The Advent Antiphons: O Emmanuel

'O Emmanuel' Antiphon for Magnificat during Advent Vespers, Antiphonal (Dominican Archive, Krakow, 16th c.)

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster,

expectratio gentium, et Salvator earum:

veni ad salvandum nos,

Domines, Deus noster.

O Emmanuel, our King and our lawgiver,

the hope of the nations and their Savior:

Come and save us, O Lord our God.

Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23

Jesus the Messiah, born of your mother Mary from the Holy Spirit, you are Emmanuel, God with us (Mt 1:18, 23).  As God you are always with us in the sense that “we live and move and have our being” in you—where can we go and not be with you?  (Ac 17:28; cf. Ps 139:6)  At the same time, as the Creator you are far from creation in that you are life itself and we, your creatures, have life from you, not in ourselves. And we go far from you when we wander from you in sin.  O Lord my God, you are interior intimo meo et superior summo meo (“more inward than my innermost and higher than my highest"). [1]

As God become man you are with us because you “became flesh and lived among us” (Jn 1:14).  Without changing your nature, you took on our nature when you humbled yourself (Phil 2:7).  You who were from the beginning, and are, were “made man” so that we, who were not, but are, might hear you and see you and touch you, that is, that we might have fellowship with you and with your Father and the Holy Spirit. [2]  The fellowship of a bridegroom and bride is like the fellowship we now have with you, because in your mother’s “virginal womb two things were joined, a bridegroom and a bride, the bridegroom being the Word and the bride being the flesh” and they are no longer two “but one flesh, for ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us’.” [3]  In that fellowship, we "have life, and have it abundantly" (Jn 10:10).

Come, Lord Jesus, that we might call you, “My husband” (Hos 2:16).  Hasten the day when your holy city will appear “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband,” when the loud voice will say,

     See, the home of God is among mortals.

     He will dwell with them;

     they will be his peoples,

     and God himself will be with them; 

     he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

     Death will be no more;

     mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

     for the first things have passed away. (Rev 21:2–4)

[Here is a setting of O Emmanuel, 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, Conf. 3.6.11.

[2] Cf. Augustine, Io. ep. tr. 1.5; 1 Jn 1:1–3.

[3] Augustine, Io. ep. tr. 1.2.

The Advent Antiphons: O Sapientia

Detail of drawing of Temple of Wisdom,
with the Virgin, Christ, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit
(Germany, 12th c.) [British Library]

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodisti,

attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter,

suaviter disponensque omnia:

veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,

reaching from one end to the other mightily,

and sweetly ordering all things:

Come and teach us the way of prudence.

Ecclesiasticus 24:3; Wisdom 8:1

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, you are “the wisdom and power of God” (1 Cor 1:24), because you are “wisdom from wisdom” just as you are light from light and God from God, one wisdom, one light, one God with the Father and the Holy Spirit. [1]  

You are the wisdom whom the Father eternally utters as his Word.  Through you the worlds were created, “all things in heaven and on earth…, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through” you and for you (Col 1:16).  You are the Word in whom “all things hold together” (Col 1:16, 17), the wisdom of whom it is written,

     She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other,

     and she orders all things well. (Wis 8:1) 

By you the Father has spoken to us in these last days (Heb 1:2), when you, the Word, “became flesh and lived among us” (Jn 1:14).  You “declare the Father as he is, because you are yourself just like that, being exactly what the Father is insofar as you are wisdom…” [2]  Because you are the exact “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), whoever has seen you has seen the Father (Jn 14:9).

You, Christ, “became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor 1:30).  You become wisdom for us, our wisdom, when we turn to you and you enlighten us; you are made wisdom in the sense that “we turn to you in time...in order to abide with you for ever.” [3]  You became for us the way to the Father.  When we imitate you by living wisely, you refashion us to your likeness; when we walk in you, we move toward you, who are ever with the Father and the Holy Spirit. [4]

Come, teach us the way of wisdom in the “foolishness” of your cross, “for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor 1:25).

[Here is a setting of O Sapientia, 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, one of an abundance of supplementary seasonal material in Common Worship.

[1] Cf. Augustine, Trin. 7.1.2.

[2] Augustine, Trin. 7.3.4, emphasis added and pronouns changed to second person.  ET:  Augustine, The Trinity. The Works of Saint Augustine. Trans. Edmund Hill (New City Press, 1991).

[3] Ibid., pronouns changed to second person.

[4] Cf. Augustine, Trin. 7.3.5.

Notes on the Transfiguration

Icon of the Transfiguration, attributed to Theophanes the Greek
(15th c., Moscow) (Tretyakov Gallery)

"…and on the mountain he flashes like lightning, and becomes more luminous than the sun, revealing the mystery of the future"—Gregory of Nazianzus, Third Theological Oration (Oration 29), 19

I

While praying on the mountain, the Lord Jesus was transfigured before Peter and John and James.  They saw his glory when “his face shone like the sun” (Mt. 17:2) and his clothing became radiant white, flashing out like lightning (Lk. 9:29).  Although “Peter and his companions were weighed down by sleep,” they stayed awake and saw his glory and Moses and Elijah talking with him (9:32).  Did the disciples hear what was said?  Did they comprehend what was said of the Jesus’ departure?  Or were they like infants listening to the speech of adults?

When Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus of his departure, did they speak of what they and all the prophets had declared concerning him?  Did they speak of how it was necessary that the Messiah should suffer betrayal and death before entering into his glory?  (Lk. 24:25–27)  Did speaking with them strengthen Jesus as the days drew near for his departure?  Did they strengthen him now as he set his face toward Jerusalem as the angel would at his agony in the garden?  (9:51; 22:43)

Yet the voice from heaven—”This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”—spoke for the benefit of Peter and his companions, confirming Peter’s confession of Jesus as “the Messiah of God” and commanding they heed what he says (Lk. 9:35, 20).  For what Jesus had said recently was not easy to hear.  Only a week ago he had told them he must suffer and die and afterwards told them, “If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross daily and follow me” (9:22, 23).

II

St. Thomas Aquinas on the transfiguration:

“After having foretold his Passion to his disciples, our Lord had persuaded them to follow the path of his Passion.  Now in order for someone to go straight along the way, he must have some foreknowledge of the end; just as an archer will not shoot the arrow straight unless he has first seen the target he is aiming at. […] And this is especially necessary when the way is rough and difficult, the journey wearisome, but the end delightful.  Now Christ underwent the Passion in order to obtain glory […]; according to Luke, Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer and so enter into his glory?  To which glory he leads those who follow in the footsteps of his Passion; according to Acts, We have to endure many hardships before we enter the kingdom of God.  And so it was fitting for him to manifest his glorious splendour (which is to be transfigured), according to which he will configure those who belong to him; as it is written, He will configure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body.  For this reason Bede says, By his loving foresight he prepared them to endure adversity bravely by allowing them to taste for a short time the contemplation of everlasting joy.”*

III

Peter sees the manifestation of the glory of the resurrection and finds it desirable, so he proposes staying on the mountain with Moses and Elijah.  But he spoke, “not knowing what he said” (Lk. 9:34), for his proposal entailed Jesus not going to suffering and death in Jerusalem.  In other words, Peter’s proposal is effectively the same as his rebuke of Jesus predicting his Passion, to which Jesus responded:  “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Mt. 16:23).  Accordingly, Origen speculates that Peter was unwittingly playing into the hands of the Tempter, who sought to turn Jesus aside “from the dispensation whose characteristic was suffering that brought salvation to men” and “to draw away Jesus, as if calling upon him no longer to condescend to men, and come to them, and undergo death for them, but to abide on the high mountain with Moses and Elijah.”**

Following a similar line of thought, Augustine says that Peter did not understand that he would receive the rest he sought on the mountain through the work of love.  To remain with Christ is reserved for Peter after death, but he should come down from the mountain to follow his Lord in the way of suffering: “Come down, Peter…For now, Jesus says: "Go down to toil on earth, to serve on earth, to be scorned and crucified on earth. Life goes down to be killed; Bread goes down to suffer hunger; the Way goes down to be exhausted on his journey; the Spring goes down to suffer thirst; and you refuse to suffer?’”***

IV

The voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; Listen to him!”  The Son, that is, who commands, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (Jn. 13:34).

* Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 3a, 45, 1, co. [Blackfriars edition quoted.  Link to Benzinger edition here.]

** Origen, Commentary on Matthew 7.40.

*** Augustine, Sermon 78.6.

"The trinity which God is": Notes on Augustine on the Trinity

Beginning of Augustine's De Trinitate (12th c., England)

In his great De Trinitate, Augustine writes both to give reasons for the doctrine of the Trinity and to show why the purification of faith is necessary for the human mind to gaze upon the overwhelming light of the Triune Lord.  He begins that work by summarizing the church's teaching "on the trinity which God is."  Here is the passage in full:

“The purpose of all the Catholic commentators I have been able to read on the divine books of both testaments, who have written before me on the trinity which God is, have been to teach that according to the scriptures Father and Son and Holy Spirit in the inseparable equality of one substance present a divine unity; and therefore there are not three gods but one God; although indeed the Father has begotten the Son, and therefore he who is the Father is not the Son; and the Son is begotten by the Father, and therefore he who is the Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, himself coequal to the Father and the Son, and belonging to the threefold unity.
     “It was not however these same three (their teaching continues) that was born of the virgin Mary, crucified and buried under Pontius Pilate, rose again on the third day and ascended into heaven, but the Son alone.  Nor was it this same three that came down upon Jesus in the form of a dove at his baptism, or came down on the day of Pentecost after the Lord’s ascension, with a roaring sound from heaven as though a violent gust were rushing down, and in divided tongues as of fire, but the Holy Spirit alone.  Nor was it this same three that spoke from heaven, You are my Son, either at his baptism by John (Mk 1:11), or on the mountain when the three disciples were with him (Mt 17:5), nor when the resounding voice was heard, I will have both glorified it (my name) and will glorify if again (Jn 12:28), but it was the Father’s voice alone addressing the Son; although just as Father and Son and Holy Spirit are inseparable, so do they work inseparably.  This is also my faith inasmuch as it is the Catholic faith.” (Trin. 1.4.7, trans. Edmund Hill)

 At least three things are worth noting about this passage.  First, Augustine understands the doctrine of the Trinity to derive from biblical exegesis; the teaching he relates is "according to the scriptures."  Accordingly, he devotes nearly a quarter of the work to scriptural interpretation.

Second, Augustine's exposition of the faith of the church proceeds also by grammatical analysis of language about God.  In an important section of De Trinitate, he shows that such predications as "unbegotten", "begotten," and "procession" do not entail a difference of substance among the divine persons, but one of relation.  In so doing, he displays the logic of the teaching that while the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, the Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit,  the Son is not the Father or the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son.

Third, Augustine insists on the unity of the external acts of the Trinity: "just as Father and Son and Holy Spirit are inseparable, so do they work inseparably."  In other words, Augustine is arguing that the scriptural language should not be taken to suggest that it is the Father who creates, the Son who redeems, and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies; rather, the One Lord, who is trinity, works to create, redeem and sanctify his creatures.  I take Augustine's point in the second paragraph to be essentially that the ways in which scripture and creed appropriate particular actions to particular Persons (i.e., the Incarnation to the Son) are properly understood in this light.

Augustine largely fulfills his goal of giving reasons for the doctrine of the Trinity in Books V–VII, where he displays the grammar of the doctrine of the Trinity, after having established the scriptural authority for that doctrine in Books I–IV.  The purview of Books VIII–XV is to show why and how our minds must be purified in order to behold the Triune Lord.  Put too simply, he argues that faith in Christ the Mediator lifts our gaze to the Triune Lord, so that, by God's gift, the imago trinitatis (i.e., the mind's remembering, knowing and loving its Lord) might be renewed through growth in the love of God.  Augustine closes the De Trinitate with a prayer that aptly summarizes the work—"for Augustine does not so much as speak of God as he speaks to God"*—and draws it to its proper end:

“O Lord our God, we believe in you, Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  Truth would not have said, Go and baptize the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Mt 28:19), unless you were a triad [Trinitas].  Nor would you have commanded us to be baptized, Lord God, in the name of any who is not Lord God.  Nor would it have been said with divine authority, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God (Dt 6:4), unless while being a triad [Trinitas] you were still one Lord God.  And if you, God and Father, were yourself also the Son your Word Jesus Christ, were yourself also your gift the Holy Spirit, we would not read in the documents of truth God sent his Son (Gal 4:4), nor would you, only-begotten one, have said of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name (Jn 14:26), and, whom I will send you from the Father (Jn 15:26).  Directing my attention to this rule of faith as best I could, as far as you enabled me to, I have sought you and desired to see intellectually what I have believed, and I have argued much and toiled much.  O Lord my God, my one hope, listen to me lest out of weariness I should stop wanting to seek you, but let me see your face always, and with ardor.  Do you yourself give me the strength to seek, having caused yourself to be found and having given me the hope of finding you more and more.  Before you lies my strength and my weakness; preserve the one, heal the other.  Before you lies my knowledge and my ignorance; where you have opened to me, receive me as I come in; where you have shut to me, open to me as I knock.  Let me remember you, let me understand you, let me love you.  Increase these things in me until you refashion me entirely.” (Trin. 15.28.51, tr. Edmund Hill)

* Jean-Luc Marion, In the Self's Place:  The Approach of Saint Augustine, p. 9. 

"Remembering Jerusalem"

The New Jerusalem as bride of the lamb, Walters Manuscript W.917, fol. 206v

One thing I asked of the Lord,
   that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
   all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
   and to inquire in his temple. (Ps. 27:4)

I will 'enter my chamber' and will sing you songs of love, groaning with inexpressible groanings on my wanderer's path, and remembering Jerusalem with my heart lifted up toward it--Jerusalem, my home land, Jerusalem, my mother, and above it yourself, ruler, illuminator, father, tutor, husband, pure and strong delights and solid joy and all good things to an unexpressible degree, all being enjoyed in simultaneity because you are the one supreme and true Good.  I shall not turn away until in that peace of this dearest mother, where are the firstfruits of my spirit and the source of my certainties, you gather all that I am from my dispersed and distorted state to reshape me and strengthen me for ever, 'my God my mercy.' (Augustine, Conf. 12.26.23, trans. H. Chadwick)

In the midst of defending his understanding of Genesis 1:1 as one of many true interpretations, Augustine is drawn into this rhapsodic confession.  He was considering whether it is true to interpret the "heavens" God created in the beginning as "the heaven of heavens," that is, Heaven, the spiritual House of God, wherein the beauty of the triune Lord is perpetually beheld.  And now, in the midst of defending his view against potential critics, he breaks off, suddenly, into a love song to his Lord.

Like the psalmist, the "one thing" Augustine asks is "to behold the beauty of the Lord" in his House (Ps. 27:4).  Wandering as he is in the world devastated by sin, he groans like one homesick to enter that state of rest and peace.  Now he is dispersed in the flux of time, finding himself tending toward nothingness.  Now he fleetingly knows the stability of that House, when he lifts up his heart contemplation or in the sursum corda of the liturgy.  But he longs for the Lord to gather his dispersed self together in the heavenly City, that he might "behold the beauty of the Lord" forever.

Augustine's desire is to find his rest, his fulfillment, his life, in the triune Lord.  His desire, to be sure, is to gaze upon the Creator, the Beauty of all things beautiful.  But it is also a desire to be gazed on as the Lord's beloved, and so to find himself gathered together, enfolded in the eternal embrace of Love.  Until that Day--when he will know, even as he has been known (1 Cor. 13:12)--, he will not be fully himself.

A Meditation for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son (Detail)

When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. (Luke 15:14)

As usual, the Pharisees and the scribes are grumbling that Jesus is welcoming and eating with tax-collectors and sinners (Lk. 15:1–2).  So Jesus tells three stories about people rejoicing over finding something that was lost: a sheep, a silver coin, a son.  The three stories share a common, explicitly-stated theme: God delights in the repentance of those who wander from him (cf. vv. 7, 10).  Each story is also implicitly directed against the grumbling Pharisees and scribes, who like the elder son in the last story, are indignant (v. 28) at the welcome Jesus gives to the prodigals who come near to listen to him (v. 1).  Our Lord welcomes the tax-collectors and sinners because they come near to him, because they have felt their deathly hunger and come seeking nourishment from him, who is the bread of life.  Perhaps they are still a long way off, but he is running towards them.

Perhaps the story of the prodigal son is the paradigmatic story of conversion, metanoia.  At least it was for St. Augustine when, in his middle age, he reflected back on his life.*  He had been the prodigal son, turning away from God, becoming to himself “a region of destitution” (regio egestatis), of need, lack, poverty (Conf. 2.10.18).  As he confesses to God:

My hunger was internal, deprived of inward food, that is of you yourself, my God.  But that was not the kind of hunger I felt.  I was without any desire for incorruptible nourishment, not because I was replete with it, but the emptier I was, the more unappetizing such food became.  So my soul was in rotten health.  In an ulcerous condition it thrust itself to outward things, miserably avid to be scratched by contact with the world of senses. (Conf. 3.1.1)

Apart from the Creator, he could find no life in the created order, which had become to him “the region of death” (ibid., 4.12.18).

In that region of death, Augustine, as it were, heard the voice of the Lord Jesus, the Mediator, “he who for us is life itself [and who] descended here and endured our death and slew it by his abundance of life” (Conf. 4. 12.19).  In his hunger, he hears the voice of the Lord calling to him, “‘I am the food of the fully grown; grow and you will feed on me.  And you will not change me into you like the food your flesh eats, but you will be changed into me’” (ibid., 7.10.16).  

But Augustine does not find the growth that is required, until he begins to grow in humility by embracing “the humble Jesus” (ibid., 7.23.24).  As he despairs of his own strength and falls prostrate before “the divine weakness” of the Word become flesh, he finds true nourishment and rest.  Like the tax-collectors and sinners, Augustine finds himself welcomed by the humble Jesus when he humbly comes near to feed on him.  

With them, let us become weak, prostrating ourselves before the humble Lord that we might share in his life.

* Only retrospectively, in the light of grace, could Augustine see himself in the prodigal.  Barth: “Known sin is always forgiven sin, known in the light of forgiveness and the triumph of grace...Unforgiven sin, or sin not yet known to be forgiven, is always unrecognised sin. We repent only as we have already found the God of grace and realised that we are His creatures. Any other penitence moves hopelessly in a circle. For the knowledge of sin is itself an element in the knowledge of grace.” (CD 3.2, 36)

Collocation

'Tsar of Glory' icon. 14th cent. Bulgarian. (Tretyakov Gallery)

Passages from the Daily Office and Augustine placed together without comment for Ash Wednesday:

"I abandoned you to pursue the lowest things of your creation.  I was dust going to dust." (Augustine, Confessions 1.13.21)

"...let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross..." (Heb. 12:1–2)

"Who will enable me to find rest in you?  Who will grant me that you come to my heart and intoxicate it, so that I forget my evils and embrace my one and only good, yourself?  What are you to me? [...] In your mercies, Lord God, tell me what you are to me.  'Say to my soul, I am your salvation' (Ps. 34:3).  Speak to me so that I may hear.  See the ears of my heart are before you, Lord.  Open them and 'say to my soul, I am your salvation.'  After that utterance I will run and lay hold on you.  Do not hide your face from me (cf. Ps. 26:9).  Lest I die, let me die so that I may see it."  (Augustine, Conf. 1.5.5)

"Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." (Heb. 12:14)

"'Lord hear my prayer' (Ps. 60:2) that my soul may not collapse (Ps. 83:3) under your discipline (Ps. 54:2)... Bring to me a sweetness surpassing all the seductive delights which I pursued.  Enable me to love you with all my strength that I may clasp your hand with all my heart.  'Deliver me from all temptation to the end' (Ps. 17:30)." (Augustine, Conf. 1.15.24)