O Emmanuel - 23 December

O Emmanuel, our King and lawgiver, for whom the nations wait, their Saviour: come to save us, Lord, our God.

O Rex Gentium - 22 December

O King of the Nations, whom they desire, and the cornerstone, who join two together into one: come and save mankind, whom you formed from the clay.

O Oriens - 21 December

O Rising Sun, splendour of eternal Light and sun of righteousness: come and shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

There can be a natural human tendency to believe that we can achieve anything through our own efforts. As we approach the final straight of Advent, with Christmas in our sights, we may feel that we can pat ourselves on the back and say to God: “Haven’t I done well over Advent”. In many ways King David, with good intentions, has a similar attitude. He believes that, with his power and position, he can now prepare a suitable dwelling for God. God, however, tells David, through the prophet Nathan, that his journey from shepherd-boy to victorious King is only through the action and participation of God in his life. God inverts the offer of David and declares that the Lord will make him a house, meaning not simply a dwelling place but a great dynasty.

This truly great dynasty is established in the creation of a suitable dwelling place for the Lord: Our Lady, Theotokos, the God-bearer. Through her Immaculate Conception she has been prepared for the acceptance of her task, God’s greatest intervention is fulfilled, 'let what you have said be done to me', and God becomes man.

Let us follow the example of the Handmaid of the Lord and realise that everything we do is sustained and aided by God, without whom we have nothing, are nothing, and can do nothing. Let us pray that this Christmas we may be stripped of pride, allow ourselves to hear God’s voice, and respond in humility.

O Clavis - 20 December

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

O Radix - 19 December

"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."

O Adonai - 18 December

O Adonai, and leader of the house of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush, and who gave him the law on Sinai: come to redeem us with outstretched arm.

Advent Talk 3 on video

This year's third and final Advent talk, delivered by Br Daniel Mary Jeffries, O.P. on Wednesday night, is now available in a pre-recorded video for readers who cannot join us for our weekly talk, meditation and Compline.

O Sapientia - 17 December

The text of today‘s antiphon is

O Wisdom, who came forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other, powerfully and sweetly ordering all things: come to teach us the way of prudence.

Jesus, the Word or Wisdom of God, is like a bridge reaching from heaven to earth and from earth to heaven. We are invited to journey towards our Father by stepping on this bridge and following where it leads. Walking this 'way of prudence' helps to make the kingdom of God visible in our time. The one who utters the invitation is none less than the Messiah himself.

Rorate Caeli (Introit)

The Fourth Sunday of Advent recalls the Annunciation when the Word of God took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. As such, we find that the entrance chant (Introit) for both this final Sunday of Advent and the feast of the Annunciation (25 March) are the same. The words are taken from Isaiah 45:8 but given a specifically Christ-centred interpretation: "Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down the Just One; let the earth open, that the Saviour may sprout forth, and let it cause justice to spring up also; I the LORD have begotten him."

Below is a video of this chant sung by the Dominican brothers at Blackfriars Oxford. As is typical of an entrance chant, the 'Gloria Patri' is sung after the verse from Isaiah, and then the refrain is repeated.

Third Sunday of Advent - The One Who Is Coming

On this, the third Sunday of Advent or Gaudete Sunday, we sense a definite mood change. The austerity of what can be a sombre though hope-filled penitential season is replaced by a shift of emphasis. We see a burst of colour appearing at the Mass today as rose coloured vestments replace the violet and we are enjoined at the Introit to: Rejoice in the Lord and again I say rejoice or Gaudete in Domino semper, hence Gaudete Sunday. But why this shift in emphasis? We are edging that bit nearer to celebrating the coming of Our Lord at Christmas, that is undeniably true, but looking at today’s Gospel we also see that we have built upon last week’s message of preparation in Mark’s Gospel and now we see John the Baptist actively proclaiming the Coming. ‘There stands among you – unknown to you – the one who is coming’. John the Baptist’s proclamation is sure and certain, filled with hope and, one must assume, wholly joyful. Can we also feel in the depths of our hearts such joy as we hear this news? Amidst the tumult of our everyday lives - the rush to find the right presents, get the cards away on time, and attend the obligatory functions – are we allowing ourselves to find the time to truly prepare and more dauntingly perhaps, truly proclaim, this wonderful news? That Christ is in us, each and every one, and that, in little over a week, we will celebrate the most astonishing and fantastic event that is Christ’s birth here in our midst should truly fill us with such joy and peace. However, it can only do so if we allow ourselves the time to reflect, to pray and to prepare. Only then will we, like John the Baptist, be so moved by the Spirit that we will also wish to proclaim this blessed coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in a world that greatly needs to hear His message.

Conditor alme siderum

The Vespers hymn for Advent, 'Conditor alme siderum', dates to the 7th-century. This hymn spans all of salvation history, from creation to the end of time when the entire created order will be redeemed and caught up in the life of the Trinity. It is particularly well-suited to the season of Advent because it alludes both to Christ's coming at Christmas for our salvation, and to His final return in glory. At the centre of the hymn, then, is a reference to Philippians 2:8-11: "And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Below is a video of this hymn with its distinctive tune recorded by the brothers at Blackfriars Oxford.



Conditor alme siderum,
aeterna lux credentium,
Christe, redemptor omnium,
exaudi preces supplicum.

Qui condolens interitu
mortis perire saeculum,
salvasti mundum languidum,
donans reis remedium.

Vergente mundi vespere,
uti sponsus de thalamo,
egressus honestissima
Virginis matris clausula.

Cuius forti potentiae
genu curvantur omnia;
caelestia, terrestria
nutu fatentur subdita.

Te, deprecamur hagie,
venture iudex saeculi,
conserva nos in tempore
hostis a telo perfidi.

Laus, honor, virtus, gloria,
Deo Patri et Filio
Sancto simul Paraclito,
in sempiterna saecula. Amen.

Creator of the stars of night,
Thy people's everlasting light,
Jesu, Redeemer, save us all,
and hear Thy servants when they call.

Thou, grieving that the ancient curse
should doom to death a universe,
hast found the medicine, full of grace,
to save and heal a ruined race.

Thou camest, the Bridegroom of the Bride,
as drew the world to evening tide,
proceeding from a virgin shrine,
the spotless Victim all divine.

At whose dread Name, majestic now,
all knees must bend, all hearts must bow;
and things celestial Thee shall own,
and things terrestrial Lord alone.

O Thou whose coming is with dread,
to judge and doom the quick and dead,
preserve us, while we dwell below,
from every insult of the foe.

To God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Spirit, Three in One,
laud, honor, might, and glory be
from age to age eternally. Amen.

Advent Talk 2 on video

This year's second Advent talk, delivered by Br Robert Verrill, O.P. on Wednesday night, is now available in a pre-recorded video for readers who cannot join us for our weekly talk, meditation and Compline.

Advent Talks 2008

If you are in Oxford on any of the Wednesdays before Christmas you are welcome to join us for an Advent talk followed by meditation and Compline. Details are on the poster above.

The Immaculate Conception - Wonderful Gift of God’s Grace

“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). This greeting of the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation tells us so much about Mary’s deep and wonderful relationship with God. Mary was chosen from before her birth. Mary, from her first moment of conception, was preserved free from all stain of original sin. This was done through a unique grace granted her by Almighty God through the merits of Christ. While the act of grace performed for Mary that we celebrate today is unique, we are all called to live the life of grace which helps each person, made in the image and likeness of our Creator, to participate fully in God’s life.

Mary shows us what being fully open to that life of grace can do for us. So joyful is she because of God’s extraordinary love that she cries out in Luke’s Gospel : “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” Each of us is warmly invited into that deep and loving relationship with God. We are called to be full of grace and to glorify God with our lives. Later in Luke Jesus tells us : “My mother and my brethren are those who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:21). We are called to celebrate what God has done in Mary, a human being, and to imitate her in our lives so we can share forever in the transforming love of God. As St Augustine said: "Mary is blessed because she ‘heard the word of God and kept it’. Her mind was filled more fully with Truth than her womb by his flesh".

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee

Second Sunday of Advent- A Voice Cries

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

Different kinds of landscape evoke different responses in us, perhaps even shape different kinds of people: the rugged coastlines of Scotland or Ireland contrast with the green hills of Tipperary or Derbyshire. In Palestine too there are contrasting landscapes, in the north the rich and fertile valleys and hillsides of Galilee running down to the sparkling waters of the Lake, in the south the parched and merciless hills of Judea ending in a sea of salt, the Dead Sea. John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness and not in the rich pasturelands of Galilee. He cut a strange figure, as rugged and austere as the countryside through which he moved. Close to nature in one sense—dressed in camel skin, eating locusts and wild honey—he seemed to be quite detached from it in another—focussed exclusively on his ‘baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’.

The wilderness already had an honoured place in the history and consciousness of Israel. The great trek to freedom saw the people following Moses and wandering in that wilderness for forty years, before Joshua finally led them across the river Jordan into the promised land. The prophets often recalled those years as the years of Israel’s first love, when she was a young bride being betrothed to her Lord in integrity and faithfulness.

Times of power, settlement and comfort led, as they must, to corruption and compromise, to betrayal and the loss of integrity. Only the profoundly shocking experience of the exile made Israel sit up and take notice. But by then all was lost: the people were exiled from the land, the political leadership was overthrown, cities and towns were pillaged, it seemed that God’s promises were torn up, the covenant dissolved, the glory of the Lord left the Temple—the relationship forged in the wilderness years had, it seemed, irretrievably broken down.

At this lowest point in Israel’s history the prophet we call Second Isaiah raised a voice of encouragement and hope: ‘Comfort my people’, he cried out, ‘the time of trial is over. Speak a word of comfort to the heart of Jerusalem.’ The voice in the wilderness says to prepare a way for the Lord, a highway through the desert, filling in valleys, lowering hills, levelling out the rough and straightening the crooked. The people are to be led back—chastened, wounded, still hurting perhaps—but renewed, restored, revitalised.

It is a wonderful vision and it is the one to which the gospel writers spontaneously turned when they set out to record the story of Jesus. This good news began, says Mark, in the wilderness. The voice of comfort, encouragement and hope is the voice of this strange man John the Baptist. He is the voice crying in the wilderness, announcing an imminent visitation from God. ‘Someone more powerful than I is coming after me’, he says, ‘who will baptise you not just externally with water but internally with the Holy Spirit’, not just in the strength of our human longing but in the strength of God’s own love.

The wilderness of our hearts, the dead and dry places of our lives, these are to be visited by God—by God’s truthful and caring love—so that the renewal, restoration and revitalisation will be radical in us, happening deep within, in the darkness of our most intimate thoughts, desires, fears and longings.

This is not just a Sunday afternoon outing to the banks of the river to see a strange and eccentric street entertainer. The Second Letter of Peter makes that very clear. Radical upheaval is to be expected if there is to be the kind of change that is promised. The dramatic picture painted there (2 Pet 3.8-14), of the entire structure and landscape of the planet being thrown into disarray, recalls Israel’s experience of the exile, of complete disintegration.

How prepared can we be for the kind of radical change in our lives which the coming of God’s love might bring about? The comfort of Galilee with its gentle landscape and beautiful sunsets must give way at some point to the austerity and bitterness of Judea. Only by passing through the wilderness—for Jesus, the wilderness of Gethsemane and Calvary—do we have access to the real comfort of God, the place of rest, the salvation Jesus brings, the glory revealed in Him and promised to us.

Rorate Caeli

"Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it" (Matthew 13:17). The Advent prose, Rorate Caeli', reflects these words of Our Lord as it sings of the longing of the prophets for a Redeemer, for the Just One to rain down upon the earth and satisfy the thirst of the human heart for justice, peace and salvation. The refrain is taken from Isaiah 45:8, "Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness".

In the video below, the Dominican brothers at Blackfriars Oxford sing two verses of this beautiful chant.



Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

Ne irascaris Domine, ne ultra memineris iniquitatis: ecce civitas Sancti facta est deserta: Sion deserta facta est: Jerusalem desolata est: domus sanctificationis tuae et gloriae tuae, ubi laudaverunt te patres nostri.

Consolamini, consolamini, popule meus: cito veniet salus tua: quare maerore consumeris, quia innovavit te dolor? Salvabo te, noli timere, ego enim sum Dominus Deus tuus, Sanctus Israel, Redemptor tuus.

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.

Be not angry, O Lord, and remember no longer our iniquity : behold the city of thy sanctuary is become a desert, Sion is made a desert. Jerusalem is desolate, the house of our holiness and of thy glory, where our fathers praised thee.

Be comforted, be comforted, my people; thy salvation shall speedily come. Why wilt thou waste away in sadness? why hath sorrow seized thee? I will save thee; fear not: for I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Redeemer.

Advent Talk 1 on Video

This year's first Advent talk, delivered by Br Dennis Murphy, O.P. on Wednesday night, is now available in a pre-recorded video for readers who cannot join us for our weekly talk, meditation and Compline.

Alma Redemptoris Mater

During Advent, it is customary in some places to sing the 11th-century antiphon, 'Alma Redemptoris Mater', in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Dominican chant tone heard on this recording is somewhat different from the solemn Roman version that is perhaps more well-known. It was recorded by a group of Dominican students in Blackfriars, Oxford.



Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli
Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,
Surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti,
Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem
Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore
Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.

"Kindly Mother of the Redeemer, who art ever of heaven
The open gate, and the star of the sea, aid a fallen people,
Which is trying to rise again; thou who didst give birth,
While Nature marvelled how, to thy Holy Creator,
Virgin both before and after, from Gabriel's mouth
Accepting the All hail, be merciful towards sinners."

(translated by Cardinal Newman)

First Sunday of Advent - Waiting and Hoping

Readings: Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b, 64:2-7; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37

Beginning a new year often prompts us to take stock, to celebrate the events that have gone well, and to review those that haven’t gone so well, when we’ve been injured by others; or, worse, found ourselves becoming injurious to others, even if we didn’t intend to. And this sense of attention, of alertness, preparedness, is central to today’s gospel. Jesus tells us all to ‘stay awake’. Mark uses the same language ‘stay awake’ in the next chapter of his gospel, when he describes Jesus and his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane.

And, of course, the disciples fail. They fall asleep, and soon will fall away. They are not alert to God working in and through Jesus: at the Cross, it is the pagan centurion who affirms that Jesus ‘Truly was God’s Son’; and even after the Resurrection the women who witness the empty tomb ‘said nothing, because they were afraid’.

Like the first disciples, we, too, fail. Our disordered appetites leave us being tossed about in every wind like Isaiah’s dry leaves, and our shame at our failure to live up to the commitments we’ve assumed as disciples leaves us cowering in filthy clothing before the all-Holy God. Yet, Isaiah finishes by making the audacious claim that the people of Israel, and, by extension, ourselves, are God’s responsibility, His treasured possession, the work of His hands.

This is so, St Paul reminds us, because God has called us, poured out the gifts of His Spirit upon us, and joined us to his Son. God’s face does shine on us, if we will only recognise that, turn back to him, and seek forgiveness. Every year this season is given to us to renew our sense of what really is important, and to seek God’s gift of forgiveness, sacramentally or otherwise.