Episcopal Church
of the Good Shepherd
SERVICES
SUNDAY AT 8:00 AM (2nd & 3rd Sundays)
SUNDAY AT 10:30 AM (every Sunday)
WEDNESDAY AT 6:00 PM (in Chapel)
From the Desk of
Mother Mary Grace
The O Antiphons:
Advent Doubles Down
What does Anglican Santa say? “O, O, O! Merry Christmas!”
On December 17, our Advent practice becomes even more intentional. Things kick into high gear, in our waiting and in our spiritual preparation: in one week, Christmas Eve arrives. This heightened sense of expectation is reflected in our liturgy, and especially in one of the most beautiful traditions of Western Christianity, the O Antiphons.
An antiphon is just a short refrain that is sung before and after a psalm or a canticle, kind of as a “framing” to the psalm or canticle. We say antiphons at Morning Prayer, just before the Invitatory Psalm, and if you look on page 80 in your Prayer Book, you can see a selection of them. During the week before Christmas, there are special antiphons that we say before the Magnificat or Song of Mary. We pray the Magnificat every day at Evening Prayer throughout the year, but in Advent the Magnificat has special meaning. With Mary, we await the coming of the one who “has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly,” and our waiting with Our Lady is the reason for our Advent blue. So it makes sense that we would use special antiphons to draw attention to the Magnificat during Advent.
These antiphons are old – so old that we don’t really know when they were written, but we know that by the 500s in Italy, authors were already quoting them as though they were ancient and well-known. So probably they had their beginning in Italy, and spread from there throughout the Church. Each day, from the evening of December 17 through the evening of December 23, a different antiphon is sung at Evening Prayer. Each antiphon begins with “O” (hence their name, the O Antiphons) and is followed by a different name for Jesus, the One whom we await.
Dec. 17: O Wisdom,
coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other,
mightily and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.
Dec. 18: O Adonai,
and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of
the burning bush,
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.
Dec. 19: 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.
Dec. 20: O Key of David
and scepter 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.
Dec. 21: O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
Dec. 22: O King of the Nations,
and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.
Dec. 23: O Emmanuel,
our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Saviour:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.
You might have noticed that the cover of our bulletin in Advent is a collection of these names for Jesus, taken from the O Antiphons. And if you know your hymnal, you might recognize some of this poetry, because the O Antiphons are the basis for one of the most famous of all Advent hymns, number 56 in our Hymnal, O Come O Come Emmanuel. Each of the seven verses of the hymn is a paraphrase of an O Antiphon, which is why we sing it so much during Advent.
During the final week of Advent, we take a deep breath and quiet our souls. There is so much hustle and bustle going on around us, so much that resists the stillness of Advent. The Church in her wisdom gives us a way to push back against the busy-ness and noise of the holidays by giving us a focus for our prayer. If you pray Evening Prayer, try saying the O Antiphons before and after the Magnificat every night. Maybe the antiphon can be the prayer that you say as you light the candles of your Advent wreath in the final week. Or you might find that the antiphons work as a focus of meditation for you. Each morning, you could read the antiphon of the day, and let its poetry wash over you. Let its sonorous phrases roll around in your head throughout the day. Let the ancient, mystical words keep your mind and your heart centered on Jesus that day. This Sunday, there will be a little booklet of the O Antiphons available for you in the narthex, if you would like to take one home with you, however you decide to use it.
And finally, because you know for a fact that I am never going to miss the chance to tell you the Latin name for something, the Latin word for wisdom is sapientia – as in homo sapiens, the wise man (well maybe not all that wise, but at least smarter than our evolutionary predecessors). “Wisdom” is the first name for Jesus in the very first of the O Antiphons, so over time this final week of Advent came to be called Sapientiatide.
“O Wisdom,” we acclaim Jesus at the beginning of the last week of Advent. St. Paul calls Jesus “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (I Corinthians 1:24) and the one “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). The wisdom of God, Paul reminds us, runs counter to the expectations of the world. As we approach the joy of Christmastide, may we be filled with that wisdom of God that draws us away from all the word’s expectations of drama and noise, and into the quiet center of stillness, where we rest with Jesus. Come and save us, O Lord our God!
(If you want to hear the O Antiphons sung in their traditional plainchant, click here.)