On a bright, quiet night like the Milky Way, it is difficult to tell the dawn, and the wind is weak. The first rooster’s cackle is so pleasant to hear...
This is part of a poem by Yongjae Seonghyeon, a great scholar and man of letters from the early Joseon Dynasty. He was also well-versed in music, and under the order of King Seongjong, he compiled a book with two others in 1493, which is called the textbook of Joseon music. With outstanding talent in literature and music, he romantically described the rooster's crowing that breaks the dawn's silence through his poetry. So why do roosters crow at dawn, just before daybreak?
In the case of vertebrates, there is a pineal gland, a hormone-secreting tissue resembling a pine cone, in the brain's center. Melatonin hormone is synthesized and secreted here, and melatonin acts as a biological clock that creates a daily rhythm of physiological and behavioral activities according to the circadian cycle of day and night. Melatonin secretion is promoted at night when the light is weak, inducing sleep, and secretion is suppressed during the day when the light is strong, maintaining a state of wakefulness. This is why sleeping is difficult if you don’t turn off the lights in your room at night.
Mammals receive light through their eyes, but birds receive light directly through the skin on their heads and stimulate the pineal gland, so they have a life cycle that is much more sensitive to light than other animals. For this reason, birds wake up early from sleep due to decreased melatonin secretion, even in the dim light at dawn, and chirp diligently from early in the morning. Chickens also serve as alarms to let people know morning has come. The first rooster crow at dawn must have been pleasant to the ears of Seonghyeon, but to Saint Peter, it sounded like a thunderclap.
In this week’s Passion Sunday Gospel, there is a scene where Peter says at the Last Supper, “Lord, I am ready to go to prison and die with you” (Luke 22:33). Jesus says, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times” (22:34). In fact, Peter denied knowing Jesus three times when Jesus was taken away before the first rooster crowed in the morning. Peter remembered what the Lord had said and “went outside and wept bitterly” (22:62).
Saint Peter’s human weakness, caused by his fear of the powers that persecuted Christ and his self-abasement, is transformed with the first rooster crow. He serves as the church's foundation, dying hanging upside down on a cross.
In his 1953 award-winning poem, “The Rooster of Jerusalem,” the pro-life poet Chung Ma Yoo-hwan reflected, “Have I not participated in evil by turning away in the face of hypocrisy's denial of goodness?” “Every dawn, in the distant city of Jerusalem, the rooster cries out (⋯), and I wet my pillow with tears of resentment, sinfulness, and self-reproach."
Lent is a time of conversion, deep reflection, and change in behavior toward the world and ourselves. Before we hear a rooster crowing somewhere, let's see if we've turned a blind eye to the injustices, hypocrisies, and inadequacies of the world and ourselves.
