EXPLANATION OF THE PSALMS AND CANTICLES
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SUNDAY AT MATINS
INVITATORY – PSALM XCIV OF THE PSALTER
1. Come let us praise the Lord with joy: let us joyfully sing to God our Savior. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving: and make a joyful noise to him with psalms.
2. For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
For in his hand are all the ends of the earth and the heights of the mountains are his.
3. For the sea is his, and he made it and his hands formed the dry land. Come let us adore and fall down and weep before the Lord that made us.
For he is the Lord our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
4. Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts;
As in provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness; where your fathers tempted me, they proved me and saw my works.
5. Forty years long was I offended with that generation, and I said: These always err in their heart.
And these men have not known my ways so I swore in my wrath they shall not enter into my rest.
- “Prceoccupemusfaciem ejus in confessione.” Before the rising of the sun, let us be found in the presence of the Savior, topraise him and to confess to him our faults. St. Augustine
says: “Est confessio laudantis, confessio gementis. There is the confession of him who praises, and the confession of him who mourns.”
2. “Omnes deos All the false gods and all the kings of the earth.” “Altitudines montium Earthly powers,” according to St. Augustine; that is to say: The Lord regards alike the powerful of the world and the poor whom the world despises; for all are in his power; therefore he does not reject any of his people.<
