O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Expected of the nations and their Savior. Come and save us, O Lord our God.
Isaiah 7:14, gives us a glimpse of the divine plan, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel”.
Isaiah 33:22, reminds us that the One who Comes is the One who Dwells with us an among us, “Indeed the Lord will be there with us, majestic. Yes, the Lord our judge, the Lord our lawgiver, the Lord our king, he it is who will save us”.
With this last antiphon our expectation finds joy now in the certainty of fulfillment. We call Jesus by one of the most personal and intimate of his titles, Emmanuel, God-with-us. We recall that in his birth from the Virgin Mary God takes on our very flesh and human nature: God coming nearer to us than we could have ever imagined! Yet he is also to be exalted above us as our king, the lawgiver and judge, the one whom we honor and obey. And he is our savior, long expected by all creation. The final cry rises from us urgent in our need for daily salvation and forgiveness of our sins, and confident that our God will not withhold himself from us. Indeed, this God Who Comes takes on our humanity so that we can take on his divinity. This is the true dignity of our human nature and the great fulfillment of our deepest longing for union with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As Saint John of the Cross teaches us, “we become what we love.” We love Emmanuel; we love God With Us. Christ our Emmanuel is not just the friend of sinners he is the Sinless One who alone can take away our sins and give us a new humanity. As a new creation in Christ we no longer define ourselves by sin, we have begun to see ourselves as God sees us, bright and beautiful in his grace and glory. Christ is divine by nature, and we are divine by participation in his divine nature. By his grace we are born again, born from on high, reborn in his own image and likeness. Such is the bold and boundless joy of our Advent 2008 and our next celebration of Christmas.
(Quoted and adapted from Jeanne Kun)
O Emmanuel
O come, O come, and be our God-with-us
O long-sought With-ness for a world without,
O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.
Come to us, Wisdom, come unspoken Name
Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame,
O quickened little wick so tightly curled,
Be folded with us into time and place,
Unfold for us the mystery of grace
And make a womb of all this wounded world.
O heart of heaven beating in the earth,
O tiny hope within our hopelessness
Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,
To touch a dying world with new-made hands
And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.
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