Matins: Meaning, Order, and the Night Office

Matins is the night prayer of the Catholic Church, the first and longest hour of the Divine Office. In the Roman Breviary of 1962 it opens with the verse Domine, labia mea aperies, sings the Invitatory (Psalm 94 with its antiphon) and a hymn, then prays the psalms in one or three nocturns, each closed by three lessons from Scripture, the Fathers or the lives of the saints. On Sundays and feasts it ends with the Te Deum. It belongs to the hours of darkness; Lauds follows it at dawn.

What is Matins? Meaning and definition

Matins is one of the eight canonical hours of the Divine Office: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. The 1960 rubrics of the Breviary count it among the three major hours, with Lauds and Vespers.

The word comes from the Latin matutinum, "of the morning." Strictly it is a misnomer that history has made stick. The old name of the night office was Vigils (vigiliae, "watches"), and matutinae first meant the dawn praises we now call Lauds. As the night office came to be said in the last hours before daybreak and joined to the morning praise, the name passed to it. St Benedict, in the sixth century, still calls it Vigils throughout his Rule. The reformed books of 1971, the Liturgy of the Hours, dropped it as a night hour for an "Office of Readings" that may be said at any time.

Its spirit is the vigil of the servant waiting for his master. Our Lord blessed it: "Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching" (Luke 12:37). And the Psalmist gave the Church her text for it: "I rose at midnight to give praise to thee; for the judgments of thy justification" (Psalm 118:62). The Church still sings that verse as the versicle of the second nocturn on Sundays.

From the vigils to the nocturns: a short history

The first Christians prayed by night. St Paul and Silas, in the prison at Philippi, "at midnight, praying, praised God" (Acts 16:25), and the night stayed the hour of expectation: "At midnight there was a cry made: Behold the bridegroom cometh" (Matthew 25:6).

The Romans divided the night into four watches of soldiers on guard, and the Church borrowed the image. The night office came to be prayed in sections, each called a nocturn (nocturnum, "of the night"), with psalms followed by readings. St Benedict fixes the hour in winter "at the eighth hour of the night", that is, about two in the morning, so that the monks might rise having slept, and he lays down twelve psalms in two nocturns on weekdays, with a longer office of three nocturns on Sundays.

The Roman Office kept nine psalms in three nocturns for feasts. In 1911 St Pius X, in the apostolic constitution Divino afflatu, redistributed the Psalter so that it is prayed every week, and Matins on Sundays and ferias, which had counted eighteen and twelve psalms, was brought to nine psalms or portions of psalms. The Code of Rubrics of 1960, which governs the Breviary of 1962, kept that psalter and settled in plain terms which days have one nocturn and which three.

The order of Matins in the 1962 Breviary

Matins follows the same order every night; the texts change with the day and the feast. The Roman Breviary of 1962 prints the fixed parts in its Ordinary and the rest in the Psalter and the Propers.

The opening versicles

Since 1955 the Pater, Ave and Credo once said silently beforehand are no longer prescribed, and Matins begins at once. At the first words the one who prays signs his lips with the cross; the verse is taken from the Miserere (Psalm 50:17). Then the verse of Psalm 69 that opens the other hours:

V. Dómine, lábia mea apéries.
R. Et os meum annuntiábit laudem tuam.
V. Deus, in adjutórium meum inténde.
R. Dómine, ad adjuvándum me festína.
Glória Patri, et Fílio, et Spirítui Sancto. Sicut erat in princípio, et nunc, et semper, et in sǽcula sæculórum. Amen. Allelúja.

V. O Lord, open thou my lips.
R. And my mouth shall declare thy praise.
V. O God, come to my assistance.
R. O Lord, make haste to help me.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Alleluia.

From Septuagesima to the Wednesday of Holy Week the Alleluia gives way to Laus tibi, Domine, Rex æternæ gloriæ, "Praise be to thee, O Lord, King of eternal glory."

The Invitatory: Psalm 94

The Invitatory is the Church's call to adoration: Psalm 94, Venite, exsultemus, sung under an antiphon that is repeated, in whole or in part, between its sections. It is said at the start of Matins every day of the year except on the Epiphany and in the Sacred Triduum. The antiphon announces the mystery of the day. On Sundays of the year it is Dóminum, qui fecit nos, Veníte, adorémus, "The Lord who made us, come, let us adore." In Advent it is Regem ventúrum Dóminum, "The Lord, the King who is to come"; in Lent, Non sit vobis vanum mane súrgere ante lucem, "Let it not be vain for you to rise up early, before the light"; at Easter, Surréxit Dóminus vere, Allelúja, "The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia."

The psalm itself, in the Douay-Rheims:

Come let us praise the Lord with joy: let us joyfully sing to God our saviour.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to him with psalms.
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.
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.
To day if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts:
As in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness: where your fathers tempted me, they proved me, and saw my works.
Forty years long was I offended with that generation, and I said: These always err in heart.
And these men have not known my ways: so I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

At Venite, adoremus et procidamus, "Come let us adore and fall down," the rubrics have all kneel.

The hymn

A hymn proper to the day or season follows. On many Sundays of the year it is Nocte surgentes, traditionally ascribed to St Gregory the Great, whose first stanza gives the whole meaning of the hour: rising by night, let us all keep watch, ever meditating on the psalms, and sing sweet hymns to the Lord with one voice.

Nocte surgéntes vigilémus omnes,
Semper in psalmis meditémur, atque
Voce concórdi Dómino canámus
Dúlciter hymnos.

The nocturns

Then come the psalms, each with its antiphon and its Glory be. A nocturn is a group of psalms, followed by a versicle, the Pater noster said silently, an absolution (a short prayer for mercy), a blessing asked with Jube, Domine, benedicere, and three lessons. Each lesson ends Tu autem, Domine, miserere nobis, "But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us," answered Deo gratias, and is followed by a responsory, a chant of Scripture that answers the reading. The absolution of the first nocturn runs:

Exáudi, Dómine Jesu Christe, preces servórum tuórum, et miserére nobis: Qui cum Patre et Spíritu Sancto vivis et regnas in sǽcula sæculórum. R. Amen.

Hear, O Lord Jesus Christ, the prayers of thy servants, and have mercy upon us: who with the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest world without end. R. Amen.

Matins works through the first great part of the Psalter, from Psalm 1 to Psalm 108, over the week. On Sunday the nine psalms are 1, 2, 3, 8, Psalm 9 in four parts, and 10; their versicles are Memor fui nocte nominis tui, Domine, "In the night I have remembered thy name, O Lord," then Media nocte surgebam, then Prævenerunt oculi mei ad te diluculo, "My eyes to thee have prevented the morning." Feasts take psalms chosen for the mystery or the saint, given in the Proper or the Common.

The Te Deum and the end of Matins

On Sundays and feasts the last responsory gives way to the Te Deum, "We praise thee, O God: we acknowledge thee to be the Lord", the hymn of thanksgiving that crowns the night office; its full Latin and English text is in our page on the Te Deum. Under the 1960 rubrics (nos. 237-239) it is said on all feasts, on the Sundays after Epiphany and after Pentecost, through the octaves of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, on the ferias of Christmastide and Eastertide, and in the Saturday Office of Our Lady. The Office of the season omits it in Advent and from Septuagesima to Holy Saturday, as do the ferias of the rest of the year, most vigils and the Office of the Dead; a last responsory is then said in its place.

If Matins is said apart from Lauds, it closes with the collect of the day and Fidelium animæ (no. 179). Most often Lauds follows at once, and the collect is said there.

One nocturn or three: how the rank of the day decides

The Code of Rubrics of 1960 (nos. 161-163) sets the length of Matins by the rank of the day:

Day	Form of Matins
Feasts of the 1st and 2nd class, the ferias of the Sacred Triduum, the Octave Day of Christmas (January 1), All Souls	Three nocturns: nine psalms, nine lessons
All Sundays except Easter and Pentecost; ferias; vigils; feasts of the 3rd class; the days within the octave of Christmas; the Saturday Office of Our Lady	One nocturn: nine psalms, three lessons
Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday, with their octaves	One nocturn of three psalms, three lessons

The lessons follow the same logic. In three nocturns, the first three lessons are from Scripture, the next three tell the life of the saint or give a sermon of the Fathers, and the last three are a homily of a Father on the Gospel of the day's Mass. In one nocturn, the two first lessons are from the Scripture of the season, read through book by book across the year, and the third is the homily on the Sunday Gospel or, on a feast of the 3rd class, a single lesson on the saint. That is why Matins is the hour where the Breviary keeps the lives of the saints, the same lives our saint of the day page tells each morning.

When is Matins prayed?

By its nature Matins belongs to the night, from midnight or the small hours to the dawn, when it passes into Lauds. Carthusians and many monasteries still rise for it in the dark.

The Church has long allowed it to be said earlier. The 1960 rubrics state it plainly (no. 144): for a good reason Matins may be anticipated in the afternoon or evening of the preceding day, but not before two o'clock in the afternoon. Compline is still to be said as the last prayer of the day, even when the next day's Matins has already been anticipated (no. 147). Lauds, on the other hand, is a morning prayer, and the rubrics want it said in the early morning (no. 145).

Matins and Lauds

Matins and Lauds are two hours born as one night-and-dawn office, and still usually said together. Matins watches through the dark with the long psalms and the readings; Lauds, the morning prayer of the Church, greets the rising sun with psalms of praise and the Benedictus of Zachary. Taken with Vespers at evening, the evening hour of the Divine Office, these are the three major hours around which the whole day turns, while Compline, the Church's night prayer before sleep, closes the day before Matins opens the next.

Tenebrae: Matins and Lauds of the Sacred Triduum

For the last three days of Holy Week, Matins and Lauds take the ancient name of Tenebrae, "darkness." Everything festive is stripped away: there is no Domine, labia mea aperies, no invitatory, no hymn, no Glory be, no absolutions or blessings. Matins has three nocturns of three psalms each. The lessons of the first nocturn are the Lamentations of Jeremias, sung with the Hebrew letters that begin each verse, "Aleph. How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people!" (Lamentations 1:1). The second nocturn reads St Augustine on the Psalms, and the third St Paul.

Before the altar stands a triangular candlestick, the Tenebrae hearse, which the rubrics fit with fifteen candles. One is put out after each psalm of Matins and Lauds until a single candle remains. It is hidden behind the altar, and in darkness the choir sings "Christ became obedient for us unto death" (Philippians 2:8), adding on Good Friday "even to the death of the cross", and on Holy Saturday the rest of the verse. Then the Pater noster in silence and the collect. By ancient custom a short noise follows, the strepitus, recalling the earthquake of the Passion, and the hidden candle is brought back: the Light was not put out. You will find the days themselves in our guide to the Sacred Paschal Triduum.

For centuries Tenebrae was anticipated the evening before. Pius XII's restored Holy Week of 1955 set Matins and Lauds of the Triduum in the morning, keeping the evening anticipation of Holy Thursday's only for cathedrals where the Chrism Mass is sung that morning.

How to pray Matins at home

• Have the text arranged for the day. A printed Breviary in Latin and English requires following the calendar and the ribbons across Psalter, Proper and Common (see The Breviary: The Book of the Divine Office). It is far simpler to use the Iter Fidei Divine Office app, which sets out each night's Matins, nocturns, lessons and responsories, in Latin and English, according to the 1962 liturgical calendar.
• Choose your hour. Late at night, before dawn, or in the evening after Vespers, with Lauds on waking.
• Begin with the Sunday Office. One nocturn of nine psalms and three lessons, closed by the Te Deum, gives the whole shape of the hour.
• Let the lessons teach you. Pray them slowly.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Matins in the Catholic Church?

It is the night hour of the Divine Office, the longest of its eight hours: psalms and readings in one or three nocturns, opened by the Invitatory and, on festive days, crowned by the Te Deum.

What does Matins mean?

From the Latin matutinum, "of the morning." The night office was first called Vigils; the name passed to it from the dawn praises it was joined to.

What are Matins and Vespers?

The two poles of the Church's day of prayer: Matins keeps watch in the night with psalms and lessons, Vespers gives thanks at sunset with five psalms and the Magnificat. With Lauds they are the three major hours.

What time is Matins prayed?

In the night or before dawn. The rubrics allow it to be anticipated from two o'clock in the afternoon of the previous day, so it is often said in the evening, after Vespers.

How long is Matins?

About thirty to forty-five minutes recited for a Sunday or feria of one nocturn, and an hour or more for a feast of three nocturns.

What is Matins in the Orthodox Church?

In the Byzantine rite the morning office is called Orthros. It is a different office from Roman Matins, with its own psalms, canon of odes and Great Doxology, and it is often served at night or the evening before on great feasts.

What is Bridegroom Matins?

In the Byzantine rite, the Matins of the first days of Holy Week, usually served the evening before and named after the hymn "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh at midnight" (Matthew 25:6). The nearest Roman equivalent is Tenebrae, the Matins and Lauds of the Triduum.

What is Matins in the Church of England?

In the Book of Common Prayer, "Mattins" is the name of Morning Prayer, an office Cranmer drew in 1549 from the Catholic Matins, Lauds and Prime. It is not the Roman night office described above.

The Iter Fidei app sets out the traditional Divine Office of 1962 for every day, Matins with its nocturns and lessons included, in Latin and English. Join early access here.

Sources. Holy Scripture, Douay-Rheims (Psalms 50:17, 94, 118:62; Lamentations 1:1; Matthew 25:6; Luke 12:37; Acts 16:25; Philippians 2:8); Breviarium Romanum, editio typica 1962 (Ordinary of Matins, Psalter, Proper of the Season for the Sacred Triduum); Rubricæ Breviarii et Missalis Romani (1960), nos. 138, 144-147, 161-163, 179, 182, 208-222, 237-239, 267; Sacred Congregation of Rites, Cum nostra hac ætate (1955); St Pius X, apostolic constitution Divino afflatu (1911); Sacred Congregation of Rites, Maxima Redemptionis nostræ mysteria (1955); Rule of St Benedict, chapters 8-11.