WDTPRS: Vespers hymn for Mondays – Immense caeli Conditor

It is good sometimes to sit and really drill into the hymns for the liturgical Hours, rather than just read them through – familiar as they become with repetition (the essence of liturgical rites).  It helps to know the melodies, too.  Since we are our rites, we Catholic priests really ought to know our rite.  That means slowing down, drilling in, soaking it in, letting it seep into the marrow, dye the warp and weft of our prayers.

The Vigil of St. Lawrence, (check out Vespers HERE) we have this year the Hymn for Vespers on Mondays, feria secunda in Latin, the second day of the week.

The Vespers hymns follow an order through the week, recounting God’s work of creation day by day.  Yesterday, for Sunday Vespers, the 1st day of the week, we sing Lucis creator optime, which is about the creation of Light: Fiat lux!  Today, the hymn recounts God’s creative action on the second day of the week in Genesis 1:

⁶ And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” ⁷ And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. ⁸ And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

Today’s hymn, Immense caeli Conditor (and it is Cónditor not Condítor!), is in what is sometimes called the Ambrosian Meter, for Ambrose used it.  The Ambrosian strophe has four verses of eight syllables in iambic dimeter.  Remember that by the time this was written, accentual meters had pretty much replaced the earlier classical meters which considered the length of time it took to pronounce syllables, rather than just word accent … which lead to fascinating tensions in heterodyne feet!  Not just a ham radio term, heterodyne!  I don’t need to tell you that heterodyning is making a signal frequency by mixing two frequencies in a stable way using a mixer, like a oscillating vacuum-tube or transistor.   Thank you, Reginald Fessenden, another guy jacked around unfairly by Thomas Edison.  But I digress….

The Vespers hymns of the week in the Roman Breviary were probably written by St. Pope Gregory I, “The Great” (+604) who did a great deal to shape the Roman Rite that we have today… the Traditional Roman Rite, which our inheritance, our patrimony as Roman Catholics.  Let us never allow anyone to rob us or withhold from us our heritage.

Let’s drill. Let’s dye.

Imménse caeli Cónditor,
Qui mixta ne confúnderent,
Aquæ fluénta dívidens,
Cælum dedísti límitem.

Mighty creator of the heavens, dividing the streams of water You gave heaven as a limit, lest once mixed they should be confusedly jumbled together. (NB: heterodyne?  Nope.)

Firmans locum cæléstibus,
Simúlque terræ rívulis;
Ut unda flammas témperet,
Terræ solum ne díssipent.

Fixing a place for the heavenly streams, at the same time fixing one for those of the earth, so that the wave might temper the flames lest they destroy the ground of the earth.  (NB: sŏlum, the o is short.)

Infúnde nunc, piíssime,
Donum perénnis grátiæ:
Fraudis novæ ne cásibus
Nos error átterat vetus.

Now pour forth, O most Merciful, the gift of unending grace, so that the ancient offense not grind us down in the failures of new crimes.

Lucem fides adáugeat:
Sic lúminis iubar ferat:
Hæc vana cuncta próterat:
Hanc falsa nulla cómprimant.

O let the Faith increase the light: O thusly may divine splendor of illumination hasten: O may it trample under foot every vanity: O let no false thing suppress it. (NB: lux – f., iubar – n., lumen -n.)

Præsta, Pater piíssime,
Patríque compar Únice,
Cum Spíritu Paráclito
Regnans per omne s?culum.
Amen.