The Advent Antiphons: O Rex gentium

Detail of Mosaic of Christ Enthrone as Heavenly King, Basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo (Ravena, Italy, 6th c.)

O Rex gentium, et desideratus earum,

lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:

veni, et salva hominem,

quem de limo formasti.

O King of the nations, and their desire,

the cornerstone making both one:

Come and save the human race,

which you fashioned from clay.

Jeremiah 10:7; Isaiah 28:16;  Ephesians 2:14

Lord Jesus Christ, you are the “King of the nations,” the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, both feared and desired by the nations.  You are feared because, on the one hand, “you are great” and it is your due to be feared (Jer 10:6–7).  On the other, because you are “the living God and the everlasting King,” you inspire terror in the nations insofar as they make “a covenant with death” and seek to conceal their transience with lies; they cannot endure the prospect of your coming to “sweep away the refuge of lies” and annul their death-dealing ((Jer 10:10; Isa 28:15, 17–18).

You are the desire of the nations because you are the “Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6).  The nations desire you insofar as there is no creature that does not desire peace, for even when we, in pride, hate your just peace and love our own peace of injustice, we “cannot help loving peace of some kind or other.” [2]  

Christ Jesus, you are “our peace” (Eph 2:14):  in your flesh you have united Jews and Gentiles, breaking down the dividing wall of hostility between us.  You came that you might create in your self “one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace” and that you “might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it” (vv. 15–16).  You came and proclaimed peace to those of us “who were far off and peace to those who were near”; for through you “both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father” (v. 17).

Come, Lord, and make manifest your peace!

[Here is a setting of O Rex gentium, sung by Peter Morton (tenor) and the Choir of St John's College Cambridge, conducted by David Hill.]

* English translation from the Church of England’s Advent seasonal resource.
[1] Augustine, civ. 19.12.