The last of the great 'O Antiphons' is 'O Emmanuel':
O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Saviour:
Come and save us, O Lord our God
Malcolm Guite prepares us to think about what it means for God to be with us:
"I sometimes think that Christianity is not so much a propositional religion as a prepositional religion: everything turns on the prepositions, the tiny little words that define and change relationships. So much of pagan religion was about God's aboveness, immortals over against morals, eternity in contradistinction to time, about transcendence, disconnect and otherness. But Christianity brings these little words: in, 'Christ in you, the hope of glory' (Colossians 1:27); for, 'if God is for us, who is against us?' (Romans 8:31); through, 'we make our prayer to the Father through the Son and in the Spirit'; and most supremely in this Advent and Christmas time, with, 'God with us'. This little word 'with' is good news for a world without; so often without hope, without love, without meaning...Perhaps it is only when we grasp the fundamental gospel, the 'good news', that in our Emmanuel God is with us, that we can seriously begin to be with one another." (Guite, Waiting on the Word, 88)
Early on when I was at college, I experienced deep yearnings for success, good relationships, renown, influence, beauty, and joy. Yet, I also experienced deep frustration at my own lack of discipline, compassion, or courage. I felt it acutely painful to yearn for such wonderful things while I was also beginning to fear what it would mean to live my life without them. Without success. Without relationships. Without beauty. As I read the Bible, often by the light of a single lamp late at night, I found it beautiful that Jesus Christ seemed to forbid me much leeway to define any of those things - success, influence, beauty, and the rest - apart from him. He was a hiding place which didn't hide. He was a narrow road which expanded once you were on it. It looked cramped from the outside, but on the inside was unbelievably big. Though 'prone to wander' now until I die, as the great hymn puts it, he is increasingly found to be everywhere, including, as Guite puts it, in prepositions. God with us. And in Christ, I found then, and continue to find, I haven't lost anything. In feast or fallow, all drives me closer to him. To be with him. To live my life as a continual abiding in him.
As I wrote on the first Sunday of Advent, Christ is coming again. Yet, it won't be as though he's been absent. Rather than gone, he's been hidden. His second coming will make his authority apparent. In a small way, each Advent, we prepare ourselves and keep the flame of our yearning for Christ healthy, strong, and ready to last. This is what led folks from many centuries ago to spend the last week before Christmas singing these 'O Antiphons'. Many Advents of many years had not caused them to grow callous, but through prayer, to become creative, to dwell within God's word, so that, centuries later, the word dwells richly within us.
They left a hidden joke too. Medieval people, as Philip Pfatteicher tells us, delighted in stuff like this.
O Emmanuel
O Rex
O Oriens
O Clavis
O Radix
O Adonai
O Sapientia
Ero cras: the Latin words meaning 'Tomorrow I will come!' (Guite, 89)
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