Advent 2013: 'O Clavis David'

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Isreal, qui aperis, et nemo claudit; claudis, et nemo aperit: veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Key of David and the scepter of the House of Israel, who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens. O come and bring out the captive from the prison-house, him who sits in the in darkness and in the shadow of death.

At the beginning of today’s antiphon there are two significant words: ‘a key’ and ‘David’. To understand not only these words, but the whole antiphon we need to go to the Bible.

Let’s start our searching in the Old Testament. There is one very important fragment in the book of the prophet 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” (Is 22:22). But if we look at the New Testament we find very similar words in the book of Revelation where St. John writes: “These are the words of the holy one, the true one, who has key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens” (Rev 3:7).

These two words have a symbolic meaning: ‘a key’ means ‘access’ and ‘David’ means ‘kingdom’, so they mean together ‘the access to the kingdom’. David was a king of Israel, thus ‘key of David’ is a symbol of power and authority. In the antiphon appears also “the scepter of Israel” emphasizing David’s supremacy over Israel. If we look at Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus (cf. Mt 1:1-11) we see that Jesus was a descendant of David. Also in today’s Gospel the angel Gabriel says to Mary that God will give to Jesus the throne of his ancestor David (cf. Lk 1:32).

This Advent antiphon emphasizes that Jesus’s incarnation and birth are for us like a key. Jesus is Key of David, because through Him we have received the access to the kingdom, the access to the kingdom of heaven. It is because that Jesus is a descendant of David, so He is also a king, a king who has absolute power and dominion over sin and death. He is the Messiah who can open and close, He and no one else, therefore only He can deliver the mankind from the chains of prison and gives freedom those who are in the darkness and in the shadow of death. We have the access to the kingdom through the Church, because Jesus gave Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Mt 16:19).

We are waiting for Christmas when we will celebrate the first Jesus’s coming, His birth in Bethlehem, but Advent is also the time of waiting for the second and final coming of Christ, and after that, as we can read in today’s Gospel, He will reign and of his kingdom there will be no end (cf. Lk 1:33).

Advent 2013: 'O Radix Iesse'

O Radix Iesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, iam noli tardare.

O Root of Jesse, set up as a sign for the peoples, before whom kings will stop their mouths, to whom the nations will pray: Come to set us free, delay no more.

What kind of Christian are you, or would you like to be? Would you call yourself a radical Christian?

Just as political radicals call for 'root-and-branch' reform, the radical Christian is a witness to the root-and-branch transformation of life by the power of Christ's love. According to its Latin derivation, to be 'radical' means to be rooted, to go to the roots, to be thorough and profound. It's no good being a half-hearted Christian. Of course, we are all sinners. But unless our heart is truly, deeply in the right place, then all the goodness of life itself – let alone the celebration of Christmas – might somehow pass us by. The Bible contains a stern warning against half-heartedness: 'So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth' (Rev. 3:16). And the only way to avoid being a lukewarm Christian, is to be a radical Christian.

The Root of Jesse in the former Dominican priory at Hawkesyard, Staffs.

So, in today's antiphon, O Radix Jesse, we hear the prophecy of Isaiah about the 'Root of Jesse' who will be a sign for the reconciliation of all the nations (cf. Is. 11:10). Jesse of Bethlehem was the father of King David, and so the 'root' refers to one of the Davidic descendants. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is identified as that 'Root of Jesse' by St Paul (Rom. 15:12) and the 'Root of David' by St John (Rev. 5:5). In the same chapter of Isaiah (11:1-3), the one who comes from Jesse will have the 'Spirit of the Lord' resting upon him – and this happened visibly, in history, at Jesus' baptism (e.g. Mt. 3:16).

And how can we be radical Christians in the 21st century? One essential ingredient will be prayer. Prayer is the most radical thing you can do, because prayer is communion with God, and God is (so to speak) 'at the root' of everything. We must always remember that apart from God, the Almighty Creator, we are nothing. Like the Root of Jesse, a new image is offered by Our Lord himself: Jesus is the Vine and we are the branches (Jn. 15). We must be grafted onto Jesus if we wish to share his divine life. We have absolutely no life in us without him. Without Jesus, we are no better than withered branches for the fire (Jn. 15:6). The path of life is certainly not easy and the world may hate us for it (see Jn. 15:18-25), just as Jesus the Vine was nailed to the Tree of the Cross. In the end, however, that tree has become the Tree of Life for us.

St Catherine of Siena, OP

Our nothingness without Jesus is imaginatively described by St Catherine of Siena, the Dominican mystic, in a discourse about the 'cell of self-knowledge':

This cell is a well in which there is earth as well as water. In the earth we recognise our own poverty: we see that we are not. For we are not. We see that our being is from God. O ineffable blazing charity! I see next that as we discover the earth we get to the living water, the very core of the knowledge of God's true and gentle will which desires nothing else but that we be made holy. So let us enter into the depths of this well. For if we dwell there, we will necessarily come to know both ourselves and God's goodness. (L T41, The Letters of Catherine of Siena, trans. Noffke, I, 7-8)

The mysteries of divine Providence, drawing trees out of roots, water out of muddy earth, life out of death – these are at the root of the radical Christian life.

O Root of Jesse, come to set us free from our lukewarm attitudes, set us on fire with your blazing charity, and do not delay!

Advent 2013: 'O Sapientia'

At times life can seem so bewildering and mysterious that it feels as if we are lacking a vital piece of knowledge, something that would ‘unlock’ the secrets of the world around us and bring its mysteries into the clear light of day. Indeed, many of us will have experienced the wonderful gift of a sagacious friend, someone who sees a problem from a new and insightful perspective, and—looking at things in a new way—offers shrewd advice in times of trial and indecision. Many modern approaches to wisdom, perhaps influenced by Freudian psychology, share a common supposition: wisdom is found by uncovering the power of our untapped inner resources that lie in our subconscious, by looking inwards to the mystery of ourselves.

The Christian understanding of wisdom, exemplified by St Thomas Aquinas OP, treats wisdom as part of God’s gift of the virtue of charity (which Thomas understands as friendship with God). For Thomas, wisdom is the very opposite of introspection: it comes by God’s drawing us out of ourselves, into life-giving communion with him and our brothers and sisters. As a virtue, wisdom is not simply a fact, but a habit and disposition: the wise woman knows wisdom in the way that an honest man knows honesty, by being made in someway alike to it. As wisdom is most properly found in God himself, it is by being made alike to God—by being sanctified by the action of his grace—that we are made truly wise. Christ, as God made man, is Wisdom Himself. Building on the gifts of knowledge and understanding, this authentic wisdom allows us to contemplate the world by reference to its first cause in God, to see how the edifice of creation hangs together, by gaining a glimpse of the divine plan. 

As a fruit of the incarnation, true wisdom is always a Trinitarian gift: it is a consequence of our being drawn into the inner life of the Blessed Trinity, of participation—by the Holy Spirit—in the Son’s knowledge of the Father, and the Father’s knowledge of the Son. God’s gift of wisdom admits us to a partial and fragmentary participation in a God’s-eye view of the world, contemplating the mystery of ourselves and human history from the eternal perspective of God the Father. But whilst wisdom is given to particular people in abundance, it is nonetheless part of the normal life of the baptised, albeit one that is often pushed out by sin and restored by the Sacrament of Reconciliation: it is the gift of wisdom that allows us to penetrate the inner logic of the list of names that make up the genealogy of Jesus in today’s Gospel, to see how they cohere to form part of God’s saving will toward humanity and to recognise its implications for our own lives. Wisdom is not only speculative, but always practical and moral: its fruits are peace—‘the tranquility of order’ found paradigmatically in the Trinity—an end perceived and contemplated by wisdom. 

As we move into these final days of Advent, then, we might contemplate ourselves as modern-day Magi, journeying toward the birth of the Christ at Christmas, seeking to gather around the person who offers us the key to understanding ourselves and the world in which we live. The litany of things that trouble our hearts, compete for our affections and draw us away from Christ can be placed, by the gift of wisdom, in Trinitarian perspective: how will my fears and anxieties look sub specie aeternitatis, from the perspective of the eternal life in the Trinity, promised to us by the babe of Bethlehem?

19 December: O Radix Jesse

Below is a post written by fr Robert Gay OP, which Godzdogz ran, back in 2006,  under the title "It's not too late". Fr Robert has recently returned to Oxford as Bursar of Blackfriars Hall and Studium.


Readings: Judges 13:2-7, 24-25, Psalm 70:3-6, 16-17, Luke 1:5-25

Let’s try for a moment to imagine that all we know about Jesus is some vague notion that he has something to do with God, that he is someone who will change our lives and that we will find out how on Christmas day. Then when Christmas day comes we discover that Jesus is God incarnate, God come into the world as flesh and blood. Can we imagine how this incredible news might dramatically change our lives, not just on Christmas day, but forever? For most of us it is hard to imagine what this might feel like. We are all too familiar with the story, so we pass over it almost without a second thought. During these last days of Advent we must prepare for Christmas in such a way that when we hear the Christmas story, it comes to us afresh, as if for the first time.

In today’s Gospel, Zechariah seems to be world weary, set in his ways and caught up in the routine of daily life. So much so that he is not a man prepared to receive God’s message, a message which is God’s gift. This probably resonates with our own experience. But see how God brings Zechariah two gifts: the gift of a son, and the gift of silence. The silence gives him the time to be prepared, time for his idea of an inferior, predictable God to be swept away, preparing him to receive God’s love more fully. Regardless of how good or bad this Advent has been there is still time left for us to be silent, to allow God to shape us into people who will willingly accept his Son this Christmas. It is an opportunity not to be missed.

O Root of Jesse, set up as a sign for the peoples, before whom kings will stop their mouths, to whom the nations will pray: come to set us free, delay no more.