Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

Starting today and continuing through December 23, many Western churches use special seasonal antiphons for the Magnificat at celebrations of Vespers/Evening Prayer/Evensong. Known as the Great O Antiphons, they are drawn from passages in the Hebrew Scriptures traditionally interpreted by the Church as referring to the coming of the Messiah. They occur in liturgical texts as early as the ninth century and became solidly entrenched in monastic and parish worship during the middle ages.

A good reference to the Antiphons may be found here on the excellent Chantblog site, which includes links to recordings. (To avoid confusion, in England and some other places the Great O's begin on December 16, with the extra O Virgo Virginum used on December 23. I follow the practice of the American Episcopal Church).

The English text below comes from the sadly out-of-print The Prayer Book Office (Seabury Press 1988), an augmented version of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer which I have long used for my personal recitation of the Office. The antiphons are found on pp 131-132.

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December 17. O Sapientia

O Wisdom, you came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and reach from one end of the earth to another, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.

December 18. O Adonai

O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, you appeared in the bush to Moses in a flame of fire, and gave him the law on Sinai: Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

December 19. O Radix Jesse

O Root of Jesse, you stand as an ensign to the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths, and nations bow in worship: Come and deliver us, and tarry not.

December 20. O Clavis David

O Key of David, and Scepter of the house of Israel, you open and no one can shut, you shut and no one can open: Come and bring the captives out of the prison house, those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

December 21. O Oriens

O Dayspring, Brightness of the Light Eternal, and Sun of Righteousness: Come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

December 22. O Rex Gentium

O King of the nations, and their Desire, you are the cornerstone who makes us both one: Come and save the creature whom you fashioned from clay.

December 23. O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Desire of all nations and their Salvation: Come and save us, O Lord our God.

Over at Monachos.net, MC Steenberg has an excellent essay exploring the theological connections between the Nativity and the Resurrection. If you read the whole thing, pay particular attention to how he compares the icons of the two feasts.
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There is an intimate, intrinsic connection between the Feast of the Nativity of Christ in the flesh, and the feast of His glorious Resurrection, the holy Pascha of the Lord. The two are united in the single saving reality of the Son's incarnation, which from His human birth to His death and resurrection manifests the eternal saving design of the man-befriending God....At the Feast of the Nativity, when we hymn Christ's birth, we are already singing a Paschal song, already commemorating the great and mysterious events at the other terminus of His earthly life--for in Christ, the eternity of God meets the finitude of His creation, and we see in every moment of the Son's human life the full scope and dimension of that eternity. Already, as we hymn the infant lain in the cave, we are enabled to sing with the hymn, 'Salvation enters the world and the curse is destroyed'; already we are able to taste the glory of Paschal midnight, which we rejoice in the full mystery of a 'death that has trampled down death', bestowing life to those in the tombs. It begins here. It is known and encountered now.

On today's Feast of the Nativity we have a Christmas proclamation originating in the Roman Catholic church and recommended for use at the beginning of the Christmas liturgy. A hat-tip to
The New Liturgical Movement.

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Today, the twenty-fifth day of December,
unknown ages from the time when God created the heavens and the earth and then formed man and woman in his own image;
several thousand years after the flood, when God made the rainbow shine forth as a sign of the covenant;
twenty-one centuries from the time of Abraham and Sarah, thirteen centuries after Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt;
eleven hundred years from the time of Ruth and the Judges;
one thousand years from the anointing of David as king;
in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel;
in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome;
the forty-second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace;
Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming, being conceived by the Holy Spirit, and nine months having passed since his conception, was born at Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary.
Today is the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

On today's celebration of the Nativity, we look at excerpts from the Christmas messages of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Ecumenical Patriarch, and the Pope. Respective hat-tips to Creedal Christian, JN1034, and A Word on the Word.

Archbishop Rowan Williams

Human beings, left to themselves, have imagined God in all sorts of shapes; but...it took Christianity to introduce the world to the idea of God in the form of a baby: in the form of complete dependence and fragility, without power or control. If you stop to think about it, it is still shocking. And it is also deeply challenging.

God chose to show himself to us in a complete human life, telling us that every stage in human existence, from conception to maturity and even death, was in principle capable of telling us something about God. Although what we learn from Jesus Christ and what his life makes possible is unique, that life still means that we look differently at every other life. There is something in us that is capable of communicating what God has to say--the image of God in each of us, which is expressed in its perfection only in Jesus.

Hence the reverence which as Christians we ought to show to human beings in every condition, at every stage of existence. This is why we cannot regard unborn children as less than members of the human family, why those with disabilities or deprivations have no less claim upon us than anyone else, why we try to make loving sense of human life even when it is near its end and we can hardly see any signs left of freedom or thought.

Patriarch Bartholomew

The event of incarnation of God's word grants us the opportunity to reach the extreme limits of our nature, which are identified neither with the "good and beautiful" of the ancient Greeks and the "justice" of the philosophers, nor with the tranquility of Buddhist "nirvana" and the transcendental "fate" or so-called "karma" by means of the reputedly continuous changes in the form of life, nor again with any "harmony" of supposedly contradictory elements of some imaginary "living force" and anything else like these. Rather, it is the ontological transcendence of corruption and death through Christ, our integration into his divine life and glory, and our union by grace through Him with the Father in the Holy Spirit. These are our ultimate limits: personal union with the Trinitarian God! And Christ's nativity does not promise any vague blessedness or abstract eternity; it places in our hands the potential of personal participation in God's sacred life and love in an endless progression. It grants us the possibility not only of "receiving adoption" (Gal 4:5) but also of becoming "partakers of divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).

Pope Benedict

Today we dispose of vast material resources. But the men and women in our technological age risk becoming victims of their own intellectual and technical achievements , ending up in spiritual bitterness and emptiness of heart. That is why it is so important for us to open our hearts to the Birth of Christ, this event of salvation which can give new hope to the life of each human being.

Wake up, O man! For your sake God became man (St Augustine, Sermo 185). Wake up, O men and women of the third millenium!

At Christmas, the Almighty becomes a child and asks for our help and protection. His way of showing that he is God challenges our way of being human.