O Emmanuel -- the last day of Advent

Today in  many liturgical churches, the seventh and final of the O Antiphons is recited.  On the 17th I started a short blog series explaining each Antiphon.  There's a short intro to the whole series at the beginning of that post.  Here is today's reading, O Emmanuel.

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Latin:
O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster,
exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum:
veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.

English:

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,

the hope of the nations and their Saviour:

Come and save us, O Lord our God.

"O Come, O Come Emmanuel" always begins with this verse:
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

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We are finally here at the pinnacle!  The main reason we Jesus came is because He is God with us!  This is cause for great joy and exclamation points on every sentence!

I don't want to get annoying with punctuation, so I'll stop.  But, I hope you see why I love the O Antiphons.  Each day we remember one of the reasons Jesus came, and as we approach Christmas we remember the more significant reasons, until we reach the most significant of all--He is God With Us, Immanuel. 

As the Antiphons build on one another, they create a sense of anticipation, building towards the most important thing.  

As I wrote in the first post, the Christmas Carol "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" is based on the O Antiphons, and each day we've seen an Antiphon and its corresponding verse (or two verses in the case of O Radix Jesse).  Unfortunately, the first verse of the song doesn't have as much to do with the last antiphon as one would hope.  

The last antiphon summarizes the rest of the stanzas, and is placed at the end as the final exclamation to the crescendo of expectation.  On the other hand, the first verse of the Carol establishes that we are mostly talking about Israel, and not thinking as much about how much Jesus' coming impacts the whole world.  This also tends to make us focus primarily on Jesus' first coming, neglecting the fact that Advent was meant to both remember His birth and remind us to eagerly await His return.  

But, I still love the carol because it sounds so beautiful.  More importantly, if we can remember to celebrate the whole of Advent, even "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" reminds us to desperately await Jesus' coming.

Remember that the world waited for God to reveal his rescue plan for at least 4000 years (if you're a young earth creationist), maybe even billions of years (if you're anything else).  The feeling we get as children, waiting for Christmas morning to open a simple toy pales in comparison to the way all of creation eagerly awaited Immanuel.  

And we look forward to His return with equal expectation.  Romans 8:19-23 express how creation and the saints are groaning because we so want to live fully in the (re)New(ed) Creation.  

Jesus, you came to be God-With-Us.  That is so radical and mind-boggling, but we treat it as a familiar thing.  Wow!  Even though we had broken our communion with you, Father, you came up with this beautiful rescue plan.  Spirit, remind us today of how special and stunning it is that you did this.  Remind us of how much all of creation longed for its rescue.  

May we look forward to your return with great expectation.  May our anticipation grow each day, like a child looking forward to Christmas morning.  Like the child trying to figure out what the gift is ahead of Christmas, may we see glimpses of your New Creation in our lives, just as you promised (2 Corinthians 5:17).  

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,

the hope of the nations and their Saviour:

Come and save us, O Lord our God!

O Rex Gentium -- The 2nd to last day of Advent

Today in  many liturgical churches, the sixth of the O Antiphons is recited.  On the 17th I started a short blog series explaining each Antiphon.  There's a short intro to the whole series at the beginning of that post.  Here is today's reading, O Rex Gentium.

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Latin:
O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,
lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:
veni, et salva hominem,
quem de limo formasti.

English:

O King of the nations, and their desire,

the cornerstone making both one:

Come and save the human race,

which you fashioned from clay.

"O Come, O Come Emmanuel" almost always contains this verse:
O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace.

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Rex Gentium sounds like the name of a country singer, but it's actually the Latin phrase for "King of the Nations."  Today's verse celebrates that Jesus is the King of all nations.  We have already seen how He is the Davidic King with ultimate authority (O Clavis David), so today we are paying closer attention to Jesus as the one who restores our relationship with other people, and asking Him to save the human race.

Today's stanza reminds us that Jesus was the Creator of all things.  In Genesis 1, God established a world where human beings had perfect relationships with Him, each other and nature.  When our communion with God was broken, we also found we could no longer have perfect relationships with one another or nature.

You'll often hear people say "Jesus would have died for you even if you were the only person on earth."  Well that's great, but it's pretty irrelevant.  Jesus came to unite us with God because He misses everyone, not just one person.  Today's antiphon asks Jesus to come and save the human race.  I don't believe this is a universalist statement because it is not saying all men will be saved.  We should pray for the salvation of all people!

Today's verse in "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" focuses on the relationships among the members of the human race.  Tomorrow we will celebrate that Jesus is "God With Us," which is the ultimate reason He is here, but today we celebrate something that is almost as important, that he is the King of all of us who brings us back into a place of perfect relationship with one another.

Jesus came to reverse the curse of the tower of Babel.  He has already paid for the reversal of this curse, but it has not yet been completed.  We will one day get along with people from every tribe and tongue who have joined His kingdom, which endures forever.


Jesus did not just come so you individually can be at peace with God.  He also came so you can be at peace with others.  Remember, you're not going to be spending eternity alone with God.  There are going to be a lot of other people there too!  And the point of today's antiphon is to ask Jesus that more and more people would be there.


Jesus, our prayer for today is that your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.  We want to be a people of peace whose "sad divisions cease."  We want to see every person come to know you.  Come and save us!

O Oriens -- The 3rd to last day of Advent

Today in  many liturgical churches, the fifth of the O Antiphons is recited.  On the 17th I started a short blog series explaining each Antiphon.  There's a short intro to the whole series at the beginning of that post.  Here is today's reading, O Oriens.

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Latin:
O Oriens,

splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae:

veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

English:

O Morning Star,

splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:

Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

(Note: A literal translation of the Latin yields "O Rising Sun", but the poetic "O Morning Star" is often preferred.

"O Come, O Come Emmanuel" almost always contains this verse:
O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

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I like this one of the O Antiphons because we usually sing it in "O Come, O Come Emmanuel."  Also, it has a bunch of Latin words that I sort of know from repeated exposure, like aeternae.

As you see noted above, the translation of O Oriens is literally "O Rising Sun," but usually is rendered "O Morning Star."  Some people get in big debates about whether the Morning Star refers to Jesus or Satan in the Bible.  The truth is, it refers to both at different times.  The phrase was used as a metaphor for something beautiful or spectacular, because the Morning Star is both when you see it in the twilight.

The Morning Star is the planet Venus.  If you go outside around sunrise, you will often find it near the rising Sun.  If you don't, that means it will probably be visible around sunset. The very simple astronomical explanation is that Venus is closer to the Sun than we are, so you can see it near the Sun, but the Sun is too bright at midday to see Venus, so you have to wait until dawn or dusk to make it out.

Anyway, I prefer the translation "O Rising Sun" because I'm 1/4 Japanese.

Well, that's true, but actually I prefer it because it makes more sense in context of the stanza.  The planet Venus is nowhere near bright enough to cast out shadows, but the Rising Sun is quite bright (Or so I've heard; as a night owl, I've seen it only a handful of times).

Incidentally, December 21 is usually the Winter Solstice (not this year because it is the year before leap year). The solstice which was and is celebrated as a religious festival in many pagan societies.  We Christians see the Sun not as an object to be worshiped, but as an object to remind us of Jesus, the "Sun of Righteousness"

In Malachi 4 (the last chapter in the Old Testament), we discover the worshipers of God will be blessed by the rising "sun of righteousness, with healing in its rays."  Check out the fourth verse of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" for another reference to this passage.

O Oriens refers to Jesus as the light of the world, the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings, the one who casts out the darkness.   It's important for us to read the word "enlighten" as it was meant before the historical Enlightenment (the O Antiphons were written by AD 500 at the latest, while the Enlightenment wasn't until the 17th century).  We are not asking Jesus to come show us reason & knowledge, but to come cast out the darkness and light the way for us.

The theme of light and darkness is one of the most common, beautiful, and nebulous metaphors in scripture, and I really can't explain it.  I like to postulate ideas that try to synthesize the science of the Electromagnetic force with the beautiful statements we read about God being light, but I'm really not sure about them.  What I do know is that Jesus is the light.

Have you ever been in a pitch black room or cave when someone lights the smallest light?  It's incredibly bright.  Imagine how bright the rising sun would seem.  This is how sudden and jolting the coming of Jesus was to our world.  

Everything changed.

The world would never be the same.  This is the Jesus whose birth we are about to celebrate.

Come, Sun of Righteousness!

O Clavis David -- The 4th to last day of Advent

Today in  many liturgical churches, the fourth of the O Antiphons is recited.  On the 17th I started a short blog series explaining each Antiphon.  There's a short intro to the whole series at the beginning of that post.  Here is today's reading, O Clavis David.

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Latin:
O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;
qui aperis, et nemo claudit;
claudis, et nemo aperit:
veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,
sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

English:

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

"O Come, O Come Emmanuel" often contains this verse:
O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.

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Yesterday's antiphon (O Radix Jesse) already keyed in (pun fully intended) to the fact that Jesus was a descendant of King David and his father Jesse.  So why do we have two Antiphons (and three verses of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel") devoted to this fact?

Well, yesterday's antiphon had more to do with the fact that Jesus was the fulfillment of God's promise to David, and looked forward to Jesus as the One who liberates us from "foreign rule" and our bondage to death.  Today's verse focuses more on the authority that the Davidic ruler has been given by God, but again reminds us that He came to free us from bondage to death.

Isaiah 22:22 says "I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open."  It looks like the writer(s) of the O Antiphons may have taken some liberty by calling Jesus "the Key of David" while the Bible seems to indicate Jesus has the key to the house of David.  But the point is that Jesus has the ultimate authority, the final say.

In Isaiah 42:7 and 61:1 we read that one of the reasons Jesus came to earth was to free the prisoners.  Today's Antiphon alludes to fallen mankind's imprisonment to death and despair, and asks our Savior to lead us out of prison.  One of the verses of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" that we read yesterday also reminded us of this fact.

So today, let us remember that Jesus is both our Liberator and the ultimate authority in all the heavens and the earth.

O Radix Jesse -- The 5th to last day of Advent

Today in many liturgical churches, the third of the O Antiphons is recited. On Saturday I started a short blog series explaining each Antiphon. There's a short intro to the whole series at the beginning of that post.  Here is today's Antiphon, O Radix Jesse.

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Latin:

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,

super quem continebunt reges os suum,

quem Gentes deprecabuntur:

veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

English:

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;

before you kings will shut their mouths,

to you the nations will make their prayer:

Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.


"O Come, O Come Emmanuel" actually has two verses related to this Antiphon:

O come, Thou Root of Jesse’s tree,
An ensign of Thy people be;
Before Thee rulers silent fall;
All peoples on Thy mercy call.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory over the grave.

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Today's reading and tomorrow's reading both look at Jesus' genealogy.  Tomorrow we learn that Jesus is the "Key of David."  Jesse was King David's father.  It is important to us that Jesus descended from David, because it shows he fulfills the Davidic Covenant (God's promise to King David that his dynasty would last forever).  Here we see God's faithfulness--He keeps His promises.  

In Jeremiah and Isaiah dynasties are symbolized by trees.  In Isaiah 11:1 we read "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit."

At the time Isaiah wrote, the Davidic dynasty seemed to be over, as the Jewish people were under foreign rule.  The promise of Isaiah 11 is that the Root of Jesse would come one day and liberate God's people from other rulers.  One day Jesse's descendant would come and  deliver His people.

Advent remembers the Jewish people looking forward to the coming of Radix Jesse to liberate them from foreign rulers (the Babylonians, Medo-Persians, Greeks, and Romans).  It also looks forward to the day when Jesus comes again and liberates us from the rule of imperfect men and women who lead imperfect governments.  "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" points out that the Root of Jesse's Tree will not only liberate us from the rule of imperfect people, but from the rule of death.

O Faithful God, who keeps His covenant to a thousand generations, You never let us down.  We  praise You, our liberator.  Come and rule your world.  May you rule our lives today.