O Wisdom, O holy Word of God,
you govern all creation
with your strong yet tender care.
Come and show your people
the way to slavation.
Today, Dec. 17, marks the one week mark to Christmas Eve. There is a neato liturgical phenomenon that begins with Evening Prayer tonight called the "O Antiphons". For the next week, the Magnificat antiphon of Evening Prayer will contain the titles of the Lord that comprise the verses of the classic Advent song O Come O Come Emmanuel:
Emmanuel
Root of Jesse
Day-Spring
Key of David
King of the Nations
Lord
Wisdom
Take a look at them in Latin now.
Emmanuel
Radix Jesse
Oriens
Clavis David
Rex Gentium
Adonai
Sapientia
When you take the first letter of each of these titles of the Lord in order, you get Ero Cras, which in Latin means "I'm coming tomorrow".
So with the completion of the O Antiphons on Christmas Eve, we can sense the closeness of the Lord who comes to us as a little Baby in Bethlehem and we hear him cry out that he is coming to save us.
And this, my friends, is one of the MILLION reasons why I love being Catholic.
(It should be noted that the antiphons appear in reverse order in the liturgy, starting with Wisdom and ending with Emmanuel.)
No comments:
Post a Comment