When it is said
The Church sings it at Sunday Matins, after Psalm 51, from the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee until the fifth Sunday of Lent.
That first Sunday opens the weeks of getting ready for Lent.
On your own, it suits the morning you set out for church, above all the morning of a confession.
Where it comes from
No author known
A hymn of the Lenten Triodion
It belongs to the Lenten Triodion, the book of services that runs from the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee to the eve of Easter. The prayer books that print it give no author’s name. The Jordanville prayer book sets it among the hymns of that first Sunday.
G. V. Shann, Euchology (1891), on the service books; Prayer Book, Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville (2011), hymns from the Triodion
The hymns that follow it
Two more hymns follow it at Matins. The first asks the Mother of God to guide the singer in the paths of salvation, for the singer has wasted a whole life in idleness. The second remembers the many wrongs the singer has done and trembles at the day of judgment. Yet it trusts in God’s mercy and cries out with David, “Have mercy on me, O God.”
Prayer Book, Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville (2011), the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee
What the words mean
Two temples
The hymn speaks of two temples. One is the church, where the singer goes at dawn. The other is the singer’s own body, which Paul calls “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). The body arrives stained, and the hymn asks God to make it clean.
The Scripture in it
My soul longs for You in the night; indeed, my spirit seeks You at dawn. For when Your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness.
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit Who is in you, Whom you have received from God? You are not your own …
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Greek
Τῆς μετανοίας ἄνοιξόν μοι πύλας Ζωοδότα·
ὀρθρίζει γὰρ τὸ πνεῦμά μου, πρὸς ναὸν τὸν ἅγιόν σου,
ναὸν φέρον τοῦ σώματος, ὅλον ἐσπιλωμένον·
ἀλλʼ ὡς οἰκτίρμων κάθαρον, εὐσπλάγχνῳ σου ἐλέει.