penitential Psalm

noun

1. any of the Psalms (the 6th, 32nd, 38th, 51st, 102nd, 130th, and 143rd) that give expression to feelings of penitence and that are used in various Christian liturgical services.

Example Sentences

Most scholars agree that an illicit attachment between Knox and Lock was unlikely, but I couldn’t help wondering why Lock chose to gloss the only penitential psalm that is explicitly about adultery.

From The New Yorker

"Read the fifty-first psalm, my daughter; it was the penitential psalm in England in my beginnings," Stephen Hopkins said, and Constance read it in a low voice, which she dared not raise, lest it break.

From Project Gutenberg

But his lamentations were so deep and long that Chiniquy at last lost patience, and said a word or two which greatly shocked the superstitious priest, who severely rebuked him, and ordered him for a penance to kneel every day before the fourteen images representing "the way of the cross," and say a penitential psalm before each for nine days, and on no account to tell the story of the rat to any one.

From Project Gutenberg

Many a penitential psalm and hymn of praise exists to testify to the piety of the ancient nations of Assyria and Babylonia.

From Project Gutenberg

Then the chaplain sang a penitential psalm and the other divines prayed, and the candidate for the rope was made to repeat the Apostles’ Creed, after which he called for a glass of wine.

From Project Gutenberg