A quarterly journal of ideas, art, and faith
Reviewed by Joseph O’Brien
House of Words
By Jonathan Potter
Korrektiv Press, 2010
94 pp., $15
ISBN: 1439258031
“Nature is a Haunted House—but Art—a House that tries to be haunted.” Penned in a letter to her sponsor and editor T.W. Higginson, Emily Dickinson zeroes in here on what the human imagination is about when it sets down to create—although “create” is not quite the word we want in this case. [Read more…]
I first became intrigued by the relationship between “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” the season of Advent, and the O antiphons a few years ago when I chanced to find a Youtube show in which Fr. William George Rutler presented some of this hymn’s rich history. Last year during Advent, I posted ten quotes from this video in “Top Ten Thoughts about Advent from Fr. Rutler.” As this quote from Fr. Rutler said in thought #2 in my post, “The Church has wonderful hymns for Advent, and if we don’t keep Advent, we are going to miss them. We know one very well, and because we’ve lost Advent, we tend to think of it as a Christmas hymn: ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel.’”
Because many additional fascinating details are associated with the origins and history of this hymn, this year I want to dig deeper, and look at where the hymn came from.
Fr. Rutler continued, “The Latin version of ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel,’ which came first, is called ‘Veni, Veni, Emmanuel.’” Corpus Christi Watershed just published a post with the original version of this hymn, which was arranged for two voices, here. A large part of what makes this hymn especially interesting to me is the origin of its verses. Each verse in the hymn is a modified version of one of the seven O antiphons. As Fr. Rutler explained, an antiphon is a short line that precedes a liturgical hymn. The particular collection of antiphons that made their way into the hymn is called the O antiphons for the somewhat prosaic reason that they each begin with an O.
Each night between Dec. 17 and 23, wherever Latin Vespers or the vernacular Evening Prayer are prayed, one of these O antiphons is sung or recited before and after the Magnificat. In the post-Vatican II form of the Mass, each of the O antiphons is also included as the Gospel Acclamation during the Mass of the day. The O antiphons powerfully express the Church’s longing and awe at this time of heightened anticipation, while Advent is coming to a close, and the feast of Christmas approaches.
The Magnificat, of course, is the canticle of Our Lady, which she sang under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost during her visit with her cousin Elizabeth soon after the annunciation. My favorite liturgical scholar from the late 19th century, Dom Prosper Gueranger wrote that these antiphons are sung at the Magnificat, “to show us that the Saviour whom we expect is to come to us by Mary.”
The Church enters today on the seven days which precede the Vigil of Christmas, and which are known in the liturgy under the name of the Greater Ferias. The ordinary of the Advent Office becomes more solemn; the antiphons of the psalms, both for Lauds and the Hours of the day, are proper, and allude expressly to the great coming. Every day, at Vespers, is sung a solemn antiphon, consisting of a fervent prayer to the Messias, whom it addresses by one of the titles given Him in the sacred Scriptures. … The canonical Hour of Vespers has been selected as the most appropriate time for this solemn supplication to our Saviour, because, as the Church sings in one of her hymns, it was in the evening of the world (vergente mundi vespere) that the Messias came amongst us.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of Advent as making present the expectation of the Messiah: as we prepare to celebrate His first coming, we also prepare for His second coming.
524 When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Saviour’s first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming.”
Messianic Titles
Each of the seven O antiphons starts with one of the names of a Scriptural type of the Messiah. He is the Wisdom of God, the Ruler of the House of Israel, the Root of Jesse, the Key of David, the Dawn, the King of the Nations, and God with us.
And each O antiphon ends by calling out to the Savior to come and to show us the power that is associated with the particular Messianic name that the antiphon uses.
Incidentally, but interestingly, the hymn verses are much shorter than the corresponding antiphons, and the verses are not in the same order as the sequence in which the O antiphons are sung. For one example, the last O antiphon on Dec. 23 is addressed to Emmanuel, which means God with us, while the hymn begins with the verse about Emmanuel.
For a concrete example of the pattern followed each of the O antiphons, following is the antiphon for Dec. 17th. It begins by addressing God as O Sapientia, O Wisdom, then it describes what God’s wisdom does, and it ends with a petition, “come to teach us the way of prudence.”
O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviter disponensque omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.
O Wisdom, that proceedest from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end mightily, and disposing all things sweetly! come and teach us the way of prudence.”
These are the corresponding modified hymn verses.
Veni, O Sapientia, quae hic disponis omnia, veni, viam prudentiae ut doceas et gloriae. R: Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel, nascetur pro te Israel!
O Come Thou Wisdom from on high, that orderest all things mightily. to us the path of knowledge show, and teach us in your ways to go. R: Rejoice! Rejoice! O Israel, to thee shall come Emmanuel!”
To show how deeply it is possible to delve when exploring the meaning of each antiphon, here is Dom Gueranger’s commentary about this first O antiphon.
O uncreated Wisdom, who art so soon to make Thyself visible to Thy creatures, truly Thou disposest all things. It is by Thy permission that the emperor Augustus issues a decree ordering the enrollment of the whole world. Each citizen of the vast empire is to have his name enrolled in the city of his birth. This prince has no other object in this order, which sets the world in motion, but his own ambition. Men go to and fro by millions, and an unbroken procession traverses the immense Roman world; men think they are doing the bidding of man, and it is God whom they are obeying. This world-wide agitation has really but one object; it is, to bring to Bethlehem a man and woman who live at Nazareth in Galilee, in order that this woman, who is unknown to the world but dear to heaven, and who is at the close of the ninth month since she conceived her Child, may give birth to this Child in Bethlehem; for the Prophet has said of Him: ‘His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity. And thou, O Bethlehem! art not the least among the thousand cities of Juda, for out of thee He shall come.’ O divine Wisdom! how strong art Thou in thus reaching Thine ends by means which are infallible, though hidden; and yet, how sweet, offering no constraint to man’s free-will; and withal, how fatherly, in providing for our necessities! Thou choosest Bethlehem for Thy birth-place, because Bethlehem signifies the house of bread. In this, Thou teachest us that Thou art our Bread, the nourishment and support of our life. With God as our food, we cannot die. O Wisdom of the Father, living Bread that hast descended from heaven, come speedily into us, that thus we may approach to Thee and be enlightened by Thy light, and by that prudence which leads to salvation.”
Bringing the O Antiphons Home
Many Catholics are becoming interested in including the O antiphons as part of their Advent preparations, by singing or reciting or listening to recordings (or doing all of these things) between Dec. 17 and 23. Everyone can find renewed inspiration at the end of Advent by praying the O antiphons as a countdown to the great feast that is to come. Numerous craft ideas to reinforce their significance for children are available on the Internet, for example here and this excellent one here.
ERO CRAS: I Will Be Tomorrow
My middle school Latin students were greatly impressed with this tidbit about the O antiphons, so I suspect other children will be too. The initials of the first words of the O antiphons form an acrostic when you reverse them: ERO CRAS.
This is understood as Christ saying to us, “I will be tomorrow.” I don’t know about you, but that gives me goose bumps.
Bringing the O Antiphons to Facebook
I’ve gotten in the habit of breaking my self-imposed Facebook fast for Advent in honor of the O antiphons. Starting on Dec. 17, I post a link on my Facebook wall each day until Dec. 23; the link goes to a post about the O antiphon of the day from The New Liturgical Movement website. I admire the way the NLM posts about the O antiphons concisely brought together the Latin, the English, a link to the sung antiphon, and how they also provide a lovely image for each. Here are the links in case you might want to use them yourself.
The following is the meditation for Day 2 (December 17) of the Advent Novena. For the full text of the novena, click here.
The Annunciation by Matthew Alderman
Day 2:
At the holy house of Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph lived, the Eternal Word was about to take on a created nature. As the Holy Spirit approached to overshadow her with the divine decree, Mary was alone, engulfed in prayer. She spent the quite hours of the night in a most intimate union with God, and as she prayed, the Word took possession of His created abode. However, He did not arrive uninvited. Before coming to her He sent a messenger, the Archangel Gabriel, to request on God’s behalf Mary’s consent to the miracle of the Incarnation. The Creator did not wish to consummate this great mystery without the assent of His creature.
It was a solemn moment, for it remained within Mary’s power to refuse. With what sublime delights, with what ineffable rejoicing the Holy Trinity must have awaited the moment in which Mary was to open her lips to pronounce that “fiat,” a word must have been as a tender melody before God! Through it, Mary conformed her being, in an act of free and profound humility, to the omnipotent divine will.
The Immaculate Virgin has given her assent. The archangel has vanished. God has clothed Himself in a created nature. The eternal will has been accomplished, the whole of Creation consummated. From the angelic realms bursts forth a roar of jubilation, but the Virgin Mary does not hear it—nor would she have paid attention to it if she had. Rather, her head was bowed and her soul immersed in a godly silence. The Word had become flesh, and though He remained still invisible to the world, He now dwelled among those whom his limitless love had come to rescue. He was no longer simply the Eternal Word; he was the Child Jesus, clothed in human form, already worthy of being called by all generations the most beautiful among the sons of men.
The last decade has seen an unexpected resurgence of the Germanic folklore figure Krampus in American popular culture. We’ve had Hollywood-produced Santa movies since there’s been a Hollywood, and the Santa Claus myth has been deconstructed and reconstructed therein so many times that now he’s little more than a duct-taped body cobbled together from many disparate parts.
Santa is used sometimes to promulgate the humanist meaning of Christmas (Miracle on 34th Street), sometimes as a pop-mythologized hero figure (Santa Claus: The Movie), and occasionally as a bit of background dressing (The Nightmare Before Christmas). One cannot really expect any more religious meaning than this from a country founded on deistic-humanist principles, but too frequently it makes for thin fare.
None of which has anything to do with the real St. Nicholas, of course. He’s been off doing his own thing for centuries while his doppelgängers run wild…
But Krampus? Krampus was the Devil of Christmas, albeit a chained devil. He was a companion of Sinterklaas who whipped evil children with birch branches and carted them off to Hell in his bag. The chains represent the Devil’s subjugation to God, and show that he operates at Heaven’s sufferance. That, more or less, is the traditional version of Krampus.
The newer pop-Krampus is the sworn enemy of Santa Claus and his equal. He’s the yin to Santa’s yang; Santa’s opposite, rather than his slave. All of which came into focus recently when I watched the new Michael Dougherty film Krampus. Everything this film demon does is a twisted inversion of American Santa tropes. This new Krampus is Santa’s “shadow,” imitating and subverting the jolly old elf at every turn. If anything, the new Krampus might be more powerful than Santa, even being described as a more ancient evil.
(None of which is to say that I didn’t enjoy the film. I actually thought it was a rather good example of that dying genre, the morality tale. The production values were excellent, and the dark humor frequently reminded me of Gremlins. It might have too much horror for a broad audience to enjoy, though.)
Carl Jung would doubtless have written a two-volume set about what Krampus Resurgent means about our collective unconscious. Maybe our country is using this to work through its growing hatred of Christian holy days. Maybe we’re tired of paper-thin happiness and manufactured joy. Maybe it’s an indicator of our increased cynicism about the commercialization of Christmas. Maybe subconsciously we all know that our anti-religious attitude is going to get us dragged down to Hell someday, and we’re manifesting that fear through pop culture. How long until we start seeing the Krampuslauf on our city streets?
What’s next? Will we be rewriting our classic Christmas stories to include this dark beast? The Christmas Carol, with Krampus.
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Christmas is not an event within history but is rather the invasion of time by eternity. –Hans Urs von Balthasar
Despite the (often justified) grumbling of so many Advent Curmudgeons about celebrating our liturgical feasts in their proper sequence, the Season of Advent itself has little respect for chronology. Advent is temporal anarchy, a rebellion against a strictly linear experience of existence. We are waiting for the birth of a child that happened two thousand years ago. We try to mitigate this paradox by also anticipating His second coming at the end of all ages–but the readings for the Sundays of Advent focus on the Second Coming first. In this year’s Lectionary Cycle C, we hear Luke 21 (the apocalyptic end-times) on the first Sunday of Advent, Luke 3 (John the Baptist and “prepare the way”) on the second and third Sundays, and we end with Luke 1 (Mary and Elizabeth awaiting the birth of Jesus) on the fourth Sunday. Yes, we read the Gospel backwards.
The lectionary goes on to defy all logic by returning to Luke 3 on the last Sunday of the Christmas season, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. If Advent is a time of screaming, “Hey, Christmas, wait your turn,” one would think it might at least have the courtesy not to rain on Christmas’s duly-scheduled parade. But instead, on the final day of poinsettias around the altar, the last chance to squeeze “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” into the repertoire, we go right on back to Isaiah and that classic Advent refrain, “A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord!” I hope the Advent Curmudgeons all smile smugly on that day, when Christmas receives its comeuppance. But I also suspect there is something more going on than a rivalry between two seasons.
If eternity is, as many saints have claimed, not endless time but all times at once, then Advent is a season that mimics eternity. Advent takes the many various layers of Christian longing and piles them on top of each other, so that we experience them simultaneously. Here in a beautiful, illogical, finite and well-defined stretch of time, we encounter a beginning that starts with an end, an Alpha that is an Omega, a Gospel that runs backward only to begin running forward again. We are waiting, we say, but then we celebrate the Eucharist, the Word Made Flesh coming among us in the here-and-now. We prove ourselves liars, but still we go on waiting. Celebrating Advent can make you dizzy.
But Advent is only a season of preparation. If it mimics eternity, it is to point us toward the fact that we await the coming of the Eternal One. Christmas celebrates the moment when God let Himself be bound by the constraints of flesh, but also the constraints of time. When the Word became Flesh, the temporal became bound to the eternal. Eternity became a slave to time so that we might experience eternity. We are waiting for a single moment of history that has already happened; but we are still waiting for it because it is the moment that unites all other moments. We are waiting for the moment of Jesus’ birth because we will experience it firsthand someday–though “someday” is hardly the right word to express that time will no longer hold us in its shackles.
If none of this makes sense to you, don’t worry. I don’t understand it, either. But I do understand that Advent plays fast and loose with time in order to teach us that God can do the same. He can fill us before we know we are empty. He can write the beginning long after the end. He can speak to us in mysteries so far beyond our understanding, they appear to us as nonsense. Advent is a time to revel in the mystery, to humble ourselves before our ignorance of ways that are beyond our ways and thoughts that are beyond our thoughts. It is a time to wait for what we already have. When we can do that well, we will be ready to receive the eternal gift of Christmas.
Slowly but surely, Advent is making a comeback. It may not seem so in the culture at large, where it would appear we’d be just as well moving Christmas to August. However, as the consumerism of the season turns into self-parody, many are longing for a more meaningful celebration. The result is that Advent has been getting more press time.
Unfortunately, once the family has put up an Advent wreath and sung a couple of rounds of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” a disturbing thought creeps in: now what? In other words, how should one live Advent other than by saying it’s not Christmas yet? Advent is indeed meant to be a season of penitence. Seeking silence, giving to charity, and going to confession are all practices I strongly endorse. But Advent is also supposed to be a season of longing, of looking forward to Our Lord’s return by getting excited about his liturgical coming at Christmas. For that, we need practices that fill us with expectation. We need traditions.
Unfortunately, given Advent’s long neglect, most families don’t have any, which is where this post comes in.
If you were reading our blog last year, you probably know where this is going (in fact, the rest of this post may seem really familiar). The great thing about being Catholic is that the Church is truly universal, and where traditions are lacking we can look to the broader Catholic world for guidance. I’d like to share with you what I consider perhaps the most meaningful of the Advent traditions I grew up with in Colombia, the Advent Novena, in the hopes that you may be able to incorporate it into your Advent celebrations as well.
Mmmmm… natilla.
What is the Advent Novena?
Not quite what you think. Like all other novenas, the Advent novena comprises a set of prayers to be said during nine days, but it is also much more. The novena is light, friendship, song. It is, in a sense, a perfect balance of everything truly human, the sacred and the secular brought together in effortless harmony. Starting on December 16th, families, friends, and neighbors begin gathering every night to count down the days until Christmas. There are carols, holiday dishes, prayers, meditations, and companionship.
The way it usually works is that people gather for the novena sometime around 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. After ever everyone is settled in, the host for the day begins prayers (if several families are participating, usually hosting duties are rotated day to day), and once these are done, people sing their favorite Advent or Christmas carols (bringing some instruments, even just very basic noisemakers, is definitely a plus!).
Spread from last year’s novena. Hot chocolate in the foreground, empanadas, and cheesy breads in the back.
After getting in a good session of caroling, it is time to eat! Colombians like to break out the natilla (a custard dish) and buñuelos (fried cheesy breads). I’ll be providing recipes in case you’re feeling adventurous, but feel free to celebrate with your own favorites. After this point, people usually just sit and chat, sign more songs, eat (and on occasion even dance) until bedtime. And then the next day, you do it all over again!
Isn’t it a bit much to do this for nine days straight?
Yes, and no. As I said, ideally you’ll find at least a couple of more households who are willing to rotate hosting duties. And you don’t have to do the full thing every night–feel free to just do some nights quietly with your own family, or just by yourself if you live alone. But try to stick with it all nine days, and to make it as communal as possible. By the end of it, you will feel truly ready for Christmas, and the day will not seem like a blur that just comes and goes, but rather as the culmination of a process of preparation.
So where do I get the prayers?
Last year’s novena at the Aparicios’.
During the past few years, a couple of translations into English have started popping up on the Internet. Unfortunately, they are not very good (sometimes I wonder if they’re not the product of Google Translate). One part that is almost entirely lost in these translations is a section made up of short rhyming verses inspired by the “O Antiphons” from the Liturgy of the Hours. It’s a truly delightful section, theologically rich and yet always a favorite with kids, but prose translations simply don’t do it justice. For these reasons, I’ve decided to come up with my own translation, the link to which you can find below.
If organizing a gathering of friends for the 16th is short notice, just start at home on your own, but I encourage you to pick at least one day or two this Advent to actually host a gathering. Several people tried it last year and wrote to say they had loved it. Do let us know in the comments section if you decide to take up this tradition.
Happy Advent!
Joseph O’Brien
for Patrick Slattery
And with the clashing of their sword-blades make A rapturous music, till the morning break... --W.B. Yeats We’re a nation of all talk, recording The story of our blood, registering Our complaints against Land, Lord and Love According to the latest government, Counting past grudges and future graces On our beads and in our pews as from the isles. [Read more...]
Janice Walker
Coming to the end of the curtain call, award-winning actor Max McLean broke the fourth wall to inform the audience of the Lansburgh Theater in Washinton, D.C. (which included your humble interviewer) that he “worked for [Screwtape’s] ‘Enemy.'” Paradoxically, precisely by positioning himself firmly within the service of Christian theatrical arts, McLean has liberated himself and his production company, The Fellowship for the Performing Arts from the restrictions and stigmas of that genre. [Read more…]
F.P. Sampino
On Thursday, August 26, 2004, U.S. District Court Judge Richard C. Casey issued a ruling striking down the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. Legally speaking, it was an unremarkable and entirely expected result. Four years earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled in Stenberg v. Carhart that a similar Nebraska state ban was unconstitutional. But Judge Casey’s opinion attracted attention for different reasons – not least of which is that he is a devout Catholic. [Read more…]
Your social media pictures of Christmas trees already assembled and decorated in November make me shudder. I am a small-hearted, fussy man. I like my Christmas in December, please, and that not until the actual Feast of the Nativity (Not the Feast of the Incarnation. Rookie mistake) on the evening of the 24th. The problem is me, not you. Well, the problem is a bit more widespread than that, but my attitude, I mean. My bad attitude is all me. The real problem is that as a culture we don’t really know how to celebrate Christmas anymore. Most of us dive right into the saccharine insanity of it even before Thanksgiving. This year, in fact, I saw Christmas wrapping paper displays at the grocery store in the month of October! Dear giant, impersonal corporations, please stop making us hate holidays.
Like Santa, I feel the real need to punch something.
It seems to me that we currently have two options. We can either learn to stop worrying, buy the wrapping paper in June, put up the tree when the school year starts, and sing our hearts out to Jingle Bell Rock during Lent, or we can become emotionally warped anti-Christmas crusaders and maintain a penitential Advent with nary a wisp of mistletoe in sight. The best of this breed leaves the Christmas tree up until February and haughtily explains to the rest of us that in the unreformed, medieval calendar, Christmas lasts until the feast of Purification. I am tempted to become the latter of these options. But really, neither one is any good at all.
Caravaggio’s nativity is powerful for its lack of sentimentality. Mary is isolated and exhausted, but she has her Son. He is all she needs.
The first seems more open-hearted but ends up destroying the holiday season. We are so tired of celebrating that by the time the Feast of the Nativity actually arrives, we are exhausted; the tree is taken down the next day and the next 11 days of Christmas go uncelebrated. What about the Epiphany and the wise men! These intrepid travelers shift heaven and earth to make their way across the desert only to find our doors locked and the manger scene boxed up in the basement. The Christmas festivities that predate the birth of Our Lord seem to have been unearned, a sentimental holiday that makes its departure from the Nativity but doesn’t actually understand the way in which the birth of Our Lord shakes the very foundations of the universe.
The other option, the Advent curmudgeon, is also an untenable position because it misses the whole point in a different way. At the heart of all the traditions and rules of the Church is the everlasting virtue of charity. At Christmas, this is impossible to miss, like not noticing a crying babe in a manger. The anti-Christmas crusader gets the rules right but doesn’t notice Christ. Nothing to see here. It’s still Advent. As I said, I’m sympathetic but what we really need is to find a way to maintain respect for both seasons and truly celebrate the Birth of Christ while rising to his challenge to, above all else, love.
So, how to celebrate in a way that embraces the love that everyone seems to have developed for the season? Sure, there are the usual complaints about over-commercialization and bad music and all that, but the point really is that in an increasingly post-Christian world, people are celebrating the birth of Christ! Even a tame, watered-down version of the feast is better than nothing at all. I’m not really interested in fighting it.
The secret is in the Catholic calendar.
Here are a few ways, based on the joyful preparation of the Church, to properly celebrate that both get us into the spirit of the season but also respect the unique celebrations that are Advent and Christmas. The best part of it is, when Christmas comes each year, our family is happy to celebrate the whole season.
Happy Holidays!
