"O" Antiphons: December 17-23

“From December 17 onwards, the liturgical texts of Advent are more directly concerned with the immediate preparation for the Christmas feast. The mystery of God’s love, the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God (Eph 3:9), is the foreground. God realized it in the Lord’s ancestors and proximately in the infancy of John the Baptist and in the persons of Our Lady and St. Joseph” (Ordo 2015).

Thus December 17 marks the start of the “O” antiphons where it is recited or sung before the Magnificat during Vespers. “These moving ‘O Antiphons’ were apparently composed in the seventh or eighth century when monks put together texts from the Old Testament, particularly from the prophet Isaiah, which looked forward to the coming of our salvation. They form a rich, interlocking mosaic of scriptural images. The great ‘O Antiphons’ became very popular in the Middle Ages when it became traditional to ring the great bells of the church each evening as they were being sung” (D’Ambrosio, The Great "O" Antiphons of Advent).

Every antiphons give highlights on the different titles of the Messiah. “In the first, O Sapientia or O Wisdom, takes us to a backward flight into the recesses of eternity to address Wisdom, the Word of God. In the second, O Adonai or O Sacred Lord, we leap from eternity to the time of Moses and the Law of Moses. In the third, O Radix Jesse or O Flower of Jesse’s Stem, we come to the time when God was preparing the line of David. In the fourth, O Clavis David or O Key of David, we come to the prophecy of Isaiah: ‘I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open’ (Isaiah 22:22) In the fifth, O Oriens or O Radiant Dawn, we see that the line of David is elevated so that the peoples may look on a rising star in the east, and hence in the sixth, O Rex Gentium or O King of all the Nations, we come to know that He is the king of all the world of. This brings us to the evening before the vigil, and before coming to the town limits of Bethlehem, we salute Him with the last Great O, O Emmanuel” (J.G. Miller, Catholic Activity: O Antiphons - December 17 - 24).

There is also a particularly fascinating feature of the “O” Antiphons on the first letter of each invocation. According to Fr. William Saunders, the Benedictine monks arranged these antiphons with a definite purpose. If one starts with the last title and takes the first letter of each one—Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai, Sapientia—the Latin words Ero Cras are formed, meaning, "Tomorrow, I will come". Therefore Jesus, whose coming Christians have prepared for in Advent and whom they have addressed in these seven Messianic titles, now speaks to them: "Tomorrow, I will come." So the "O Antiphons" not only bring intensity to their Advent preparation, but bring it to a joyful conclusion. However, the way that these antiphons were arranged to form Ero Cras is somewhat dubitable. It is because Ero Cras actually meant “Tomorrow, I will be.” “There is little or no evidence in the sources that this is anything more than a coincidence” (Martin Connell, Eternity Today: On the Liturgical Year).