Hymns for the Hours

Contents

Reading pages: 0.1–6.129 · 7.1–12.193

1. 0.1In his preface the aged Prudentius reviews his schooling, legal career, governorships and court office, judges them worthless before death, and resolves to spend his remaining days praising God in verse.
2. 1.1The cock’s crow before dawn is a figure of Christ the Judge, who calls sleepers to rise, for sleep is an image of the death that sin brings.
3. 1.33Cockcrow puts demons to flight and recalls Peter, who denied Christ before the cock crowed, wept, and sinned so no more.
4. 1.65Christ rose from the dead at cockcrow; so the soul should wake from sin and worldly dreams and pray to him for new light.
5. 2.1As dawn drives out night, so Christ’s coming will expose every hidden sin; in daylight thieves, frauds and adulterers are ashamed.
6. 2.33While others begin the day’s trades, Christians begin it in prayer to Christ, asking him to keep them as pure as at their baptism.
7. 2.65Jacob, lamed in the thigh while wrestling the angel until dawn, teaches that the man who yields to God loses his rebellious lust; the day should be spent without sin under God’s watchful eye.
8. 3.1Before the meal the poet invokes Christ, the cross-bearer and Word, begotten of the Father before creation and born of a virgin, to bless food and drink, so that all the table’s talk and actions are governed by the Trinity; his Muse is to wear the garland of God’s praise instead of ivy.
9. 3.33God has made all the creatures of air, sea and land subject to man; Christians gladly use the fruits of field and vine and prefer innocent meals of herbs and pulse to the slaughter of animals.
10. 3.65Milk, cheese, honey and fruit are God’s gifts, beyond the praise of any poet; the poet resolves to praise the Father at every meal, recalling that God shaped man from the earth in his own image.
11. 3.97Paraphrase of Genesis 2–3: God breathes life into man, sets him in paradise, forbids the tree; the serpent deceives the woman, the pair hide their nakedness, are expelled, the woman is put under her husband, and the serpent is condemned to be trodden by her heel.
12. 3.129Fallen posterity followed Adam into sin and death; then the Word became flesh, born of a virgin without intercourse, and the ancient enmity of Genesis 3:15 was fulfilled as the woman’s offspring crushed the serpent and peace came to the flock.
13. 3.161Christ, the dove and the Lamb, tames the beasts; the poet prays for temperance at table, affirms that the God-breathed soul does not die, and confesses the resurrection of the body after the pattern of Christ’s own return from the dead.
14. 4.1After the meal the tongue praises the Father, eternal Lord of the Cherubim and Seraphim, and the Spirit sent by Christ and the Father, who dwells in chaste hearts as a temple but flees from vice and gluttony.
15. 4.33God feeds both body and soul, as he fed Daniel in the lions’ den when an angel carried the prophet Habakkuk with the reapers’ meal through the air.
16. 4.65Daniel ate the food God sent, gave thanks, and was strong; so Christians, beset by the roaring beast of a violent world and its persecutions, are fed by God and by the prophets’ words and need fear neither tyrants nor lions.
17. 5.1At lamp-lighting the poet asks Christ for light: fire struck from flint recalls Christ the rock, lamps and candles are God’s gifts, and light comes from God, as Moses saw him in the burning bush.
18. 5.33Moses removed his shoes before the burning bush; the pillar of fire led Israel out of Egypt; Pharaoh’s army pursued, and the sea parted for the Hebrews.
19. 5.65Pharaoh’s army drowned in the returning sea; Christ, who struck Egypt with plagues and parted the sea, also gave water from the rock, sweetened the bitter water with wood (a figure of the Cross), and sent manna.
20. 5.97God gave quails and manna to the fathers and feeds Christians with mystic food; he leads the weary to the paradise of the righteous, and on the night of Christ’s resurrection even the punished souls below have a respite.
21. 5.129The faithful keep the night vigil with prayers and offerings by the light of hanging lamps, offering to God the light he gave, and end with a doxology to the Father through Christ in threefold power.
22. 6.1Before sleep the poet invokes the Trinity, Father, Word and Spirit, one power and one light, and describes sleep as God’s healing gift, during which the mind roams free and sees hidden things.
23. 6.33In sleep the mind fashions images: to the pure, true dreams reveal hidden things; to the vicious, lying terrors appear, as Joseph showed when he interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh’s two servants in prison.
24. 6.65Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams and became ruler of Egypt; John in his revelation saw the slain Lamb open the sealed book and bear a two-edged sword, judge of soul and body, yet merciful.
25. 6.97Christ, given the Father’s judgment seat and the name above every name, will destroy the Antichrist, the beast John saw; ordinary sinners should be content with peaceful sleep and remember their baptism and anointing.
26. 6.129Before sleeping the Christian signs forehead and heart with the Cross, which drives away sin, darkness and the deceiving serpent, and keeps the mind on Christ even in sleep.
27. 7.1Fasting is a pure mystery that tames gluttony, lust and sloth and frees the mind to pray; Elijah grew strong by it in the desert before he was carried up in the fiery chariot.
28. 7.33Moses fasted forty days before he saw God; John the Baptist, born of an aged mother and greeting the Virgin from the womb, prepared the way of the Lord and withdrew into the desert.
29. 7.65John the Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey, preached the new salvation and baptized, the Spirit descending on the baptized; the poet then turns to Nineveh, which God was about to destroy for its pride and luxury.
30. 7.97God delayed Nineveh’s punishment and sent Jonah, who fled toward Tarshish knowing God would rather save than strike; the lot fell on him, he was thrown overboard, swallowed whole by the sea monster, and cast out unharmed after three days and nights.
31. 7.129Cast up on shore, Jonah preached Nineveh’s destruction and waited on a hill under a sudden shade; the whole city, king and people, young and old, turned to fasting, sackcloth and ashes to appease Christ.
32. 7.161Nineveh’s fast, even of infants and cattle, turned God’s anger to mercy; Jesus, Emmanuel, fasted forty days in the desert, freeing the flesh from pleasure, and repulsed the tempter who tested whether God was in him.
33. 7.193Christians should follow Christ’s fasting so the spirit rules the appetite; fasting joined with almsgiving destroys sin, and he who gives in secret is repaid a hundredfold.
34. 8.1At the ninth hour the short fast ends; Christ, who himself bore hard labors, gives a gentle law and teaches that those who fast should not look gloomy, for God sees and rewards what is done in secret.
35. 8.33Christ the Good Shepherd brings back the lost sheep to green pastures; no fasting can repay his gift, and since excessive abstinence breaks the body, the measure of fasting is left free to each, provided all is begun with God’s blessing.
36. 9.1The poet sings of Christ, foretold by David, begotten of the Father before creation, maker of all things, born of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit to save Adam’s race, and of his first miracles: water made wine and lepers cleansed.
37. 9.33Christ’s miracles: he heals the blind with clay, stills the storm, heals the woman with the flow of blood, raises the widow’s son and Lazarus, walks on the sea, frees the demoniac of the tombs, feeds the thousands, and opens deaf ears; he is himself the bread that satisfies forever.
38. 9.65Christ heals all sickness, descends to Tartarus and breaks its gates, darkens the sun at his death; from his side flow blood and water, the serpent is crushed, the saints rise with him, and he ascends to the Father’s right hand as judge, praised by all people and all creation.
39. 10.1God made man of soul and body; death separates them, but God shows the way to the resurrection of the flesh, and a soul that resists earthly desires carries its body with it to heaven.
40. 10.33The dead body is only asleep and will soon be reunited with its soul; that is why Christians bury the dead with care, linen and myrrh, and why burying the unburied is a work done for Christ.
41. 10.65Tobit left his meal to bury the dead and was rewarded when God restored his sight with the fish’s gall; through suffering and death the righteous reach heaven, and their bodies will return renewed.
42. 10.97In the resurrection the body will be young and healthy, while disease itself is punished; mourners should stop weeping, for death renews life as buried seed grows into grain; the earth is asked to keep the body safe.
43. 10.129However completely the body is reduced to dust, the earth must give it back intact; meanwhile the soul rests in Abraham’s bosom like Lazarus, and paradise is open to the faithful as to the penitent thief; the mourners adorn the grave with flowers and perfume.
44. 11.1At the winter solstice the returning sun heralds Christ’s birth from a virgin mother; he is the Mediator of twofold nature, the Word and Wisdom through whom all things were made, who stayed in the Father’s bosom until he came to the sinful world.
45. 11.33Mankind, worshiping idols, had fallen under the devil’s power; Christ took a mortal body to break death’s chain and bring man to the Father; the Virgin’s childbirth increased her purity, and the Child’s first cry began a renewed world.
46. 11.65At Christ’s birth all nature blossomed; even the beasts of the manger adore him and the pagan nations come to him, while the descendants of the patriarchs reject him; the poet urges them to acknowledge their own prince.
47. 11.97The Child born in the manger will return on the clouds as judge when the last trumpet sounds and the world burns, giving everlasting light to some and Gehenna to others; then Judea will know whom it gave over to death.
48. 12.1The star of Bethlehem, brighter than the sun and never setting, announces that God has come in the flesh; the Magi in the east see it, and all other stars give way.
49. 12.33The Magi recognize in the star an eternal king, the seed promised to Abraham and the flower of Jesse’s root; they follow it to the Child and offer incense, myrrh and gold.
50. 12.65The gifts declare the Child king (gold), God (incense) and mortal (myrrh for his tomb); Bethlehem bore the only heir of the Father, man and God, to whom the Father wills a kingdom over all things; Herod hears of the new king.
51. 12.97Herod orders every male infant in Bethlehem killed; the poet describes the slaughter and hails the murdered children as the flowers of the martyrs.
52. 12.129The Holy Innocents play before the heavenly altar; Herod’s crime gained nothing, for Christ escaped, as Moses, a figure of Christ, escaped Pharaoh’s edict and became lawgiver and deliverer of Israel.
53. 12.161Christ is the true leader prefigured by Moses, who led Israel through the sea, sweetened the water, followed the pillar of fire and defeated Amalek with arms outstretched like the cross, and by Joshua, who gave the land and set up twelve stones in the Jordan, figures of the apostles.
54. 12.193Even idol-worshipers abandon their gods for Christ; all nations are called to rejoice in the one king, and all, living and dead, to praise him, for now no one is dead.