The Sixth Day of the O Antiphons: O Come, Desire of Nations, Come

O come, Desire of nations, come

Bind in one the hearts of all mankind,

Bid thou our sad divisions cease,

And be thyself our King of Peace.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!

Emmaneul shall come to thee, O Israel!

Syria.  Sudan.  Christmas Market in Berlin, Germany.  Bombing during worship at St. Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo, Egypt.

Each day of this final week of Advent, a tragedy has lit up the news.  It seems particularly fitting that today we pray as we sing:

Please, please God:  Come as King of Peace,
Please, please God:  End our sad divisions, 
Please, please God:  Bind us into one heart.

If we believe that all of this is God's will, and I do, why doesn't God say yes?  The truth is perhaps that it's not that God isn't saying yes, but that we say no. 

I've been thinking and praying about how to respond in a meaningful way to each of the many ways that we say no to God's perfect will.  The past two days I've heard the same answer through conversations with women whom I respect greatly, and so today I share it with you.

If we do indeed believe that God is ultimately Love--fully, completely, perfectly, then it seems that every time we share God's love with others that we become part of God's yes.  If my small, though not truly small, act of love, incarnates God's love, and then that love incarnates another act of love in someone else, and then another, and then another.........would the impossible become possible, one act of love at a time?

Could my sharing of love through some act with a person in Spring, Texas, actually travel eventually to acts of love in Aleppo and Cairo and Berlin and Moscow and Tehran?  When I recall that the love I share found it's way to me by a 2000 year journey from Bethlehem in Palestine, I know that the impossible is possible with God.

How will God come to you today?  

Will it be by sharing God's love with someone who may not even know that he or she needs it?

The Fifth Day of the O Antphons: O Come, Thou Dayspring from on High

O Come, thou Dayspring from on high,

And cheer us by the drawing nigh;

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

And death's dark shadow put to flight.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, 

O Israel.

Today is the shortest day of the year.  Tonight is the longest night of the year.  It is especially holy that today we sing about Christ,  the Dayspring, and the promise of bringing light to the darkest places of our lives.

In Houston, our shortest days are not that short nor our longest days all that long.  However, when I was in Iceland in May, the only challenge for me was that even though there was a supposed sunset in the middle of the time we call night, it never really got dark; it was always light.  Hotel rooms in Iceland were rated by travelers by how well the curtains would darken the room at night for sleep.  

Today in Reykjavik,  the sun rises at 11.30 in the morning and the sun sets at 3.30 in the afternoon;  however, those four hours in the sun are actually full of darkness.  The shortest day of the year in some places in our world may never have any apparent sun light.

On this winter solstice, we sing of the Light of the Son that goes into the darkest places of our lives and hearts.   For some of us this Advent,  our darkest place is the fear and grief of the separation of death.  In our hymn, we pray as we sing that Emmanuel, God is with us, even there, especially there.

Once again, we sing that in Christ there is no darkness at all, the night and the day, life and death, are both alike in him.

How will Christ's light come to you today?

Today we are invited as we sing to look for Christ in our very darkest moment.

Fourth Day of the O Antiphons: O Come, thou Key of David, Come

At St. Mary's at nine o'clock this morning, three of us gathered to pray Morning Prayer.  We lit three blue and one pink candle on the Advent wreath, and sat to listen and knelt to pray.

After hearing the lesson from the First Testament appointed for the Tuesday in the fourth week of Advent, we sang and prayed:

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.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emanuel shall come to thee,

O Israel.

My soul proclaims your greatness, O God; 

My spirit rejoices in you, my Savior, 

For you have looked with favor on your lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed; 

You, the Almighty, have done great things for me,

 and holy is your Name.

You have mercy on those who fear you

 from generation to generation.

You, O God, have shown strength with your arm, 

And scattered the proud in their conceit,

Casting down the mighty from their thrones

 and lifting up the lowly.

You have filled the hungry with good things

 and sent the rich away empty.

You have come to the help of your servant Israel, 

For you have remembered your promise of mercy,

The promise made to our forebears, 

to Abraham, Sarah and their children for ever.

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.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emanuel shall come to thee,

O Israel.

We were using the translation of the Song of Mary provided from the breviary of the Order of Saint Helena, an Episcopal religious community for women (yep, Episcopal nuns).  I love this translation of the Magnificat because it has been reframed to make it a prayer, using the second person pronoun to address God, rather than the third.  This also opens our hearts for God to be gender neutral and expands the possibility of the mystery of God.  I believe that singing is a way to pray, and rephrasing the Song of Mary to make it a more intentional prayer is helpful as we listen to God's answer to our question for this fourth week of Advent:

How is God coming to us today?

The Third Day of the O Antiphons: O Come, thou Branch of Jesse's Tree

O come, thou Branch of Jesse's Tree,

Free them from Satan's tyranny,

That trust the mighty power to save,

And give them victory o'er the grave.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

 I can recall the first time I ever learned about the Jesse Tree.  It was early days in my walk in the Episcopal Church, and I was learning about the difference between Advent and Christmas.  At St. Cuthbert, when it is was still housed in temporary metal buildings near Bear Creek, during Advent we created Jesse Tree ornaments tracing the lineage of Jesus through the Hebrew Scripture.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel, is also a journey through the Scripture Jesus would have known, read, studied, and loved.  Each verse has ties to the First Testament, and if those passages were important enough for Jesus to know, read, study, and love, they are for us, too.

Jesse's Tree in the hymn connects Jesus to his ancestors, those cloud of witnesses that were part of who he became.  Ruth married Boaz, and they had a son named Obed.  Obed had a son named Jesse, and one of Jesse's sons was David, who became King and was the fixed hope of the Jews for the coming Messiah, who Jesus is.

At this time of year, most, if not all of us, feel connections to those we love and see no more.  For some, this grief is still so sharp that this season brings more pain than joy.  We sing today, as the antiphon for Mary's song of the world being turned right side up again by the son she will bear,  that we carry our sorrows, but not as those who have no hope.  Today as we sing, we pray for the trust to know that in God there are no longer graves but a new birth and a life after we die.  For some, this may be at best a small comfort, but it is truth.

So we have the courage to sing:

Rejoice!  Rejoice.

Emmanuel:  God is with us.

Israel:  God prevails.

Always.

My grandson, Austin Jack, at  the grave of his great grandfather, Austin Jack Jernigan.

Second Day of the O Antiphons: O Come, Thou Lord of Might

How will God come to us?  

At St. Mary's today we will offer this question as an oblation, a prayer that offers our lives to God, especially each day this final week of Advent.

As we listen for the answer, we are invited to sing the O Antiphon appointed for the day.  Today we will sing the verse for December 18, verse 4, before and after praying Mary's Song.

O come, O come, thou Lord of Might,

Who to thy tribes on Sinai's height

In ancient times didst give the law,

In cloud, and majesty, and awe.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

My soul proclaims your greatness, O God; 

My spirit rejoices in you, my Savior, 

For you have looked with favor on your lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed; 

You, the Almighty, have done great things for me, and holy is your Name.

You have mercy on those who fear you from generation to generation.

You, O God, have shown strength with your arm, 

And scattered the proud in their conceit,

Casting down the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly.

You have filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

You have come to the help of your servant Israel, 

For you have remembered your promise of mercy,

The promise made to our forebears, to Abraham, Sarah and their children for ever.

O come, O come, thou Lord of Might,

Who to thy tribes on Sinai's height

In ancient times didst give the law,

In cloud, and majesty, and awe.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

How will God come to us?

Rejoice!  Rejoice! 

Emmanuel, that is, God is with us.

Israel, that is, God prevails.

The First Day of the O Antiphons: O Come thou Wisdom

I'd never paid attention to the O Antiphons until I read Kathleen Norris' account in The Cloister Walk of searching during Advent for a place to hear them sung.

How could I have missed this?  The most common hymn we sing during Advent is Hymn 56, "O come, O come Emanuel."  And there, beginning for December 17, clearly beside each verse, a date is clearly written, as well as rubrics at the bottom, The stanzas may be used as antiphons with "The Song of Mary" on dates given.

Since the passage we are hearing from Isaiah tomorrow for the Fourth Sunday of Advent contains these words: Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel (Isaiah 7.14), and the Gospel being like unto it:  Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel (Matthew 1. 23), I've spent some time this week thinking about Emmanuel (the spelling from the Greek) and Immanuel (from the Hebrew)--both meaning God with us.

One author I read said that in her parish a question was posed the last week of Advent in response to this hymn:  How will He come to us?

I believe we have a gift this final week of Advent. Beginning today, we can ask each day in prayer:  If God is indeed with us, how will Jesus come to us today?  The answer is found in singing a verse from the hymn appointed for that very day.

Today our verse is this:

O Come, thou Wisdom from on on high,

Who orders all things mightily;

To us the path of knowledge show,

And teach us in her ways to go.

Rejoice!  Rejoice! 

Emmanuel shall come to, O Israel.

As a note, Israel, besides being the name of a country, besides being the name of Isaac's son who was also named Jacob, Israel literally means may God prevail.  

So we are invited to sing this last week of Advent, in these final days of preparation for the Incarnation: 

Rejoice.  Rejoice.  

God with us

 shall come to us

 O may God prevail.

If God is indeed with us, how will God come to us today?