Lauds
To you I pray, O Lord; at dawn you will hear my cry; at dawn I will plead before you and wait (Ps. 5:3-4).
By long tradition, each hour of the Liturgy of the Hours commemorates some mystery or event in the History of Salvation. Thus, we pray Lauds at early dawn “that the Resurrection of the Lord may be celebrated by Morning Prayer” (St Cyprian, De oratione dominica, 35: PL 39: 655). “In the evening the Lord is on the Cross, in the morning he rises to new life…In the evening I relate the sufferings he bore in dying; in the morning I proclaim the life that dawns from Him anew” (St. Augustine, Expositions on Psalm 26).