O Emmanuel

Since the time of Boethius in the fifth century, Christian people have been encouraged to think from 16-23 December each year of the coming Messiah using his messianic titles. Before Magnificat was said or sung at Vespers during these days one of those titles would be used as an antiphon.

The Benedictine monks went on to arrange these seven antiphons with a definite purpose. If we start with the last title which we think of on this day and then take the first letter of each of the following ones in order - Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai, Sapientia - the Latin words ero cras are formed, meaning, Tomorrow, I will come.

Therefore, Jesus of Nazareth, whose coming, the celebration of whose blooming bright in the world we have been trying to prepare for throughout this Advent and whom we may address in these seven holy Messianic titles, now speaks to us, Tomorrow, I will come.

So the “O Antiphons” not only bring intensity to our Advent preparation, but bring it to a joyful conclusion.

O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, desire of the nations, Saviour of all people, come and set us free, Lord our God.

From the greats…

The voice of one crying in the wilderness is the voice of one breaking the silence. Prepare the way for the Lord, he says, as though he were saying: “I speak out in order to lead him into your hearts, but he does not choose to come where I lead him unless you prepare the way for him”.

To prepare the way means to pray well; it means thinking humbly of oneself. We should take our lesson from John the Baptist. He is thought to be the Christ; he declares he is not what they think. He does not take advantage of their mistake to further his own glory.

If he had said, “I am the Christ”, you can imagine how readily he would have been believed, since they believed he was the Christ even before he spoke. But he did not say it; he acknowledged what he was. He pointed out clearly who he was; he humbled himself. He saw where his salvation lay. He understood that he was a lamp, and his fear was that it might be blown out by the wind of pride.

Not my words, but those of one of the greats in the Christian tradition - Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in Roman North Africa preaching in the fifth century of the Common Era.

They always lead me to reflect that we are essentially humble strangers, not pilgrims on our journey through this life. If we have 70 or 80 years what are those years except building blocks for those who come after us and who may go on to do far greater things? That in essence was the life and task of The Baptiser - to be a humble, if vociferous, stranger.

One of the prolific writers and preachers of the last century, Bishop Richard Holloway, reflected on the building of a future as strangers at the end of his Looking in the Distance:

When the map of our life is complete, and we die in the richness of our own history, some among the living will miss us for a while, but the earth will go on without us. Its day is longer than ours, though we now know that it too will die. Our brief finitude is but a beautiful spark in the vast darkness of space. So we should live the fleeting day with passion and, when the night comes, depart from it with grace.

There is a remorseless, almost hopeless and atheistic sadness underlying this kind of writing; but perhaps there is also something of the reality of some of the human experience of being alive and then dying?

The City of Peace

Taught by your Spirit, we who bear your threefold likeness

look for the City of Peace in whose light we are transfigured

and the earth transformed.

Since Paul, Augustine and all those who have tried to walk in the Augustinian tradition, followers of the Christian way have felt themselves acutely to be in an ever-present state of conflict. Do we belong to the city of God with all its fulness or the city of this aeon with all its limitations? How can we accept the ways of the world in which we live while hoping, trusting and believing that our home is not here? We are here only for a season, and then…

The answer to this dilemma has always been impossible to find. In this Advent however, some become aware of a third city - The City of Peace - that glorious state of fulfilment to be accomplished at the end of the ages but which is being built in our own day and of which we are the builders.

Yes, we are the builders of a glorious new age.

The Tree of Life

One of my favourite Advent helps to reflection and prayer is the Jesse Tree.

I have just finished making one for the chapel where I worship each day.

It is a simple thing. A large bare branch of a tree on which drawings of symbols of the ancestry of Jesus are hung. There will be a ladder for Jacob, a coloured coat for Joseph, a boat for Noah and so on.

These symbols reinforce for us the vital human story at the heart of the Advent preparations and the Christmas celebrations.

Jesus was, whatever else we have made him, a very human figure. Our time of preparation is after all for the celebration of his birth - a birth like any other.

His birth may cause us for a moment today to reflect on our own ancestry - how things are with us and our families. It may cause us to journey to the hard places - to things that were said that shouldn’t have been, to things that have never been said at all.

And on this journey there may be redemption - a buying back of things that were once loved and then lost.