Night

by Charles Péguy (translated by Robert Royal)
Oh sweet, oh great, oh holy, oh beautiful night, perhaps the most holy of my daughters, night of the long robe, of the robe of stars
You remind me of that great silence that was in the world
Before the beginning of the reign of man.
You announce to me the great silence that there will be
After the end of the reign of man, when I will have again taken up my scepter.
And I sometimes look forward to it, because man really makes a lot of noise.
But in particular, Night, you remind of that night.
And I will remember it eternally.
The ninth hour had sounded. It was in the land of my people Israel.
Everything had been consummated. That enormous adventure.
Since the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land, up until the ninth hour.
Everything had been consummated. Let's not speak more of it. It hurts me.
That unbelievable descent of my son amidst men.
Among men.
For what they did with it.
The thirty years when he was a carpenter among men.
The three years when he was a kind of preacher among men.
A priest.
The three days when he was a victim among men,
Amidst men.
The three nights when he was a dead man among men.
Amidst men.
The centuries and the centuries when he is a host among men.
Everything was consummated, that unbelievable adventure
Through which, I, God, bound my arms for my eternity.
That adventure through which my Son bound my arms.
Forever binding the arms of my justice, forever unbinding the arms of my mercy.
And against my justice inventing justice itself.
A justice of love. A justice of Hope. Everything had been consummated.
What was necessary. How it was necessary. As my prophets had announced. The
veil of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
The earth shook; the rocks were split.
Graves opened, and many bodies of saints who had died were raised.
And around the ninth hour my Son let out
The cry that will never be erased. Everything was consummated. The soldiers had
returned to barracks.
Laughing and joking because their work was done.
A guard duty they would never take again.
A lone centurion remained, and some men.
A small detachment to watch over that gibbet without importance.
The gallows on which my Son hung.
The Mother was there.
And maybe too some disciples, one is still not sure about that.
Now, every man has the right to bury his son.
Every man on earth, if he has that great woe
Of not dying before his son. And I alone, I God
My arms bound because of that adventure,
I alone in that moment, father after so many fathers,
I alone could not bury my son.
Then it was, Oh night, that you came.
Oh my daughter, dear among all, and I see it still, and will see it in my eternity
Then it was oh Night that you came and in a great shroud you buried
The centurion and his Roman men
The Virgin and the holy women,
And that mount, and that valley on which evening was descending,
And my people Israel and sinners and, together, he who was dying, who had died
for them
And Joseph of Arimathea's men who were already approaching
Bearing the white shroud.
Charles Péguy (1873-1914) was one of the most prolific and original - at times prophetic - Catholic writers of recent times. His works extend to thousands of pages of both prose and poetry. This text is an excerpt from the second of his three long poems on "mysteries" The Porch of the Mystery of the Second Virtue (i.e., Hope). Several translations already exist. The one here was done specifically for Good Friday 2025.