The following is a reflection from Fr. Joseph Gill, Pastor St. Jude Parish.
Perhaps the most-beloved Advent song is O Come, O Come Emmanuel. Each verse begins with O Come, followed by a title of Jesus. But this song has a long and beautiful history that is worth learning about!
In addition to the Mass, the other official prayer of the Church is the Liturgy of the Hours. Ancient monks used to pray the Psalms continuously – as soon as they prayed all 150 Psalms, spaced out over a few days, they would begin again. This soon coalesced into a set format of praying the Psalms at different times during the day. There are seven official “hours” as part of the Liturgy of the Hours: Lauds (prayed at midnight), Matins (morning), terce, sext and none (prayed at 9am, noon, and 3pm – from the Latin words for third, sixth, and ninth…hours after sunrise), Vespers (evening) and Compline (before retiring for the night). Diocesan priests like myself take a vow, binding under pain of sin, to pray five of the hours each day (we only have to pray one of the daytime hours, instead of all three).
Each Psalm begins and ends with an “antiphon” (kind of like the response for our Responsorial Psalm). Every Advent, the final seven days of Vespers have a special series called the “O Antiphons” – all of which speak of a title of Jesus (O Emmanuel…O King of the Nations…O Wisdom from on High, etc). These antiphons are particularly ancient – there is evidence that they were written before the sixth century AD. Interestingly, each of the first letters of the seven antiphons, in Latin, spell out ERO CRAS, which means, “Tomorrow I will be there” – the antiphons end on the day before Christmas Eve, promising that the Lord will arrive on Christmas Eve night!
Here is the full text of each of the seven Antiphons, which make up the gist of our famous “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” song:
O Sapientia: 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 salvation.
O Adonai: O sacred Lord of ancient Israel, who showed yourself to Moses in the burning bush, who gave him the holy law on Sinai mountain: come, stretch out your mighty hand to set us free.
