Theology of Vespers

Interesting discussion on a yahoo group i belong to. We were talking about "Morning vs Evening (When the Liturgical Day Begins)" when one correspondent wrote,

Our books should reflect our conviction that a day runs from sunset to sunset... but frequently they don't.

And another responded,

Perhaps because few if any of us have a real conviction that the day does run from sunset to sunset.

In real life the day does run from morning to evening. What on earth is gained by trying to pretend that there is a liturgical day that does otherwise?

And so this came out of my own fingers, after having on the previous day expressed some agnosticism on the question as to why our liturgical books seem at odds with our theological understanding of when the day begins, but thinking about it some more:

This might be a question of lack of culture, yes?

If we do serve the offices of the church as set forth by the fathers from the beginning on a daily basis, in time we actually do come to think of the evening as the start of a new day. Tonight we will begin singing of the glorious Apostle Thomas and, coincidentally or not, also of St Innocent of Moscow. We hadn't thought much about them this week, and won't, until tonight, but tonight will be all about them, for it's the beginning of their day, and we will sing about them. And after singing about them for an hour or so, as we do, and bringing out the first light of evening and blessing God for the day which has just ended, and for the new (new!) light of Christ which is now shining in our hearts, in the darkness of this world (and, not coincidentally, also amid the gathering shadows of Crow Hill, outside sultry Kampala), we really will have a sense, by the end of the service, that something has ended and something new is just beginning, as many things do, in darkness, in stillness, in the earth, to be kept secret until it is revealed in splendor (in the morning), when we shall exclaim: "The Lord is God, and he has shone upon us!"— after which we will perfect and fulfill what has thus begun, by the service of the Holy Liturgy.

We know from the scripture that "there was evening, and morning: one day" (Gn 1.4 I think). Not even: "the first day"— for there had not yet been a second; how could we call that day "first", since in doing so we would already have made it relative to a "second", when that second had not yet been brought into existence. No, that could come only later; for was God under no compulsion to bring it forth at all— he had created "one day", and he had already seen that it was "good". But if there was ever to be a second, it would have to have the same shape, the same order, if it was to be a "day" at all. For the first ever defines the class, otherwise we call it something else. But the scripture says: "evening, and morning: one day", so a "day" (as it is called) begins in the evening. But we have to ask why. In the Church's experience, why?

In our modern culture, beginning at dusk does indeed seem artificial: We— (ah! but who are we, really?)— "We" like to say a day begins at midnight. Why, though? Isn't that an odd and arbitrary time? Everybody's asleep, nobody even notices it, except the banks, which have arranged their software so as to assess interest automatically at midnight. But for us— the very idea that the creation of a new day meant nothing at all! Or that the day "really" begins in the morning, when we get to wor!. The latter, of course, makes better felt sense, but it's still all about us. And the Bible is not so androcentric, nor the ancients as interested in themselves, when they much more sensibly (and sensorily!) counted twelve hours starting when the light ended, and again when it began. They lived in the fields, their feet were in the soil, they saw the sun, moon and stars overhead. They knew when God's day began or ended. It had nothing to do with them; that they had to conform their lives to it.

The new day begins when God creates it, not when we get off to work, whether that work is the work of the financial office or of the Midnight Office. And our service books set forth the work of man, who responds to God. Now, at dawn, "man goes forth unto his work, and to his labor until the evening", as it says in the vesperal Psalm (103 LXX / 104 MT), which recounts the day's activities: so our books set forth man's work, they begin when the work of homo adorans begins, with the early morning office. And in this sequence, after all, the beginning of Vespers is still the end of the old day— for as is well known, the change to the new day, which in fact we have gathered to observe, does not come till the Prokeimenon, which is in the middle of Vespers, not its beginning— so that the vesperal service is appropriately placed in our service books at the end of the human workday.

But God's work begins with the separation of light from darkness and the creation of "evening, and morning, one day". Man can't do that. So the day itself, apart from the work we will do in it, begins with the evening, during Vespers, when God creates it. We ask mercy for the day past and bless God for the new day he is creating— and after that, we take a little nourishment and receive a little "rest for our infirmity", as the prayers say— but only so much as, and only so that, we may rise early with the Morning Star, to await the Rising Sun of Justice, and behold the Dawn of Mercy, and to praise his marvelous works, as is due.

But when we rise to do this, he has already been at work, creating the day in which we could do this.

In the world of banks and offices, some of this may have been forgotten; but shall the Church also forget?

Our correspondent relates:

In the CofE over the last decade there has been something of an encouragement in revision of lectionary and sanctorale and daily office to pretend that the day begins in the evening. Personally, I am pleased to say that the 'final' versions of these works have discarded the idea. It's still available as an option for the cognoscenti ('anoraks' if you 
prefer!), but there is no encouragement to observe evening prayer as if it were the start if the day, except for a small number of red letter feasts. That seems like reality to me.

Some things may seem like reality to us, but it could be only that we have not seen what reality is. "There was evening and there was morning: one day." Was he "pretending", or did the sacred writer actually understand something other than what the banks know?