O Virgo Virginum

O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be?
For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after.
Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me?
The thing which ye behold is a divine mystery.

This is different than the others. There is no "veni", no request to come; and this is addressed very specifically to Mary. But there is an answer, of sorts. I've been thinking about Mary a fair amount since Sunday, partly due to the influence of various bloggers and Sunday's readings, and partly because of the Collect:

God our redeemer,
who prepared the Blessed Virgin Mary
to be the mother of your Son:
grant that, as she looked for his coming as our saviour,
so we may be ready to greet him
when he comes again as our judge;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

As far as preparation goes... well, I've done a lot of contemplation and prayer. But I haven't managed to really be ready for some of the practical details of Christmas. Let's just say I'm hoping folks will take a broadly ecumenical approach to the arrival of various gifts.

I understand from Wikipedia that the practice of adding this antiphon is a mediaeval English thing. Common Worship has moved back toward only using seven, but I like this one too.

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.

How do you draw a picture of hope? How do you draw a picture of Emmanuel, of "God with us"? How do you depict salvation? What does freedom look like?

I couldn't settle on this at all. No photograph seems to capture it; it's like picking up pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but not being able to fit them all together, and having lost the lid to the box. I'll only ever be able to see part of the picture, but I know there is one.

I tried putting about 25 different photos in but that was no good, either; I don't have the skill to pull off the "contemplative calm amidst chaotic busy-ness" effect in a visual medium.

Only one more!

O Rex Gentium

O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.

cf Isaiah 28.16; Ephesians 2.14

I struggled to find appropriate visual material for this. I've stuck with fairly churchy artwork so far, stained glass and that sort of thing, and I wanted to continue with that. But I also wanted to find a symbol of kingship that also implied unity, but without actually depicting Christ. I wanted to make it clear that in Isaiah's time people didn't have the images we have now, images of a narrative that has been told and re-told. I suppose a stained glass image of the cornerstone at the top of an arch would have worked, but I couldn't find one, and I'm not a graphics wizard so couldn't conjure one up out of mere pixels and imagination. So you get this instead.

It's about ineffability, I think, and timelessness. Eternity. We observe Advent knowing what is coming, or thinking we know what is coming. Same liturgical cycle every year, right? There's this temptation to think "the created world was one way, and then Jesus came, and then the world was another way." But I've never been able to swallow that. I've never thought God is limited by linear time that way, at least not when I actually stop and think about it. We're so used to being time-limited beings that we tend to view everything as historical. But even the Nicene Creed says that Christ is "of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made." The doxology, that staple of Christian liturgy, makes a similar statement: "As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be." And even if Common Worship has done away with "world without end" I find myself adding it in my head.

I look like I'm talking at cross purposes with myself, first talking about the not-knowing-what's-next of Isaiah's time and then asserting that Christ is eternal. But saying that God is not bound by linear time does not mean that we humans are also free of it. Our story is a historical narrative: the historical narrative of God's revelation to us, through time.

I'm not a cessationist, so I think that revelation keeps going. But it's as important to keep telling and retelling the narrative we've been given as it is to watch and wait and look for continuing signs. Else, how will we recognise it?

Speaking of linear time, I've managed to get this up a bit earlier than the previous ones, but must stop now to go and teach. It's snowing thickly in this bit of London and the pavements are going to be quite lethal, but I'm reasonably sure-footed, having grown up with this sort of weather, and I do enjoy it, the sheer wasteful abundance of so many snowflakes, all different, all beautiful. All cold and wet, but that's what hot chocolate and water bottles are for. Maybe I'll be able to make snow angels in my own garden after all!

O Oriens

O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death.

cf Malachi 4.2

This does seem especially appropriate for solstice. In the Northern hemisphere, from here on the days get longer again.

My favourite part of Morning Prayer, incidentally, is this:
In the tender compassion of our God •
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,

To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, •
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

These antiphons don't belong in Morning Prayer -- they're an Evening Prayer thing, sandwiched around the Magnificat. But this one reminds me of morning prayer, and the just-before-dawn, forward-looking feel of much of the liturgy around this time.

O Clavis David

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.

cf Isaiah 22.22, 42.7


I've been recording these at Nearest Church. I'm there some mornings to practise the organ anyway, and the acoustic is far more forgiving than the less resonant atmosphere in my carpeted music room at home.

This morning, try as I might, I could not get the door to the church unlocked. Other people have complained about that door, but I've usually been able to use it with no trouble. But this morning? Twenty minutes of wrangling with the lock, and I still wasn't in. I was late for my next appointment so abandoned the project until later in the day... when the lock worked quite easily for me.

The other thing this antiphon puts me in mind of is the mental prisons we so often create for ourselves. We build little walls for ourselves, meant to protect us from situations which are uncontrollable or frightening. That works very well for a time, but eventually the walls we build can trap us. Perhaps that is the prison from which we wait to be freed.

Or perhaps, yet again, it is late and I am tired...

O Radix Jesse

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.

cf Isaiah 11.10, 45.14, 52.15; Romans 15.12

Earlier this week I was thinking about my own impatience and the last line of this antiphon. But it is late, and I am tired, and so I'm not going to offer any commentary. Suffice to say that I had a wonderful day on many counts and feel much better for it.

O Adonai

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.

cf Exodus 3.2, 24.12

The second of the Advent Antiphons. I didn't sing as well as I'd have liked, but I'm only allowing myself three takes of each and the other two were worse.

I was going to write something more in-depth this evening, but I'm really very tired again. And anyway, Chantblog has got all you could ever want to know.

O Sapientia

Hopefully these will get better as I get better at using the software.

Excuse any horrible pronunciations of the Latin; I haven't taken the time to study these as much as I'd have liked.

More over the next several days, I hope!