True North: A Playlist for this Advent Season
Josh Rodriguez
By Carolyn Pirtle
Every December 17, the Church begins praying what are known as the “O Antiphons,” offering a different antiphon each evening during Vespers, or Evening Prayer, until December 23. Outside of Vespers, the O Antiphons are more familiar in their adapted form as the verses for the quintessential Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”
Saturated with imagery from the Old Testament, the O Antiphons each highlight a different title of the Messiah. They intensify our preparations for the final days of Advent as they remind us with vivid clarity and luminous beauty of the reality that the Messiah is coming. Our God is coming to save us from death. From sin. From fear. From loneliness. From ourselves. And he is coming as Wisdom (Sapientia), as Lord (Adonai), as Flower (Radix), as Key (Clavis), as Dawn (Oriens), as King (Rex), as God-with-us (Emmanuel). The One whom the prophets foretold, the One for whom countless hearts have longed, upon whom innumerable eyes have yearned to gaze—he is coming. Indeed, the antiphons themselves tell us so: the first letters of each Messianic title form a reverse acrostic, spelling out the words “Ero cras”:
Tomorrow, I will come.
In this final week of Advent, as we turn our attention to the last-minute rush to get ready for Christmas, it can be easy to grow slack in the zeal of preparing for the coming of Christ. Praying the O Antiphons—either by listening to musical settings like those on the McGrath Institute for Church Life’s Advent playlist, or by reflecting on their texts—is a beautiful way to guard against this, to stay awake, to stand alert, to be found ready when God’s “all-powerful Word from heaven’s throne [will leap] into the doomed land” and reconcile all things by his coming (see Wisdom 18:15ff).
Marana tha. Come, Lord Jesus.
Program Director of the Center for Liturgy at Notre Dame University
This short reflection was first published by the McGrath Institute for Church Life blog, and reprinted here with author’s permission.