Advent Songs
It can seem that the songs we have to hear in the last days before Christmas get worse every year. Ever more terrible versions of pop “classics” from the 70s and 80s try to revive nostalgia for a new generation, and poor Mariah Carey must regret the moment she covered that Christmas hit. Thankfully we still have some good songs to keep us in the right frame of mind.
Each Advent, the final week before Christmas is marked by some very ancient words. Every day at Vespers (and at Mass before the Gospel) we hear the words of the O Antiphons, or the Great Antiphons, ringing out as if through the mists of time. We also sing their words in the much-loved hymn, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Their very language sounds mysterious and arcane, and they conjure up for us the sense of awe and wonder that we should have at the great mystery of Christmas. Their origins are decidedly ancient. We have evidence of them being sung at the great Benedictine Abbey of Fleury in the ninth century, and the philosopher Boethius quotes from the first of them in the fifth century. They contain titles for Christ, mined from the Old Testament, which point the way to the coming Messiah, and they call upon him to help and save us.
Yesterday we heard the first of them, when we called out to the one who is the “Wisdom of the Most High, ordering all things with strength and gentleness,” and asked him to “come and teach us the way of true knowledge.” Tonight at vespers we will sing, “O Adonai and Ruler of the House of Israel, who gave the law to Moses on Sinai; come and redeem us with outstretched arm.” And so they go on, ever deepening their call, driven by the longing of all peoples for the saving presence of Christ to come into our midst, until the last of them on the 23rd, reaches their completion. On that evening we call, “O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver, the hope of the nations and their Saviour: come and save us, O Lord our God.”
These beautiful antiphons remind us of a truth that the rest of modern Christmas culture can easily forget. This baby we await, this Christ-child, is in fact the deeply longed-for hope of all the ages. Since the fall of man, the coming of this one — The Root of Jesse, the Key of David, the Radiant Dawn — has been expected, and is the one who will bring with him the salvation for which every generation hopes.
And he brings salvation to each of us — in fact he already has. The O Antiphons remind us that Christmas for each of us is the commemoration of the fact that God thinks so much of us, he stepped into our life, took our human nature to himself, so that he could save us and share his divine life with us in return. He is the greatest of gifts and the fulfilment of every promise.
These mysterious antiphons heighten the sense of hope and longing in the last days of Advent. As the final week before Christmas arrives with its last posting dates, online order deadlines, the last shopping Saturday and the inevitable queues at the butcher’s shop, our hope and expectation can sometimes be to have it over and done with! But that’s not quite right. These last days should encourage within us a little more reflection, a bit more soul-searching to see what sort of expectation is in our hearts for the one who saves us. He comes so simply, and so gently into our lives that despite being the awesome fulfilment of the hope of all the ages, if we aren’t careful, we might miss him. All of us need to take a few moments here and there to still wonder, to wonder at the beauty and disarming simplicity of God’s regard for poor sinners like us, that he gets down to our size in order to say, “I love you.”