Isidore of Seville divided the night into seven parts: vespers, creeping-light, silence, untimeliness, rooster-cry, ripening, and daybreak.
“Rooster-cry” names that hour when, for anyone who’s been on a farm or who lives in Liliha (where feral roosters prowl the streets), the rooster heralds not so much the breaking of day, but the aching of the night. The rooster crows, as Agamben suggests, as an inquiry in the darkness, asking when the light will return: “His – if you listen carefully – is the heartbroken cry of those who watch in the night and until the last do not know if the day will come.”
The rooster on North Judd Street cries-out around 3.30 every morning. And I wake to whisper hushed prayers that my children will keep sleeping, and also, simultaneously, that God will continue his loving care over my family as we slumber.
It was at this hour many years ago that Peter denied Christ: at the rooster-crow. Peter had despaired, you see, in the darkness. Christ told his disciples to “watch” (Mk. 13:32-37, Mk. 14:32-42) which bring to mind all of his teachings about those who watch and wait (Matt. 24:42-25:13). The disciples did not watch and wait. They slept, and their slumber was not the slumber of rest and belovedness (Ps. 127:2) it was the sleep of despair (Ps. 13:3; Mt. 9:24).
All this while, the Rooster kept his watch, hoping against the darkness. And when Peter gave up hope, the rooster remained vigilant. Even as Peter cried-out “I do not know him!” (Lk. 22:57) in denial of the Light of the World (Jn. 8:12), the Rooster rose to cry-out in longing for the Light of Day (Lk. 1:78, 2:32, Jn. 1:9, 12:46; cf. Ps. 130:6).
When Peter began to invoke curses upon himself (Matt. 26:74), which is to say “dammitalltohell and let the darkness take me” the Rooster’s voice was shatteringly bright, proclaiming that the darkness would not take him, for the Light had come “and the darkness could not overcome it” (Jn. 1:5).
We can learn a lesson from the Rooster, and in the dead places and times of our lives, when everything seems untimely and miserable, we can cock-a-doodle-doo the Kingdom and find that our aching-longing has become a part of the song that hails the Brightness.