Notes on the Matins reading cycle - Sexagesima week

Image credit: Martpan

This week the Scriptural readings at Matins tell the story of Noah, covered in chapters 6-11 of Genesis; unusually, the responsories also include one related to the Sunday Gospel, the parable of the sower.

The commentary on the Old Testament readings provided in the breviary for Sunday comes from St Ambrose, but St Augustine's discussion of the subject in his City of God (Book 15, from ch 22) is also well worth a read.

The Noah responsories and the forty days of Lent

The responsories for this week trace the events of the Flood, from God's decision to destroy all life, save that to be saved in the arc, to the making of a new covenant with Noah.

The 'Noah historia' has an intriguing history, for when Archbishop Amalarius of Metz visited Rome in the early ninth century, he found the Noah responsories (and presumably the associated readings) not on Sexagesima Sunday, but taken out of their logical order, on the first Sunday of Lent.

This was possibly a legacy of an earlier time, before Septuagesima and Sexagesima Sundays were introduced, retained because of the appropriateness of the typology to Lent [1].  In particular, the opening responsory (now the third on Sunday) was taken from Genesis 7:

R. Quadragínta / dies et noctes apérti sunt cæli, † et ex omni carne habénte spíritum vitæ ingréssa sunt in arcam: * Et clausit a foris óstium Dóminus. V. In artículo diéi illíus ingréssus est Noë in arcam, † et fílii eius, et uxor illíus et uxóres filiórum eius. R. Et clausit a foris óstium Dóminus.

R. Forty days and forty nights were the heavens opened; and there went into the ark two and two of all flesh wherein is the breath of life. * And the Lord shut them in. V. In the self-same day entered Noah into the ark, and his sons, and his wife, and the wives of his sons. R. And the Lord shut them in.

The forty days symbolism, it should be noted also runs through the Benedictine Office, for each day, the Rule prescribes a  'pensum' of forty psalms (if you count the Laudate psalms individually).

Another of the responsories (no 8 of Sunday) highlights another piece of number symbolism particularly relevant to the Office, namely the 150 days before the waters started receding (Genesis 8), on which St Benedict's contemporary St Cassiodorus commented:

."..we have observed that through the Lord's generosity the earth was cleansed of its sins after one hundred and fifty days, when the flood covered the earth.  So the spiritual depth of the psalms with their perennial cleansing purifies the hearts of men until Judgment Day; and from this we experience a saving flood which washes clean our minds befouled with sins."

The parable of the sower and its antiphon

The last responsory of Sexagesima Sunday, Cum turba plúrima, is particularly interesting since it seems to be reasonably ancient in origin, yet responsories relating to the Gospel of the day, in this case the parable of the sower, are rarely included in the post-Tridentine Office.  In the (pre-1962) Roman Office it is given a special status as the ninth responsory, replacing the Te Deum.

Dom Gueranger, in his Liturgical Year, explained the link between the Gospel and the Old Testament Scriptural reading, and the collect's reference to St Paul:

The earth is deluged by sin and heresy. But the Word of God, the Seed of life, is ever producing a new generation, a race of men, who, like Noah, fear God. It is the Word of God that produces those happy children, of whom the Beloved Disciple speaks, saying: they are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God [St. John, 1. 13]. Let us endeavour to be of this family; or, if we already be numbered among its members, let us zealously maintain our glorious position. What we have to do, during these days of Septuagesima, is to escape from the Deluge of worldliness, and take shelter in the Ark of salvation; we have to become that good soil, which yields a hundred-fold from the heavenly Seed. Let us flee from the wrath to come, lest we perish with the enemies of God: let us hunger after that Word of God, which converteth and giveth life to souls [Ps. xviii].,,

At Rome, the Station is in the Basilica of Saint Paul outside the walls. It is around the tomb of the Doctor of the Gentiles, - the zealous sower of the divine Seed, - the Father by his preaching, of so many nations, - that the Roman Church assembles her children on this Sunday, whereon she is about to announce to them, how God spared the earth on the condition that it should be peopled with true believers and with faithful adorers of his Name.

Another link between the number of the Sunday (Sexagesima= 60th) and the Gospel is the reference to the sixty-fold (and implicitly thirty-fold) returns mentioned in St Matthew's version of the parable, reflected in the antiphon for Sext (but not Matins, at least in the 1962 version).

The full version of the antiphon runs as follows:

Semen cécidit in terram bonam, et áttulit fructum, áliud centésimum, et áliud sexagésimum (Some seed fell on good ground, and bare fruit, some one hundred-fold, and some sixty-fold).

The traditional interpretation of the different rates as the rewards in heaven for different states of life: depending on the writer, one hundredfold for martyrs or monastics; sixty-fold for monastics or widows; and thirty-fold for married persons.

But in the context of the Sunday, the interpretation was perhaps more meant to indicate the rewards of asceticism?

In any case, I have been unable to find a chant to match the 1962 Matins antiphon text.

The distribution of the Scriptural readings for the week

Sexagesima Sunday: Genesis 5:32, 6:1-15
Monday after Sexagesima Sunday: Genesis 7: 1-5& 10-14&17
Tuesday: Genesis 8:1-4; 5-9; 10-13
Wednesday: Genesis 8:1 -22; 9:1-6
Thursday: Genesis 9:12-29
Friday: Genesis 10:1-6; 11:1-8
Saturday: Genesis 11:10--30

Notes

[1] See the discussion of possible chronoogy in Thomas Forrest Kelly, Old-Roman Chant and the Responsories of Noah: New Evidence from Sutri, Early Music History, Vol. 26 (2007), pp. 91-120