forever." He shows that Jesus himself sang a psalm with his apostles at the Last Supper before going out to the Mount of Olives (Matthew 26:30), that the early Christians sang psalms in their gatherings (1 Corinthians 14:26), and that St. Augustine describes the responsorial psalms being taken up in the West in the fourth century — so the psalm is a sung response to God's word, not merely a musical interlude.

Key passages & sources examined: David and the Levitical singers before the tabernacle (1 Chronicles 6:31–32); the responsorial form of Psalm 118 ("His mercy endures forever"); the hymn Jesus sang at the Last Supper (Matthew 26:30); psalm-singing in the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 14:26); and St. Augustine on the responsorial psalms in the West (Confessions 9–10).