O Rising Dawn, Radiance of the Light eternal and Sun of Justice: come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.
Isaiah 9:1 enables us to rejoice with and for all who join us in celebrating the birth of the Savior, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone”.
Malachi 3:20 reveals that the One who is to come will be both our judge and our savior, “For you who fear my name, there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays”.
2 Peter 1:19 helps us to keep the focus on his coming, “Keep your attention closely fixed on it, as you would on a lamp shining in a dark place, until the first streaks of dawn appear and the morning star rises in your heart”.
This title is variously translated “morning star”, “Dayspring”, “rising sun”, “radiant dawn”, “orient”. All beautifully express the idea of light shattering the darkness of night, of sin and death, of sickness and despair, with its brightness bringing healing and warmth to cold hearts. Indeed, we who could easily become cold and distant from love have received the “living flame of love”. We have been rescued from our self-centered over concern for our own perfection and now we light up and warm up the lives of all in our monastery. We no longer live for ourselves but for him who has first loved us. Jesus is indeed the true light, the radiance of his Father’s splendor. In Morning Prayer we make this petition daily in the Benedictus, joining in the words of Zechariah: “He, the Dayspring, shall visit us in his mercy to shine on those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:78-79).
(Quoted and adapted from Jeanne Kun)
O Oriens
Paradiso XXX; 61
First light and then first lines along the east
To touch and brush a sheen of light on water
As though behind the sky itself they traced
The shift and shimmer of another river
Flowing unbidden from its hidden source;
The Day-Spring, the eternal Prima Vera.
Blake saw it too. Dante and Beatrice
Are bathing in it now, away upstream…
So every trace of light begins a grace
In me, a beckoning. The smallest gleam
Is somehow a beginning and a calling;
“Sleeper awake, the darkness was a dream
For you will see the Dayspring at your waking,
Beyond your long last line the dawn is breaking”
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