antiphons – Page 2

Power of the King

O REX Gentium, et desideratus earum,
lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:
veni, et salva hominem,
quem de limo formasti.
O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.

JMJ
✙

MODERN DEMOCRACIES from Athens and England, to latecomers like France and America, are pretty much brainwashed into thinking we have finally gotten it right, politically speaking. We have finally figured out the best, purest, and most just form of government. Those who came before us may have had a few good ideas, which we’re happy to claim for ourselves, but overall democracy is the best way to go. We are quite happy to have crawled out of the slimy pit of our darkest past to the new light of this political system. Never mind, of course that democracy is hardly new: it was discovered in ancient Athens (at least). Further, since it involves a tyranny of the majority over the minority it is almost never actually just – meaning “giving to each what is his due”. The majority has the power to inflict pain if they feel like it whether it is just or not. They have the power to inflict pleasure if they feel like it whether it is just or not and history is filled with examples of majorities doing exactly that, but we are trained to ignore those and, instead, to point at the gross errors of dictators, juntas, and monarchs. So strong is our brainwashing that even these dictators insist on democratic elections and we must resort to saying, “No no! That’s not democracy you’re doing it wrong.” Now, however, the King is coming.

We really have no idea of Kingship any more. Even in countries where there are monarchs, they have sort of become cartoons of their ancestors. Some are comic, like Mel Brooks and feel more like fake kings, but with real crowns. Some are far more serious. Her Britanic Majesty is, really, quite Majestic and Britanic. But she is reduced to a mere shadow of the power that even her father had, and one daren’t compare her to the previous monarch of the same name. Anti-Catholic though she was, she was, at least, a real Monarch and entirely not democratic.

In fact, so strong is our brainwashing about democracy that speaking of a governing authority like this could get one labeled “Fascist” – a word with nearly no content at this point, although we all agree it’s bad. It seems to really only mean “anti-democracy.” Now, however, there is a King coming and many look like the Old Woman talking to Dennis in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “I didn’t vote for you!” We’re appalled when the answer is, “You don’t vote for kings.”

At the core of this political debate is a question of self-rule. I should have the right to do what I want, when I want, and as I want. And right now I want to have a new elected leader. We think of power as arising from the self and, when collected with other selves, forming power blocks. That block can then (by a collective action) bestow power on an individual or group of individuals. Later that power can be removed. This conception of the self as source of action and power is the root of our political conceptions now and also, our theological ones. For we think that we can freely elect to give ourselves over to a religious path, to freely choose to follow – or not. And we imagine that free choice to be constitutive, constructive: that nothing was before that and, should elect to end it, it will be over. We enter into all personal and business relationships with this mindset and we hold God to the same standards: I’m here because I like you, but don’t cross me. But a King is coming. You don’t vote for kings. They rule by divine right.

In the King James Bible, the word “heart” is used 826 times. It is important to note that it seems interchangeable with “soul”. It’s also important to note that’s not the original language. The Hebrew for this inner part of us is heart: Lev (לֵב) and for soul: Nefesh (נֶפֶשׁ). Together they are used a total of 1,347 times in the Hebrew text of the scriptures. This part of the human (whatever it is) is very important! For Christian Anthropology this is the part of us that lives in communion with God. For some of us we never get to this. The communion is always there (one would cease to exist at all, otherwise) but we never engage in this communion, we never draw from it or strengthen it. It is (and cannot but be) the very source of our very existence, but we can freely elect to shove it away, lock it away, cram it away and drown out its voice. In place of the Heart, we build a “self” and we get very prideful of it. We build into it cosmetic decorations, we make choices, we create an entire “life” and then – in our mistaken Anthropology – if we should happen to get religion, we may deign to offer this self to God and say, “Here look what I’ve built for you. Now, don’t touch it or play with it as you may break it. I’ve still got more work to do.” We never realize that this self – which we have constructed – is a false self. This face we present to God, inviting him to make use of (but not break!) is a false offering, a blemished sacrifice. The offering he wants is the one he formed out of clay, not the fake one we’ve built out of ego. A divine King is coming. And he will rule without our votes.

The source of us, in our heart or soul, is not the fake self we’ve built. But rather it is the very act of communion which we cannot break. God is the ground of all being, the source of existence itself. In that you exist you are in communion with this loving God – like it or not, choose it or not. The choice we all must make, though, is what to do now? I’ve described the first option already. I spent 45 years or so living out that pattern – and most of it quite consciously. I was fully aware that I was making choices, performing actions, engaging (or not) with other people both in and out of religions. I was fully aware that I was “constructing my life”, “being my best self”, and “following my bliss.” Occasionally I would turn, raise it up like Mufasa in The Lion King and say, “Look what I’ve birthed, God! Bless it.” Then I’d go about my business. I can tell you it was a lot of fun: but it was not joy, it was not happiness, and, in the end, it nearly killed me. I don’t mean I would have died any sooner (we all die). I mean there was no “me” left. I nearly killed the core.

But a king is coming who made me out of clay – long before I got around to ruining things into the ground.

For a Christian the heart is the source and summit of all that happens: it is the place of communion with God. Even if you never go there – never enter your own heart – the very being-ness of you is connected to God irrevocably. God loves you or you wouldn’t even be. And God will never unmake you – even when that beingness and love become for you the sheer torture of hell. You will still be and be loved.

From this heart flows all actions: you cannot “create a new self” you can only create a false self if it does not arise from this communion with the King who already reigns in your heart. There’s no being arising from your actions, there’s no other person possible other than the one he’s making for you. And though we can break that person and add scars for an eternity by our addiction to sin and self direction, we can never destroy our heart.

And the person we become constantly bears this heart up to the King. Who is coming. But is already here.

He has formed you and me out of clay – literally the humus of the earth, we are humans. Adam means “earthling”. We are little creatures of dirt. And God lives in us.

The king is here: will you serve him or try to walk away? To walk away ultimately is to destroy your heart – which will destroy your ego as well, making it a hollow shell, a Qliphoth into which Satan can move and have his being. But to stay, well: your self will die then so that you can live forever, your heart in communion with the King. But then you will know – finally – your True Self. You too, will reign.

Great O Antiphons, Advent 2020
– O Sapientia (11/15)
– O Adonai (11/20)
– O Radix Jesse (11/25)
– O Clavis David (11/30)
– O Oriens (12/5)
– O Rex Gentium (12/10)
– O Emmanuel (12/15)
– O Virgo Virginum (12/20)

This wiki article explains the Great O Antiphons and also why I have eight in my practice rather than seven.

Power of light

O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae,
et sol justitiae:
veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris,
et umbra mortis.
O Rising Dawn, splendour of light eternal
and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death.

JMJ
✙

RBUCKMINSTER FULLER, aka Bucky, was an American architect whose gigantic, dome-shapes are probably familiar to you. You’ve probably seen a photo, at least, of Epcot Center at Disney World. He thought we could cover cities with domes to protect us from the elements. He never thought about the expense of his amazing ideas, but you’ll notice he only wanted to cover the rich, powerful business-center of Manhattan with his dome. Over the course of his life, he wrote a series of essays on how science – especially Geometry – could help humans solve all the world’s problems. There is no energy crisis, food crisis, or environmental crisis, he said. Only a crisis of ignorance. Because he was using geometry instead of test tubes and microscopes his work tends to sound more esoteric, spiritual. It is from Bucky’s work that we get the word “Universe” as a replacement for “God” in many a popular usage. “Looks like the Universe wanted me here now.” Or, even more esoterically, “Looks like Universe wants me here now.” For most folks, that’s meaningless pop drivel that fills in for saying something religious, but Fuller thought the universe was complicated enough to run on its own and be quite a magical place. We only needed to apply our intellect to it to discover root causes and ways to manipulate it, to make its complications easy to understand, predict, and use. He assumed the root was geometry.

But his ideas always seemed fear-based: if the universe is based on geometry, why do we need to use geometry to protect ourselves from the universe and its elements? Why not use geometry to fix the universe so it’s not always attacking us? One of his essays was the “Omnidirectional Halo” which sounds like it might be spiritual-but-not-religious enough, but he wasn’t talking about Light: he was talking about a geometrically constructed dome (like Epcot). Do we need halos of steel and concrete to close us in and protect us from this wonderful Universe?

I will admit the universe – while amazing and beautiful – can be a sucky place. This is 2020 after all. Many ancient religions seemed to think the universe was a sucky place. Pope Benedict XVI writes that all of the gods of the modern world are either Bread, Sex, or Power. Gods needed to be placated. Powers like the wind and the rain needed to be manipulated to do our bidding sometime divinities needed to be invoked or moved out of the way politely. These divinities fought with humanity for a place in a limited resource, for a seat at a table with limited food.

To this the Hebrew Prophets respond, “Codswallop.” A new light is dawning.

The ancient Hebrews worshipped the ground and source of all being. He chose the pronouns he/him in his own self-revelation to his people. He spoke from fire. He rained down food. Water flowed from rocks and the land flowed with milk and honey. He was not in competition with us for limited resources. He was the source of unlimited life – even for those who rejected him. We are not suffering from a crisis of Intelligence, but rather a crisis of faith in the source of all. We look at the all, itself – the Universe – and think it is enough. We must look beyond until we come to the source of unlimited love.

A new light is dawning.

The thing about light is it always starts dim. Even if you turn on a light switch it doesn’t just pop on: the filament for a microsecond or two begins to glow and brighten. If you could slow it down you would see the light dawn in each of the bulbs in your house. There was a moment before our Central Star, Sol, was lit. And even in the explosion microsecond by microsecond the light grew and dawned. Until for each of us the light of Faith doesn’t just turn on one moment. It grows. As it grows everything around us can be seen more clearly.

Our professor, Dr Anthony Lilles, showed us this clip yesterday. While this conversation between Dr Tolkien and Dr CS Lewis never happened this way, the movie shows us exactly the process Tolkien used to bring Lewis to Christ.

I love how the friends call each other “Jack” and “Tollers”. Then Lewis described how the light dawned slowly:

WHEN WE SET OUT I did not believe that Jesus is the Son of God and when we reached the zoo I did.” So wrote C.S. Lewis, describing his conversion to Christianity in the sidecar of his brother Warnie’s motorbike, which took place on this day, 22 September 1931.
Lewis had been reaching this understanding for some time. Reared an Irish Protestant, he rebelled against Christianity following the early death of his mother. While obtaining his education, he slid into outright atheism. However, encounters with Christian friends and reading the works of George MacDonald and G. K. Chesterton drew him back to theism (the belief in God). He wrote of that return to God, “You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” But he did not yet believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.
Three days before he came to that belief, he had a long talk with two Christian colleagues: J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. Tolkien argued that some myths might originate with God, as a means of preserving a rudimentary level of truth. Lewis said he did not believe there was any truth in them at all. They were still talking at 3AM when Tolkien had to go home. Dyson continued the conversation, pointing out the practicality of Christianity—a religion with power to actually free from sin, instill peace, and provide genuine outside help to change one’s character.
Evidently, these ideas were percolating in Lewis’s mind as he rode to the zoo. Three months later, on Christmas Day, he expressed his new faith publicly by returning to the Anglican church in which he had been confirmed, joining his local parish and taking Communion for the first time since his childhood.
“It Happened Today” Christian History Institute retrieved on 6 Dec 2020

The light dawns.

We have this process: we are convinced we must “make converts” when, in fact, we must only make disciples – people who are learning. It is God who makes converts, God who dawns, God who shows the way forward.

Tolkien saw the light dawning in his own heart from the Catholicism of his youth, he wrote in On Fairy Stories (1947), “There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.” As the light grows, we see that our past was wrongful: but now we are seeing more-clearly. “The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed.” Tolkien, again. He knows that even the ways we are broken – the ways we rejected the light in the past – become ways for the light to grow in the world!

We follow the same gods today: food, sex, and power. They are as capricious as they ever were. They give us hunger and disease, encourage selfishness and pride, and leave us addicted to things that do us no good – even as they fail to kill us, so we only consume more. And we now think we can fix it, only with different sciences: psychology, drugs, and data. We need to be computers now, instead of mathematicians. God actually wants to make us more human: so much so that he became one of us.

Bucky thought his artifice would fix a broken Creation and make it manageable. Tolkien knew that we humans are the broken parts: it we who need fixing. We humans (particularly one human, Jesus) are the tools God is using to fix us. God is fixing things exactly how they were broken. That’s how he works: nothing is lost, rejected, or left behind. Everything of value is redeemed, given purpose, and used to save others.

Christmas is dawning, off in the distance. I’m a day late as I get this posted. But it’s coming! Not just the failed retail holiday that this year will have no holiday parties, not only the celebration of a day off and far too much food. The real Christmas is dawning if you can but see it with the eyes of faith. The light is growing stronger, always.

One day: it will burst in and all that is not light will burn away like so many fading ashes. And Christmas will finally come, for real and forever.

If you are still, you can see the dawn rising now and you can almost hear the angels singing the carols.

NOTE: Apart from the fact that I saw this video in class yesterday, Tolkien was on my mind. I lean so heavily on Tolkien for this essay because this antiphon is one of the ways God drew me to him and his church. I have been a Tolkien geek since junior high school. In Tolkien’s world of Middle Earth, one of the great messianic figures is Earendel. The name, Earendel, comes from the Anglo-Saxon word used to translate this Antiphon: the Latin O Oriens is rendered, Eala earendel. Read more here.

Power of the Keys

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;
qui aperis, et nemo claudit;
claudis, et nemo aperit:
veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,
sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.
O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

JMJ
✙

LET US SEE How the world is overthrown. What is the Key of David? It’s a reference to Isaiah 22:22 – which is said of Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, but fulfilled in the Messiah. I’ve been wondering about this “key” though. What is it? Walk everything back to King Saul, David’s immediate predecessor and the first King of Israel. The Israelites had been ruled only by judges – and that only when necessary. The Torah was their governance and it was enforced by everyone (including the priests and Levites) with an appeal to the Judges or Prophets as needed. Then the people decided they wanted a king. The Prophet Samuel said he wouldn’t do it, but God told Samuel to go ahead and do it. The people were not rejecting Samuel’s judgeship – but rather God’s Kingship over them. So Samuel followed God’s command and gave the people King Saul who turned out to be a right putz.

Then came King David whom God described as “A man after my own heart.” God seemed to use Saul to prove a point but then used David (and Solomon) to raise Israel to previously unknown heights. What is the Key of David? How is it fulfilled in Messiah?

While these Antiphons for Advent are based on Scripture, they are not actually scripture – this one verse, sung once a year, pulls from three different places in Isaiah and weaves in some images later used in the Gospels. They are, more than anything, meditations. So they are worth mulling over with that in mind: they are like Dream Images, subject to many readings.

This is 2020 and what has happened has happened, so that’s where my brain is now. This year, for me, has raised the question of governance and how God participates in human actions. So at this point in time, the Key of David seems to be governance of the social order. The Messiah is named here as exactly the ruler of Temporal Order, what we now call mistakenly the “Secular” order. I say mistakenly for there was literally no concept of this “secular” order until the time between the American and the French Revolutions. There was no concept anywhere of “Church and State” prior to that time – even in places that were not Christian. For everywhere, the social order was governed by Authority and that Authority was partially religious.

Ancient Rome had laws and religious taboos had did all cultures until the modern mind broke these apart. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon he was not being “revolutionary” but rather he was committing an act of impiety – which signaled revolution. He was disrupting the divinely-instituted structures of Roman society. Likewise, Jesus was fully aware that his actions of impiety against both the Jewish and Roman structures would be seen as “politcal” as well as “theological”. These are the same things. Christianity teaches that all authority is God’s and he graciously allows men to participate in that. Only we moderns try to divorce Divine and Human Authority – and we fail. American has her own secular religion. We are unable to govern without it.

So, I think the “Key of David” signifies this joint rulership of “Church and State” which were not divided in Jesus’ day nor at any point in history until the latter part of the 18th Century amid the people of the “Enlightenment”.

The King of Israel held a religious function, an eternal as well as temporal one. And so the Key of David, the rulership of both the Sacred and the Secular, falls into the hands of Messiah. From him it passes to his body, the Church. Only modern, enlightened people in our pride imagine that these two things can be ruled separately. Most of the world and all people have known to the contrary for all of human history. And has our delusion done us so much better? Hardly. Our people are uncared for, our economy has run amok, the unrestrained content of our dreams, imaginings, and nightmares pours forth around us with never a thought to “should” only “could”. And when asked why “because it’s there” or “I wanted to” is the only answer possible. Because all other options have been removed from the table.

This is the darkness and the shadow of death in which we live and move and lose our being.

We need someone with the Key of David to close and lock away those things which are unhealthy for us, to open those ways which are good, true, and beautiful. We need someone with the Key of David to come and lead us from the prison house we have made for ourselves with – as the Orthodox/Byzantine prayer says – our “slavery to our own reasoning”.

This is prayer the Church offers here to the Messiah who is coming: rule us, lead us, take us out of our own traps and set us free.

Jesus: the Great Reset

Central image from O Root by Sr. Ansgar Holmberg, CSJ.

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,
super quem continebunt reges os suum,
quem Gentes deprecabuntur:
veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.
O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

JMJ
✙

WALKING THROUGH the Great Os this year, a pattern I’m seeing is (1) opening prayer, (2) God responding, then 2 parts describing exactly who and how this response is coming – invoking Jesse & David (Father and Son). So we’re at Jesse – the root of Jesse. It’s logical, knowing biology, to think of root as meaning the start of a tree. In fact in the present usage it is metaphorical and Jesse, himself, is root that we’re talking about. Jesus arrises from Jesse: but Jesse’s “root” goes all the way back to Adam. We are all descended from our common parents, one family, one people.

I’ve read Catholic and Orthodox writers who are biblical literalists, who think the Earth can only be about 6,000 years old and that humans have only been around for about the same amount of time. I’ve read others who simply graft Genesis onto a copy of Darwin’s work and shrug their shoulders at “mystery”. However, my first exposure to actually Catholic teaching on the subject came from a Dominican whose lecture on the topic explained that literalism (and Young Earth things) are right out. But we must accept that all humans are descended from the same two parents. So I struggled with this for a while.

Then, listening to Fr John Nepil on the Catholic Stuff podcast (back in February), I found a way to wrap the two concepts together – both evolution and two parents. Fr John suggested that as primates evolved, God picked two and gave them something: Father suggested it was the gift of speech/language. These two continued their evolutionary journey as animals, as bipeds, as mammals, as primates, and now as humans. Fr John discusses the possibility of this human family marrying others, teaching them speech, interbreeding, this all makes perfect sense. You don’t need 2 humans to be the physical genetic source of humanity – only the intellectual and spiritual teachers of what became humanity. The intent was something else, but things fall apart, and so now we continue our evolutionary journey as animals, as bipeds, as mammals, as primates, and now as fallen humans.

I like the symmetry of this pious theological opinion: it includes all the things the Church says we need and excludes all the nutters who want to deny things like millennia of evolution, Pangaea, and a round earth. It accounts for a lot of things that make no sense as merely physical phenomena like the fact that Original Sin is clearly evident to anyone – even someone who is an atheist and rejects the idea of “sin”. Things fall apart: it’s scientific.

And that’s why we need a reset.

St Paul says, “Since by man came death by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Cor 15:21-22). We did this and it is fitting that one of us undoes this. Yet this is a curious mystery: A Son of Adam must undo Adam’s Fall, but Adam’s Fall prevents any Son of Adam from being able to undo it. So we need to root of Jesse: a Son of Adam who is also the Son of Promise.

As in Adam all fall, even so in Christ are all started over again.

Christmas is the Beginning of Something New and the passing away of something old: For in Christ, the Son of Adam, the Son of Promise, is also the Son of God and God Himself. The solution to the Mystery of the Fall is a newer and greater Mystery: the Incarnation. As we learned last time, this is Adonai himself. The world becomes silent, then, for two reasons: that we should all fall down in prayer before God Himself makes sense. But now all the kings of the earth fall silent before the son of a sheep farmer and – in the person of Jesus – a carpenter. I’ve heard several times (but I don’t know if it’s true) that shepherds like King David were considered unclean. I assume they smelled like their sheep, either way. I’ve also heard that in Roman times men who worked with their hands such as carpenters were also considered lower class even if they had successful businesses. Again, I don’t know that this is true, but it says a lot about the God we worship: that he would pick the lower class to become a King and then would come among us himself as the lower class son of that same King.

Jesus, the Carpenter Son of the Shepherd, the smelly and sweaty lower class God of all heaven and earth, has reset everything by making the sons and daughters of our fallen first parents what we could not become otherwise.

And let us see how the world is overthrown.

Jesus is in Control

O ADONAI, et Dux domus Israel,
qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti,
et ei in Sina legem dedisti:
veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.
O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

JMJ
✙

The First antiphon warned us of a choice ahead. We prayed for wisdom to make that choice. This antiphon either assumes that we have made that choice – correctly or not – or else continues to warn us of what is ahead. Yes, this antiphon like all the others is sung before Christmas. However the historical event of Christmas has already passed so this antiphon is more of a commentary than a prophecy. We read/sing it knowing how the story turned out. So, no matter how you made the choice in O Sapientia, we are here confronted with a warning or a commentary: the End-User Legal Agreement as it were, the Terms of Service. Click here to continue…

Jesus is God.

Quite simply, there is no Christianity without this. The man recorded in the New Testament is either a complete nutcase who constantly alluded to himself being one with the Father and God himself, or else he is that thing that he claimed to be. And yes, it is possible to edit the texts of the Gospels to make one feel more comfortable in them, it is possible to find other documents, or to argue that the Church is biased in her opinions. But then you’re not playing Christianity you’re playing Whatever-I-made-up-today. That’s ok, actually. You do you. But admit it – confess it even – you’re doing something else.

Jesus is God. Full Stop. This text says the same Jesus is the God who appeared on Sinai giving the Torah to Moses and who appeared to him in the burning bush. Take off your shoes in the manger in Bethlehem: you are standing on Holy Ground.

Now. What does this mean for us here in Advent 2020?

This has been quite a year, has it not? So many people have said that that it’s now a cliche. Shrug. 2020, you know? It is an excuse, a way to step away from events and just kind of laughed them off – even as we are crying inside, dying a little bit each time we shrug. I won’t lie: this year has sucked. I cannot help but think of the Holy Prophet Job, minding his own business when all his children were killed, all his flocks stolen, all his goods destroyed, and his health vanished. And this all at the permission of God. Then Job’s “friends” show up and say, “Well, you must have done something to anger God or he wouldn’t have done this to you.” (With friends like this, who needs enemas?) Job is quite sure he has done nothing. So are we – the readers – for we know even God was bragging about how righteous Job was. And Job was a gentile!

We read Job recently in our chapter of Dominican Laity and I was struck as I was reading: so often Job is pushed forward in homilies or in liturgical readings as a sort of answer for why is there evil. But, really – having read the book end to end – there is no answer to these sorts questions, in fact the book sort of un-asks them. Rather than provide an answer it says – baldly – “Bad things happen. Who are you to ask questions like this?”

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (as he then was) points this out in his Introduction to Christianity:

Trust God – things happen.

Rumbling around on this Advent verse and on Job (since I’ve just read it) and on 2020, it’s come to me that I do not understand “evil”. By “evil” (in quotes like that) I do not mean the mystery of human sin – so evident at literally every turn. I mean what we call evil every day: a family member’s death, a war, a disease, a political loss or victory, an oppressive law, a murder. Yes, some of these can be sins, per se, but that doesn’t make them evil. They are the result of human failings. Certainly the “problem of evil” cannot hinge on this rephrasing: “If God is Good and Loving and All Powerful then why are humans stupid, meddlesome, and selfish?” Or worse: “If God is Good and Loving and All Powerful then why are some humans able to do things I do not like?” To be honest I think that second line is what “evil” usually means: things I do not like, things that make me uncomfortable, things that make me feel bad, things that make me want to yell, “LET ME TALK TO THE MANAGER!”

Karen, honey…. that impulse itself… bless yer heart: that’s the real evil.

That’s saying – like Job does: “How DARE you?”

Jesus is God. Full stop. Corollary: you are not God. Full stop.

What’s up with 2020 then?

The Bible – including the Book of Job – is filled with the answer to this question. Yes, the world is broken: we learn this in the first few chapters of Genesis. It’s broken because we did it. You surely can see this if you look out your window. We did this the first time we tried to be God on our own terms and shattered the whole crystal. The resonances are broken and nothing is tuned quite right.

But that did not disempower God who is still omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent – and living in your heart even if you don’t pay him any mind. The Holy Patriarch St Joseph says of his slavery in Egypt, “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” (Genesis 50:20). Even when people intend evil, it works out for good in God’s providence. St Paul says “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28). Sts Paul and James tell us to rejoice in all things and to make thanksgiving (the Greek is literally, “make eucharist”) in all things. The Eastern Church says, “Glory to God for all things”. It can sound like a sucky irony, but it’s the literal truth.

This Baby, in this manger, this one that cannot defend himself, feed himself, that needs his fundament cleaned by his parents when he does the necessary, this one is God.

And you are not.

Give up your mania for judging everything. Let go. It’s all good. Can you trust him?

Discerment and FOMO

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti,
attingens a fine usque ad finem,
fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia:
veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.
O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other,
mightily and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.

JMJ
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In the Serenity Prayer, we ask God to give us the wisdom to know the difference between the things we can change and the things we cannot change. This verse asks for wisdom to teach us prudence: in a way exactly the same. But prudence is more than that.

For a Christian, the act of the will (in conformity with Christ) is seen in the action of choice. Jesus says, “Let your yes be yes, and your no, no.” There’s nothing there about waffling. He says if you put your hand to the plough and look back, you’re not fit for the Kingdom. Prudence is the way of making the choice so that you never have to look back.

But prudence is exactly making a choice. Many people are terrified of making a choice at all. If they choose one thing they will have to give up another. If I pick marriage, I will miss out on ministry, but if I pick ministry, what if I want to date someone. Can I work here? What if I want to live elsewhere? Can I leave home? What if my parents die? This is called “Fear of Missing Out” or “FOMO”.

This is a huge problem. It’s often assigned as a generational problem to Millenials, but Xers show it (I had a boss who wanted others to make all the choices so he could blame them) and Boomers are famous for it: it’s the whole premise of 70s era feminism.

The original video tape is from 1984 so it’s a bit wonky (stretch marks) but you get the point.

Thing is, you have to choose. All of life is about choosing. In fact, the Christian journey begins with a choice: a renunciation of Satan, and an acceptance of Christ. It’s a conversion, a turning around, a choice.

The way of prudence is the way of making choices and sticking by them. It’s a course of action: not of thinking too much.

Now… can you do it? Well, I’m typing in a new apartment terrified it was the wrong choice for any number of worrying reasons, but can’t back out: signed the lease, paid the money. It will be fine, but right now, I’m scared because I’ve made a choice. It’ll pass.

That’s the whole thing: adults make choices and take responsibilities for them. Some part of life is painful: and that may be because of your choices. Accept that, grow and learn.

Why are we asked to make choices at the beginning of our preparation for Christmas? I’ve pointed it out already. The journey of a Christian begins with a sharp choice. The liturgy of the Church is telling us that the breaking point is coming. In the west, this verse will be sung just before Christmas on Dec 17. It’s the first blinking yellow light on the highway: there’s a huge split in the traffic up ahead. You have to make the choice. There’s no way to have it all. Some things will just not bring you to God.

God is the all we are choosing in the Christian Journey. Everything else must fall into line behind that. But he gives us everything we need to choose him: if he thinks you need a new job to know him better, you will get it. There’s nothing wrong with diving in: this world is the things God has given us to know him better. But we have to choose.

Pray for the wisdom to make the right choice.
Then make the choice.
And don’t look back.

O Virgin

O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? The thing which ye behold is a divine mystery.

JMJ
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Sarum Use (the ancient liturgical of the Cathedral of Salisbury) has one extra Great O Antiphon, assigned to the Blessed Virgin. For this reason, while Catholics begin with O Sapientia on the 17th, Anglicans have, quite often, began on the 16th, so that O Virgo could be sung on the 23rd. This practice has fallen out of favour recently. The official C of E office book, Daily Prayer, follows the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours. I have always liked the O Virgo and prefer to use it at least for this annual series of posts.

There are other O Antiphons as well. The Catholic Encylopedia notes:

but other medieval Breviaries added (1) “O virgo virginum quomodo fiet” etc., still retained in the Roman Breviary as the proper antiphon to the Magnificat in the second Vespers of the feast Expectatio Partus B. M. V. (18 December), the prayer of this feast being followed by the antiphon “O Adonai” as a commemoration of the ferial office of 18 December; (2) “O Gabriel, nuntius cœlorum”, subsequently replaced, almost universally, by the thirteenth-century antiphon, “O Thoma Didyme”, for the feast of the Apostle St. Thomas (21 December). Some medieval churches had twelve greater antiphons, adding to the above (1) “O Rex Pacifice”, (2) “O Mundi Domina”, (3) “O Hierusalem”, addressed respectively to Our Lord, Our Lady, and Jerusalem. Guéranger gives the Latin text of all of these (except the “O Mundi Domina”), with vernacular prose translation (“Liturgical Year”, Advent, Dublin, 1870, 508-531), besides much devotional and some historical comment. The Parisian Rite added two antiphons (“O sancte sanctorum” and “O pastor Israel”) to the seven of the Roman Rite and began the recitation of the nine on the 15th of December.

Catholics are often accused of worshipping Mary as a Goddess. I get the reasoning, even though I disagree. There is nothing said about Mary (other than naming her Mother of God) that cannot be said in a way about all Christians. Her role is special, though, in that she bore the graces of the faith by God’s grace alone, rather than through sacramental participation in Christ.

If mankind is seen as fallen (and what needs to be forgotten to not see that?) then Mary’s sinless status must be seen as a restoration of her – along – to that state humanity enjoyed before the Fall. We cannot imagine what all that entails! Unbroken communion with God and a full and total detachment from the things of this world, from all venial and mortal sins; from undue attachment to anything that would destroy her Communion. She lives in this intimacy constantly and, although it doesn’t make her a Goddess, it does elevate her far beyond the status of daily mundanity. Her prayers are efficacious because of her relationship with her son, and because of this constant communion.

For God’s incarnation among us, the Earth offers a cave, the animals their stall, the angels their song, but humanity offers the Blessed and All-Pure Virgin. The titles awarded to Mary by the Church (East and West) are without number. She is the finest offering of our humanity to God. And yet her humility is endless for she knows that even so she is only worthy by God’s grace, only able by his strength, to do what must be done.

We are not to marvel at her. Everything Mary does points to God. Her Immaculate Conception is the grace of Baptism. Her overshadowing by the Holy Spirit (and again at Pentecost) is the Confirmation which we all enjoy. Her burial and assumption is the same death we will all undergo, her coronation is the promise of our eternal glory. Her intercession is the grace of prayer in which we all participate. Even her virginal conception is echoed in our participation in the Holy Mass and the reception of the Sacred Mysteries which bring infinity into us, making us – like her – to be “more spacious than the heavens.” This is “a divine mystery”. She begs us not to marvel at her but at God’s grace in her life and in ours.

This is the position of the Christian before God: to accept even a final “well down” as underserved save by God’s grace for without him we can do nothing; but with him all things are possible. Nothing we do should point to us but rather to God’s grace active in our lives.

The manger, the cross, the grave, and the tomb, these are the signposts that bring us all through our lives to God. Mary walks with us – prays with us – along this same way, but she has already walked it. God, her son, knows this way intimately.

O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver, the hope of the nations and their Saviour: Come and save us, O Lord our God.

JMJ
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Have you ever heard of a pamphlet called The Four Spiritual Laws? I think it was written in 1965 by the folks at Campus Crusade for Christ (which is now, evidently, just called “Cru“) and it is still one of the most popular tools of “Street Evangelism”. It lists the four most-basic premises of the Christian Message:

God loves us
We’re a mess
God sent us Jesus
We’re supposed to do something in response

Although it’s boiled down so much as to be meaningless, it has brought thousands (if not millions) of folks into the discussion about Jesus. I think the steps are correct as far as they go: there’s at least a year of teaching that can go into each point. The Church’s 2,000-year history would agree with each point and could weave a tale as long as the 2,000 years and longer to tell the four stories and after you have spent all 8,000 years hearing the stories, you’d still only be walking along the periphery.

The real story of the Gospel is that deep: you dive in and it just keeps going. That’s why today’s verse is so very important. God With Us. See: God is evangelizing us.

This babe in a manger, this infant on his mother’s lap, this child needs to have his diapers changed, and feeds at his mother’s breast is the Lord and Creator of the Universe who has come to be one of us that we may go to be with him. God has become man that man might become God.

In the ancient understanding of the economy of salvation, all of humanity fell in Adam and Eve’s failure in the garden. It’s not a question of culpability: but of simple, spiritual genetics. Our parents cannot pass on to us anything that they are not. They cannot pass on to us the intimate connection with God which they had before the fall because they no longer enjoy that. We cannot “recover” it since we never had it. We wouldn’t know it if it bit us in the backside, as the saying goes.

But God has entered into human history, a slob like one of us, trying to make his way home. And it’s not that he had to do this to understand us, but rather, so we could understand him.

The titles offered to Jesus in this verse all belong to Caesar: God, King, Lawgiver, Savior, Lord. The Church sees in this baby all the things that Augustus (along with Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, etc) wanted the world to see in him. And we should rightly acclaim him as such. But God with us means so much more: for what we have is a God who is like us in every way except sin.

That does not mean that God knows what it feels like to [fill in the blank] because feeling is not important. And someone might be happy at [fill in the blank] or have any other number of emotions. What it does mean is that anything a human does (save sin), God has done. These acts become divine actions, sacraments in which we can participate. God has fed at his mother’s breast. God has cried in the night and woke up his parents. God has been alone in the dark. God has woke up from nightmares. God had favorite foods (and was probably convinced that his own mother’s hummus was better than anyone else’s). God has gone to the bathroom, and as a toddler probably did that right on the street. This God has gone swimming with friends.

This God has washed dishes for his mother. This God has helped his father at work. This God has learned a trade. This God has said his prayers. When we do these things, we are following in God’s footsteps. We can – if we wish – do each of these things and so many more in memory of him.

God did not need to do any of these things to give him sympathy for us. If that were the case, then God failed, for does he know what it’s like to work on the internet or to have indoor plumbing? No. Does he know what it’s like to be a woman? Or an ethnic minority? No. So if it were a case of simply a God who understands us he no longer does. God redrew the map: so that each of these human actions is sacramentalized in his doing of them. God has even shown us that resisting temptation leads us to holiness.

God does not need to learn about us: rather, we need to learn about him. And God-with-us has made that very easy indeed. He has drawn us into the discussion. God has evangelized us.

O King

O King of the nations, and their desire, the cornerstone making both one: Come and save the human race, which you fashioned from clay.

JMJ
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Making both one? Walk back through the O Antiphons. They tell a story of division and union.

Wisdom is sought in the first one just so we can understand what’s happening. But the Sophia of the Wisdom tradition is through all the world dispersed. Wisdom rules the whole world equally.
Adonai is invoked next. He’s the Lord of Israel and the giver of the Law. The Lord does not rule the whole world.
Root of Jesse is a sign that one family has been selected out of the whole world to do this. World > Israel > Judah > Jesse > David > Joseph & Mary > Jesus.
Key of David is the way Jesus unlocks the hidden meanings of the scriptures, so that even Gentiles might, by the light of his wisdom, read their story there.
Dayspring is the way Jesus unlocks the hidden meanings of nature, the first Bible and common to all. As Divine Wisdom has ordered all things sweetly, suddenly we see that it all points to Jesus.
King is Jesus uniting all these worlds: the Jew and Gentile, the Scriptural and the Natural, the particularity of one man and the universality of the whole world. But more: Jesus unites humanity to Godhead in his person. The great divisions are destroyed.

In short, the Christian claim is that it’s only ever been all about Jesus. It’s always been about the center point of all history, of all time, of all space. All that is true must point to Jesus: all that is untrue can only point away.

All divisions cease, there is no us and them: there is only God who is all in all.

O Dawn

O Dayspring, splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness: Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

JMJ
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And why not? We sing this verse at Vespers on the 20th (in Anglican tradition) or on the 21st (in Roman Catholic and Western Rite Orthodoxy). So it comes either side of the “longest night”, which can fit both the night of the 20th-21st as well as the 21st-22nd. The solstice traditionally being marked on the 21st at sunrise in the cultures of the European North. What has any of that to do with us? It’s totally incorrect to say that “Christmas was a pagan holiday that Constantine’s Church stole. There are a LOT of articles out there about this, but my favorite, and the oldest, I think, is by an old friend of this blog (in a previous incarnation), Dr William Tighe: Calculating Christmas lays out all the reasons that 25 December was not “stolen” and, quite possibly, is Jesus’ actual birthday.

And why not?

I believe Jesus is not only God incarnate but the entire reason for the universe, the sum total of all history and the omega point from which all other events are only typological shadows. The Incarnation was not “Plan B” after a surprising mistake in the garden. God is all-knowing: the fall was expected, the need for salvation understood, and the Incarnation was the idea all along. Christmas – and Easter 33 years later – was the entire point.

The Jews had all of their prophetic history from Abraham until John the Baptist to prepare them for the coming of Messiah. The rest of the world did not have these things. Yet, as Christ was brought to them, they saw the truth and were ready. What prepared them?

And all of nature – including the Winter Solstice itself – is set up by God to point the way to his own glory: the Fathers teach that Nature, herself, is the first Bible. “All the earth is a memorial to thee, a presence of thy works” (Odes of Solomon, 11). And Saint Maximus the Confessor points out that the sun itself is a sign of Christ. ” The Sun that rises and illumines the world, it makes itself visible as well as the objects it illumines. It is the same with the Sun of Righteousness. When he rises in a mind that has been purified, he makes himself scene in addition to the logoi of the objects he has created.”

The Vikings did not have the Old Testament: they had Odin hanging on his tree for wisdom, though, and the Winter Solstice. The Celts did not have the Old Testament, but the entire nation of Ireland converted without bloodshed or protest. American Indians, Aztecs, Mayans, they all saw something they couldn’t reject. The Chinese, too, and the Indians, saw something in this strange, incarnate God from Israel that met their local, already prepared souls. Each one saw something foretold in their cultures, and each one found it fulfilled in Christ.

And why not? If God can work through the Hebrew prophets, the religious leaders of a “stubborn and stiff-necked people,” to bring about the Blessed Virgin Mary and her divine Son, Jesus, then what can he bring about through the rest of us? Isaiah even calls King Cyrus (of Persia) the Messiah! Thus says the Lord to his anointed, (that is “Messiah” in Hebrew) to Cyrus, whom he has taken by his right hand to subdue nations before him and strip the loins of kings, to force gateways before him that their gates be closed no more: I will go before you levelling the heights. I will shatter the bronze gateways, smash the iron bars. I will give you the hidden treasures, the secret hoards, that you may know that I am the Lord. (Isaiah 45:1–3) Elsewhere (I’m having trouble finding it, to be honest…) God says to Israel, I’ve called you, but I’ve also called these other peoples to do other things.” And so God was at work everywhere.

The Church even commemorates Augustus Caesar on Christmas, noting in the Martyrology for 25 December, that the incarnation happened, “in the 42nd year of the rule of Octavian Augustus, when the whole world was at peace”. The traditional teaching being that God arranged even the Roman Empire so that there was a common language, and roads, and trade among all so that the faith could be spread that much further.

So, “you’re only saying Jesus was born now to imitate the pagans.” No, actually, Jesus was born now exactly to imitate the pagans: they’re expecting him.

And why not? He’s their God, too.

JMJ✙

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