In voluntate tua, Domine, universa sunt posita, et non est qui possit resistere voluntati tuae: tu enim fecisti omnia, caelum et terram, et universa quae caeli ambitu continentur: Dominus universorum tu es.
“Everything is put under (in) your power (will), and there is nothing that can resist your power (will). For you made everything, heaven and earth, and everything that comprises the range of heaven. You are the Lord of everything.” (Est 4)
Click here to listen to an audio of the chant sung by Br. Jacob Berns, OSB, of St. John’s Abbey.
The theologian Peter Knauer S.J. (* 1935) offers a definition of the word “God”: “God is without whom nothing exists.”
This definition expresses in philosophical terminology what the introit In voluntate tua expresses in poetry.
It is a bit surprising that the word enim in line 3 demands so much time and energy. Maybe the composer wanted to make sure that the singers and listeners take the following expression very seriously. Enim works like a colon or like a short pause when we speak and lift our voices a bit before the pause. Who is God? The one who made everything, the one without whom nothing exists.
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