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| - The hora sexta of the Romans corresponded closely with our noon. Among the Jews it was already regarded, together with Terce and None, as an hour most favourable to prayer. In the Acts of the Apostles we read that St. Peter went up to the higher parts of the house to pray (Acts 10:9). It was the middle of the day, also the usual hour of rest, and in consequence for devout men, an occasion to pray to God, as were the morning and evening hours.
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| abstract
| - The hora sexta of the Romans corresponded closely with our noon. Among the Jews it was already regarded, together with Terce and None, as an hour most favourable to prayer. In the Acts of the Apostles we read that St. Peter went up to the higher parts of the house to pray (Acts 10:9). It was the middle of the day, also the usual hour of rest, and in consequence for devout men, an occasion to pray to God, as were the morning and evening hours. The Fathers of the Church dwell constantly on the symbolism of this hour; their teaching is merely summarized here: it is treated at length in Cardinal Bona's work on psalmody. Noon is the hour when the sun is at its full, it is the image of Divine splendour, the plenitude of God, the time of grace; at the sixth hour Abraham received the three angels, the image of the Trinity; at the sixth hour Adam and Eve ate the fatal apple. We should pray at noon, says St. Ambrose, because that is the time when the Divine light is in its fulness. Origen, St. Augustine, and several others regard this hour as favourable to prayer. Lastly and above all, it was the hour when Christ was nailed to the Cross; this memory excelling all the others left a still visible trace in most of the liturgy of this hour. All these mystic reasons and traditions, which indicate the sixth hour as a culminating point in the day, a sort of pause in the life of affairs, the hour of repast, could not but exercise an influence on Christians, inducing them to choose it as an hour of prayer. As early as the third century the hour of Sext was considered as important as Terce and None as an hour of prayer. Clement of Alexandria speaks of these three hours of prayer, as does Tertullian. Long previous the Didache had spoken of the sixth hour in the same manner. Origen, the "Canons of Hippolytus", and St. Cyprian express the same tradition. It is therefore evident that the custom of prayer at the sixth hour was well-established in the 3rd century and even in the 2nd century or at the end of the 1st century. But probably most of these texts refer to private prayer. In the 4th century the hour of Sext was widely established as a Canonical Hour. The following are very explicit examples. In his rule St. Basil made the sixth hour an hour of prayer for the monks, St. John Cassian treats it as an hour of prayer generally recognized in his monasteries The De virginitate, wrongly attributed to St. Athanasius, but in any case dating from the fourth century, speaks of the prayer of Sext, as do also the "Apostolic Constitutions", St. Ephrem, St. John Chrysostom But this does not prove that the observance of Sext, any more than Prime, Terce, None, or even the other Canonical Hours, was universal. Discipline on this point varied widely according to regions and Churches. And in fact some countries may be mentioned where the custom was introduced only later. That the same variety prevailed in the formulæ of prayer is shown in the following paragraph.
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