This O Antiphon wasn't one of the selections for our December 15th carol service so here it is for your reflection:
O Lord and Ruler the house of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the flame of the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai: come, and redeem us with outstretched arms. (cf Exodus 3; Micah 5:2; and Matthew 2:6)
And the sonnet that priest and poet, Malcolm Guite, has written inspired by this antiphon, which he says "...touches on the title of God himself, who was called 'Adonai', meaning 'Lord', in the Old Testament, because his sacred name, the four letters known as 'The Tetragramaton', could not be uttered by unworthy human beings without blasphemy.":
O Adonai
Unsayable, you chose to speak one tongue,
Unseeable, you gave yourself away,
The Adonai, the Tetragramaton
Grew by a wayside in the light of day.
O you who dared to be a tribal God,
To own a language, people and a place,
Who chose to be exploited and betrayed,
If so you might be met with face to face,
Come to us here, who would not find you there,
Who chose to know the skin and not the pith,
Who heard no more than thunder in the air,
Who marked the mere events and not the myth.
Touch the bare branches of our unbelief
And blaze again like fire in every leaf.
-- Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons, Canterbury Press, 2012.
To hear the poet read the sonnet aloud, click HERE.
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