I let a day slide between my last post and this one...because this final O Antiphon has us quivering on the threshold, the Eve of Christmas, when Emmanuel shall come to us. In his poem reflecting on this antiphon, Anglican priest and poet Malcolm Guite includes all of the names we have prayed this last week of Advent.
O Emmanuel*
O come, O come, and be our God-with-us
O long-sought With-ness for a world without,
O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.
Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name
Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame,
O quickened little wick so tightly curled,
Be folded with us into time and place,
Unfold for us the mystery of grace
And make a womb of all this wounded world.
O heart of heaven beating in the earth,
O tiny hope within our hopelessness
Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,
To touch a dying world with new-made hands
And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.
-- Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons, Canterbury Press, 2012.
Once again, to hear the antiphon chanted in English and Latin, book-ending the poet's reading his sonnet aloud, click HERE.
*Scriptural source: Isaiah 7:14.
O Come, O Come Emmanuel
- a 12th Century Latin hymn,
Sung here in English (choir unidentified)
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