Cantus ad Matutinum
Dawn Song of Creation
The nightingale lifts her heart at dawn, praising God for creating her and calling her to share in His glory.
At once, lifting the instruments of her heart upward and beginning her song from the first light of dawn, she praises and glorifies God, rehearsing to herself how wonderful He was in creating her. "Loving Creator," she says, "when you created me, you showed how generous your loving kindness is. For you planned to freely make me a sharer in your glory—me, whom you loved without cost."✦1
Dignity and the Fall
The soul marvels at being made in God's image but laments the loss of greater dignity through disobedience.
Oh, what a marvelous dignity has been granted to me, when the image of the Lord was stamped upon me!✦ But the dignity I possessed would have grown still greater, if I had not broken the Lord's command.
Love's Total Gift
God's desire for intimate union prompts the soul to offer everything in love, culminating in the nightingale's song of joyful distress.
For you, highest Love, wanted me to cling to you always, to have a sweet dwelling place on high, and to remain with you—and to nourish me and teach me as a daughter. From then on you had planned to join me to the heavenly hosts and give yourself to me; but for so great a grace, what can I give in return? I simply don't know—except to love you. Only sweetness, only delight, saving plunderer of hearts that love: everything I have, or am, I give over to you; at last I entrust my deposit to you.23 Such a heart sings "Oci," rejoicing in distress, saying that it is right for the creature to love such a Maker with a pure mind, since he has shown such care for him.4
Read the original Latin
Statim cordis organa sursum elevando, Suum a diluculo cantum inchoando, Laudat et glorificat Deum, replicando Sibi quam mirificus fuit hanc creando.
Pie (inquit) Conditor, quando me creasti, Quam sit tua pietas larga declarasti, Nam consortem gloriae tuae cogitasti Facere gratuito, gratis quam amasti.
O quam mira dignitas mihi est concessa, Quum imago Domini mihi est impressa! Sed crevisset amplius dignitas possessa, Nisi iussum Domini fuisset transgressa.
Nam tu, summa charitas, tibi cohaerere Me volebas iugiter, sursumque habere Dulce domicilium, tecumque manere, Et me, velut filiam, alere, docere.
Ex tunc disposueras in id adunare Coelicis agminibus, teque mihi dare; Sed pro tanta gratia quid recompensare Possum? prorsus nescio, nisi te amare.
Unica suavitas, unica dulcedo, Cordium amantium salutaris praedo, Totum quidquid habeo, vel sum, tibi dedo, Denique depositum meum tibi credo.
Oci cantat tale cor gaudens in pressura, Dicens, quia dignum est, ut a creatura Diligatur opifex talis mente pura, Ei quum exstiterit de se tanta cura.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Rom.8.17;2Pet.1.4 — And if children, then heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. 2Pet.1.4 — Through these he has granted to us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
- ↩Gen.1.26-Gen.1.27 — Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Gen.1.27 — So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Notes
- 1 ↩pietas here is rendered as loving-kindness (God’s tender care), not modern ‘piety’ as human religious observance; pie Conditor as Loving Creator follows the same sense.
- 2 ↩praedo is deliberately paradoxical: a robber who seizes loving hearts for their salvation (salutaris). Kept as 'plunderer' rather than softened to 'captor' so the bold image remains.
- 3 ↩depositum can mean a legal/financial deposit, a sacred trust, or the whole self placed in safekeeping; 'deposit' preserves the technical force and the possible Pauline echo.
- 4 ↩Keep "Oci" as the nightingale's cry in Pecham's Philomena; in the Passion-allegory tradition it is often heard as a cry of "kill/slay," not ordinary speech.
John Pecham (Peckham), Philomena companion
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