Learning from Jesus “on the night in which he was betrayed.”

In first-century Galatia, a small but powerful group of teachers insisted that anyone who wanted to become a Christian must show that they are truly Christian through some outward sign. A very specific outward sign, in fact: circumcision.

After dismantling this argument throughout his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul proposes his own outward sign of the Christian faith. In what has since been dubbed the “Fruit of the Spirit,” he lists several outward signs (fruit) of a life indwelled by the Spirit.

According to this list, what is the very first thing you should outwardly notice in the life of a Christian?

Love.

Maundy Thursday is a celebration of two sacred moments in the life of Jesus, both of which are wrapped in love. The name itself comes from the Latin work for command (mandatum), since Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment on this sacred Thursday:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

This new commandment is shared in two ways, both of which are celebrated each year on Maundy Thursday.

First, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. Jesus taught that the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. And then he followed through by assuming the role of a household slave. Peter’s initial refusal to have his feet washed, followed by his request for Jesus to wash his entire body has always struck me as capturing my own posture towards Jesus: an oscillation between full embrace and keeping what I deem to be an appropriate distance.

After washing their feet, Jesus shares a meal with his disciples. Maundy Thursday is about foot washing, but it is also a celebration of the institution of this sacred family meal.

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright points out something about that evening that is worth considering:

When Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal.

Jesus is instituting a very specific meal in the Last Supper, one that has been celebrated every single day somewhere on the planet since the earliest days of the Christian Church. But what is true of the Lord’s Supper can also be somewhat true of each of our meals by extension. I love the prayer below, taken from Every Moment Holy, about all meals and what they can become for us:

Meet us in the making of this meal, O Lord, and make of it something more than a mere nourishment for the body.

What is true of all meals is most true of the Eucharist.

But that Thursday, and this Thursday, are about more than just a meal. When the Last Supper is revisited in 1 Corinthians, Paul reminds his readers that all of this took place “on the night in which he was betrayed.” The cross was on the horizon even as bread and wine were being shared amongst friends on the first Maundy Thursday.

The Last Supper was the beginning of the three most important days in the history of the universe, and so Maundy Thursday is the beginning of the three most important days in our Church Year.

May God use these days to equip us to live out the new commandment he first gave two thousand Thursdays ago.

Because of our sophisticated watches and our ability to schedule our days down to the minute with the push of a button, it is easy for us to misunderstand what time is and how it actually works.

Not all weeks are created equal. And this is no ordinary week.

This is no ordinary week.

A quick note before this edition of the newsletter: Holy Week culminates in a final service on Saturday Evening: The Easter Vigil. If you happen to be in the Dallas area this Easter, come see us at Church of the Incarnation for what I find to be the most moving of all services of the Christian Year. I will be teaching a History & Traditions class at 7pm ahead of the service, which begins at 8pm. Let me know if you plan to attend; seats fill quickly.

Because of our sophisticated watches and our ability to schedule our days down to the minute with the push of a button, it is easy for us to misunderstand what time is and how it actually works.

We tend to think of time as being evenly distributed. There are 24 hours in a day—in every day. So it seems right that any given hour or day or week must be the same length as any other hour, day, or week. More often than not it appears to us that all days are created equal.

Not only is this technically not the case universally-speaking, it is certainly not true experientially.

Some minutes last 60 seconds. Others last what feels likea lifetime.

Time can fly, or it can stand completely still.

Some things in our world take a long time to change. But your world can change in a fraction of a second.

Not all weeks are created equal.

And this is no ordinary week.

Just over two thousand years ago there was a single seven day period of time that has proved to be the most important week in the history—and even in the future—of the universe.

And this is the week where we take that week from the past, and drop it into the present.

Holy Week is the week of all weeks.

This week contains within it all that you and I should expect to experience as Christians.

It has its false hopes. Moments, like Palm Sunday, where it seems that all has been made well, until lofty expectations give way to reality.

This week has the loneliness of Gethsemane, the betrayal of a loved one, the abandonment of friends.

But Holy Week also has its Mondays. The mundane.

Holy Week begins today, but you might not fully notice it until Thursday night. We have a relatively normal Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday ahead of us.

The mundane. False hopes. Betrayal. Loneliness.

Holy Week contains all of this.

This week, if you allow it, will take you even to the depths of sorrow as the Son of God is nailed to a cross.

But only so that you can experience the highest of joys: the defeat of death and the hope of the resurrection.

This is no ordinary week.

But here is the catch: It can be, if you want it to.

You can go about your business, maintain your standing calendar. Tomorrow can be, for you, just another Monday.

Or you can embrace this Holiest of weeks.

If you do, you can expect to experience a few things.

First, you will think things that you normally don’t think.

• It is not every week that you wonder what it means for the author of life to die.

• Or what your private sin has to do with the Creator of all things.

• Or what really happens when all of this comes to an end.

This is a week to think about things you normally don’t think about.

But you will also feel things that you normally don’t feel.

• Sin that you might normally brush off might weigh a little heavier this week.

• You might resonate with Jesus—feeling at least a fraction of what he felt. Your own sorrow will find company in his.

Finally, and most importantly, if you embrace this Holy Week, you will become a little more like Jesus.

Or you will at least want to.

This is the goal of the Christian life.

Have this mind among yourselves—says St. Paul—which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

Perhaps more than anything, Holy Week reminds us that the Jesus we follow as Lord and King is also a wounded Savior.

It is easy to talk about being the hands and feet of Christ in a broken world.

It is harder to remember that those hands and feet still bear the marks of nails.

In the first century, as the persecution of Christians in Rome was growing increasingly intense under Nero, leaders in the Church convinced St. Peter to flee the city.

They could die, but surely their Apostle and Bishop needed to survive in order for the Church to continue.

As Peter made his way out of the city, he encountered Jesus, carrying a cross, making his way towards the city.

Quo vadis, domine? “Where are you going, Lord?”

“I am heading to Rome, Peter. To be crucified in your stead.”

An early Christian history called The Acts of St. Peter tells us that Peter got the message.

He returned to Rome, where he was crucified upside down.

Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus.

There are countless examples of this—some more intense, some far less—between St. Peter and our own day.

Why?

A willingness to be the crucified hands and feet of Christ is there throughout Christian history and today because of the hope of the resurrection.

Because, through Holy Week, we know that death is not the end. That we have a Lord who has gone before us, who fought the battle we could not win, even to the very depths of hell.

And that he came back.

All of this is here in Holy Week.

So make plans to experience it.

Go to church on Maundy Thursday as Jesus shares his Last Supper with the disciples and is betrayed.

Experience Good Friday afresh, playing the part of the crowd who shouted “Crucify him.”

Embrace the quiet, dark tomb of Holy Saturday.

And then join in the Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord.

It is not convenient. It will throw a wrench in your schedule.

But Jesus is alive and ready to meet you again in new and old ways this Holy Week.

Amen.

To all those who love soccer, and to those who don’t but love someone who does.

The dedication page of Laurent Dubois’ The Language of the Game

One of Josef Pieper’s central claims in his 1948 Leisure: The Basis of Culture is this: we place too much value on hard work, and as a result our happiness, productivity, art, and ability to flourish as a human society is suffering.

Here are just a few nuggets from the book:

The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refuses to have anything as a gift.

In other words: our over-emphasis on work has made us less capable of receiving life as a gift.

There is more:

Of course the world of work begins to become - threatens to become - our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.

We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.

His recommendation for recovering a better approach to work is actually to recover a better approach to leisure.

Leisure is “an attitude of mind and a condition of the soul that fosters a capacity to perceive the reality of the world.”

When we overwork, we perceive the universe poorly, placing our own effort at the center. Good Leisure can help correct this poor vision.

St. Joseph is a model of quiet, often thankless work that paves the way for Jesus to be known and loved.

The Feast of St. Joseph is usually celebrated on March 19th. When specific Feasts fall on a Sunday, their observance is usually transferred to the following weekday. This is because every Sunday is a Feast of our Lord’s Resurrection—and in that sense—the celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection is not shared with any other celebration. So for this year, today (March 20) is the formal Feast of St. Joseph. Celebrate away!

George Weigel describes the history of God’s dealing with humanity as “an extraordinary story involving some utterly ordinary people.”

An adopted son of a slave with a speech impediment is used by God to accomplish the greatest saving act of the Old Testament. The King of Persia’s bartender is used by God to restore the city of Jerusalem after its destruction at the hand of Babylon. A group of ragtag fishermen and rabbinic school dropouts are used by God to establish the Christian Church, and are told by Jesus that they will spend the rest of their lives doing “greater things than these.”

And right in the middle of this extraordinary story lies Joseph of Bethlehem. An ordinarily quiet dad who works hard, forsakes his legal freedom to dismiss Mary, and instead bears the brunt of communal shame so his new wife doesn’t have to. (Not to mention that his first experience in parenting involved raising the Son of God.)

I am the proud owner of multiple pairs of socks that feature Saints from the Scriptures and Christian history. The side of each sock bears the image of the Saint, and on the bottom of each foot is a famous quote from their life and work.

As a (sometimes) quiet dad myself, I naturally own a pair of Saint Joseph socks.

And printed on the bottom of each foot is the following quote:

“                       ."

- St. Joseph

Joseph has no recorded words in the Christian Scriptures. He is visited by an angel. He leads his family on several journeys: first to Bethlehem for the less-than-glamorous birth of Jesus, then to Egypt, this time as refugees. And after several quiet years in Egypt, Joseph leads his family once more to settle down in the podunk town of Nazareth. And from this point on, we know very little about how Joseph spent the rest of his days. 

We see in St. Joseph a model of quiet, often thankless work that paves the way for Jesus to be known and loved.

Habit to Adopt: At some point throughout our week, we all have quiet, thankless work to do. We are washing the dishes, or filing papers, or taking out the trash. The next time you catch yourself doing this routine work, turn off the TV, take out the headphones, or otherwise limit distractions. Allow the quiet—and the noise of the work itself—to remind you to pray that God will use your otherwise menial task to somehow make Jesus known and loved.

What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself, to which will was only attached as an instrument. Ages ago it had been a person, but the ruins of personality now survived in it only as weapons at the disposal of a furious self-exiled negation.

Perelandra, C.S. Lewis, Chapter 12, during Ransom’s fight with the Unman.

GPT-4 scores well on a variety of common academic benchmarks, but I am most intrigued—though not surprised—by where it falls comparatively short:

AP Language and Composition (Rhetoric) and AP Literature and Composition.

These are the most humane benchmarks it has encountered.

A view from the Supporters Section after a late first-half equalizer this weekend. An early birthday + father’s day gift of FC Dallas season tickets being put to good use! FCD went on to beat LA Galaxy 3-1.

Lessons from Nicodemus this Lent: The problem with humanity is not a lack of information. You and I are not one New York Times opinion piece away from a changed life. Our first, second, and final step towards abundant life is to recognize, embrace, and (eventually) enjoy our dependence on God.

Becoming more human in an age of information

In 1948, Claude Shannon published a paper on the Theory of Information and Communication that set the stage for an understanding of Information as data - bits of sound that are capable of being transmitted in an orderly fashion across great distances.

Eventually this work led to the creation of what we call the internet and the dawning of the Information Age.

Today, we know more than we ever have, and we can share that knowledge with just about anybody anywhere at any time.

But the Information Age comes with some unintended consequences.

We used to ask our dad, or our neighbor, or a stranger how to change a tire. Now we ask a machine.

If we had a story to tell or an opinion to share, we used to do this around a table or while working side-by-side or at the weekly market. Now we read—or at least start to read—posts and articles written by strangers who we will never have the chance to personally engage.

And all of this is heralded as good news.

Our age is built around the premise that information will save you.

Do you have an unusual or embarrassing rash developing? Need to know what sporty business chic attire means for your nephew’s wedding?

Ask Google.

Life in the Information Age is convenient. We are more informed now than we ever have been, but there is a catch.

Vivek Murthy is the current surgeon general of the United States. In 2017, towards the end of his previous term, he wrote this:

During my years spent caring for patients, the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes. It was loneliness.

Andy Crouch once said that the Information Age is a great place to gain information and power, but is not a great place to be a human person.

This is, in one sense, a progression of history: the obsession with information over wisdom in the 20th century led to a modern, lonely society. But it is actually an ancient problem—perhaps the most ancient of problems.

In Genesis we are told that Adam and Eve went from walking and talking with God in the cool of the day to being banished from his presence. This disconnect affected their relationship with God, to be sure, but also their relationship with one another. After leaving the Garden, humanity began the long journey of being alone together.

All of this, because Adam and Eve wanted a shortcut to wisdom.

Wisdom was meant to be slowly gleaned through a relationship with God, not grasped in an instant.

But when our First Parents took and ate of the fruit of that tree, it represented an attempt to shortcut this process. It was a desire for information instead of relationship.

Satan said to Eve, ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’

After they ate, notice their first reaction:

They covered their most intimate parts from each other, and then they hid from God.

The human pursuit of information and power over relationship began in the Garden of Eden. And it has continued—with destructive results—ever since.

Fast forward from Genesis 3 to John 3—to a late night conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus. A different context, a mostly different cast of characters, but the same old story.

Nicodemus is a fascinating character throughout the Gospel of John. He is a Pharisee—a member of the Jewish sect that was convinced that God would send his kingdom once his people got their act together and started following the Law. The whole Law.

And in order for that to happen, God’s people needed to know how to read the Law, and properly interpret the Law, and properly follow the proper interpretation of the Law.

As you can imagine, to pull this off would require a lot of teachers teaching a lot of students a lot of information. There were few communities better at transmitting information in the ancient world than the Pharisees.

We don’t know if Nicodemus was sent by the Pharisees or if he was just curious, but we do know this: he snuck out in the middle of the night to ask Jesus a question.

Nicodemus was seeking information.

Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.

I would like for you to teach me something, Jesus. Do you have any nuggets of wisdom for me? Any new teaching that I can add to my repertoire? Something I can share with my friends at a dinner party to sound like an intellectual?

Sure, said Jesus, here you go: If you want to live forever, you need to experience birth again.

It is a jarring response, isn’t it?

But Jesus isn’t finished. When Nicodemus justifiably expresses confusion over this saying, Jesus rebukes him:

Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this?

In other words: how is it that you spend your days reading and meditating on the Scriptures, and yet still think that the problem with humanity is a lack of information?

Nicodemus came to Jesus seeking new information; what he needed was new birth.

Birth is one of several running images throughout the Scriptures. There is something about birth that captures the core of where a redeemed person stands in relation to God.

In other words, there are several things that are true about physical birth that ring even more deeply true about spiritual birth.

To be born is to utterly depend upon another. This is obvious on one level: an infant cannot feed themselves or move on their own. Parents of newborns can attest that they can hardly even sleep without being cared for by someone other than themselves.

This is true of many creatures, but it is most true of humans.

We are born long before we are capable of sustaining ourselves. Other mammals are born with far more developed brains than we are. (Parents around the world can attest to this…)

A human fetus would need to remain in the womb for 18 to 21 months in order to match the neurological and cognitive development stage of a newborn chimpanzee.

Simply put: Human Beings were created to be relationally dependent.

We grow out of some of this dependence in some truly important ways, but by and large humans only flourish when we share some level of dependence on another: a neighbor, a roommate, a friend, a spouse, a child, a parent, and ultimately, God.

Embracing this dependence on God is the crucial first step on the journey that is the Christian life.

Nicodemus’ last words to Jesus in this encounter were simply, “How can this be?”

We don’t know if Nicodemus was changed that night. But John does leave us some clues. Nicodemus appears two more times in his Gospel.

The next Nicodemus sighting comes when Pharisees are arguing with the Temple Police about arresting Jesus. Nicodemus speaks up, suggesting that they not rush to judgment on Jesus and his teaching.

John leaves us with the impression that perhaps Nicodemus has been intrigued by what Jesus said to him.

But the final sighting of Nicodemus in the Gospel of John is perhaps the most convincing. We encounter it each year on Good Friday—at the very end of Holy Week.

After Jesus is crucified, John tells us that Nicodemus

who had at first come to Jesus by night, went to Jesus’ tomb, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. He took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths.

The man to whom Jesus said You must be born again was now wrapping our Lord in burial clothes adorned with spices.

I think it is safe to say that Nicodemus had experienced new birth.

The problem with humanity is not a lack of information. You and I are not one New York Times opinion piece away from a changed life.

Our first, second, and final step towards eternal life is to recognize, and then embrace, and then eventually enjoy our dependence on God.

Perhaps more so that any other Liturgical season, Lent can help move us along the path towards increased dependence.

The failures we experience throughout Lent are part of the gift of Lent.

When you find your fasting difficult to maintain, or when you drop a practice that you meant to maintain throughout the season, allow these shortcomings to remind you of your utter dependence on God.

The eve of Ash Wednesday 2023 is a good time to remember that fasting is an exercise that leads to strength, not weakness.

One of my favorite bits of dialogue in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring presents us with an age-old debate about spiritual disciplines in general, and the Christian season of Lent in particular.

Before embarking on their Journey to Mordor, Elrond—the Lord of Rivendale—shares a final message with the Company that is to join Frodo on his quest.

Frodo himself is bound to complete the journey, while the members of the Company are “free companions” that may “come back, or turn aside into other paths, as chance allows.” Gimli, the renowned Dwarf warrior, gives a response that begins the dialogue in question.

‘Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,’ said Gimli.

‘Maybe,’ said Elrond, ‘but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.’

‘Yet sworn word may strengthen quaking heart,’ said Gimli.

‘Or break it,’ said Elrond.

Gimli argues that a vow made on the front end of a journey may serve as a sustaining force for when difficulty is faced. Elrond counters that, at times, the weight of such a vow might actually break one’s will along the way. Both positions are worthy of considering further, but what light can this conversation shed on the ancient Christian practice of Lent?

The Church Calendar has historically served as a way to center our lives around the life of Christ, and the season of Lent serves (1) as an opportunity to re-live Jesus’ forty days of fasting in the wilderness and (2) as a period of preparation for our celebration of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. It has traditionally been celebrated as a season for fasting, the adoption of a new spiritual practice, and giving of time and money to the poor. These practices are not particular to Lent, but are in fact some of the most central practices of the Christian faith, commanded repeatedly throughout the New Testament (see Matthew 6:1-18). In this sense, Lent is a season that simply asks Christians to act as Christians.

So how then should we approach Lent? With Gimli’s determination and rigidity, or with Elrond’s patience and grace?

The Church’s answer to this questions, as is so often the case, is “yes” to both.

Be like Gimli as you fight against sin in your own life and injustice in the world. Use this period of 40 days to re-center your spiritual life. Don’t allow our various cultural calendars dictate your devotion to Christ. Put forth effort to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). On Ash Wednesday, after all, the Church is called to “the observance of a Holy Lent.”

But also remember that we are often more like the first Adam, who failed his temptation in the garden, than we are like the second Adam, who triumphed over temptation in the wilderness.

Be like Elrond as you let your failure during this season serve as another reminder of your need for a savior. Don’t let your adoption of new disciplines “puff up” your ego, but instead recognize them for what they are: gifts from God given to a sinner who does not deserve them.

May this Lenten season be for us one more way “that we may remember that it is only by God’s gracious gift that we are given everlasting life.” (BCP, 265)

The final chapters of Esther provide us with a reminder of why we have a liturgical calendar in the first place, and a framework for approaching these seasons of subsequent fasting and feasting.

Read more from my latest essay for Covenant.

Paul Vitz once said that in our age we will recover—or rather rediscover—many traditional beliefs and practices, and that we will do so primarily through science and the intellect.

Perhaps this is in that vein?

Dacher Keltner’s (UC Berkeley) forthcoming book Awe describes a study that sought to understand various ways people arrive at an experience of “being in the presence of something vast and mysterious that transcends your current understanding of the world.”

The participants were from 26 countries, including adherents to all major religions, as well as denizens of more secular cultures (e.g., Holland). Our participants varied in terms of their wealth and education. They lived within democratic and authoritarian political systems. They held egalitarian and patriarchal views of gender. They ranged in their cultural values from the more collectivist (e.g., China, Mexico) to the more individualistic (e.g., the United States).

Speakers of 20 languages at UC Berkeley translated the 2,600 narratives they produced. We were surprised to learn that these rich narratives from around the world could be classified into a taxonomy of awe, the eight wonders of life, from collective rituals to sudden intellectual epiphanies.

What most commonly led people to feel awe? Nature? Spiritual practice? Listening to music? In fact, it was other people’s courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming—actions of strangers, roommates, teachers, colleagues at work, people in the news, characters on podcasts, and our neighbors and family members.

Around the world, we are most likely to feel awe when moved by moral beauty: exceptional virtue, character, and ability, marked by a purity and goodness of intention and action

But the Turing test cuts both ways. You can’t tell if a machine has gotten smarter or if you’ve just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a degree that the machine seems smart. If you can have a conversation with a simulated person presented by an AI program, can you tell how far you’ve let your sense of personhood degrade in order to make the illusion work for you?

Jaron Lanier, in a book published in 2011.

English soccer is worth watching in its own right, but it does not hurt that its commentators have quite the way with words.

Case in point: Peter Drury’s comments following Harry Kane’s 267th goal for Tottenham, surpassing the record previously held by Jimmy Greaves.

He sits on Tottenham’s loftiest perch, beyond even the great Greaves. Spurs’ most lavish scorer of all time. He has dared. And he has done.

Audeat est facere, indeed.

This must be the New Math everyone is talking about?

ChatGPT and tools like it are not the end of the world, but they do highlight a worrying trend: we have an increased appetite for seeking information over wisdom. In my opinion, the recovery of a better way begins with a rediscovery of the beauty of the Incarnation itself.

Quite soon, I shall find myself before the final judge of my life. Even though, as I look back on my long life, I can have great reason for fear and trembling, I am nonetheless of good cheer, for I trust firmly that the Lord is not only the just judge, but also the friend and brother who himself has already suffered for my shortcomings, and is thus also my advocate, my ‘Paraclete.’ In light of the hour of judgment, the grace of being a Christian becomes all the more clear to me. It grants me knowledge, and indeed friendship, with the judge of my life, and thus allows me to pass confidently through the dark door of death.

May you experience fear, trembling, and good cheer, Joseph of Rome.

Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei.

Merry Christmas from the Jordan family. (Shown here in both our forced and natural poses. I will let you determine which is which for each of us…)

Come, O God with us

Friends,

The final O Antiphon of Advent is below—in its Latin and English forms. Subscribers can keep reading below the image for a short reflection and another response poem by the brilliant Fr. Malcolm Guite.

I hope these brief moments of reading and reflection have helped you capture the heart of Advent in this busy final week before Christmas.

O Emmanuel

Latin Text
Veni, veni Emmanuel, 
Captivum solve Israel, 
Qui gemit in exilio 
Privatus Dei Filio.
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel Adaptation
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.

A Poetic Response, by Fr. Malcolm Guite

Tomorrow, I will come.

In this final O Antiphon response, Malcolm Guite looks back at the previous six titles for Christ, but he also looks forward, “… beyond Christmas, to the new birth for humanity and for the whole cosmos, which is promised in the birth of God in our midst.”

As a special treat this Christmas Eve, click here to listen to Malcolm read his poem.

O Emmanuel

O come, O come, and be our God-with-us
O long-sought With-ness for a world without,
O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.
Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name
Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame,
O quickened little wick so tightly curled,
Be folded with us into time and place,
Unfold for us the mystery of grace
And make a womb of all this wounded world.
O heart of heaven beating in the earth,
O tiny hope within our hopelessness
Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,
To touch a dying world with new-made hands
And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.

Come, O King of Nations

Friends,

Today’s O Antiphon is below—in its Latin, English, and adapted forms. Subscribers can keep reading below the image for a short reflection and another response poem by the brilliant Fr. Malcolm Guite. I hope these brief moments of reading and reflection help you capture the heart of Advent in this busy final week before Christmas.

O Rex Gentium

Latin Text
O rex gentium, et desideratus earum,
lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum,
(veni, et) salva hominem quem de limo formasti
English Translation
O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race, which you fashioned from clay.
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel Adaptation
O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace.

A Poetic Response, by Fr. Malcolm Guite

The original Latin version of this O Antiphon draws our focus to the creative nature of the King of Nations. (This is, unfortunately, lost in the hymn adaptation.) Yes, Jesus is the King of all, but he is also the one who formed our very race from clay.

And—as is entirely appropriate on this penultimate day of Advent—Guite draws us to the humility of the King taking on the form of clay in his Incarnation, before reminding us that it is Jesus’ first and second Advents that prepare us for his final Advent.

His work of shaping us is not yet complete.

O Rex Gentium / O King of Nations
O King of our desire whom we despise,
King of the nations never on the throne,
Unfound foundation, cast-off cornerstone,
Rejected joiner, making many one,
You have no form or beauty for our eyes,
A King who comes to give away his crown,
A King within our rags of flesh and bone.
We pierce the flesh that pierces our disguise,
For we ourselves are found in you alone.
Come to us now and find in us your throne,
O King within the child within the clay,
O hidden King who shapes us in the play
Of all creation. Shape us for the day
Your coming Kingdom comes into its own.

Come, O Dayspring

Friends,

Today’s O Antiphon is below—in its Latin, English, and adapted forms. Subscribers can keep reading below the image for a short reflection and another response poem by the brilliant Fr. Malcolm Guite. I hope these brief moments of reading and reflection help you capture the heart of Advent in this busy final week before Christmas.

O Oriens

Latin Text
O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae,
et sol justitiae:
veni, et illumina sedentes
in tenebris, et umbra mortis
English Translation
O Dayspring,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel Adaptation
O come, O Bright and Morning Star,
and bring us comfort from afar!
Dispel the shadows of the night
and turn our darkness into light.

A Poetic Response, by Fr. Malcolm Guite

The "Bright and Morning star" or "Dayspring" refer to the first ray of light appearing when the darkness of night is pierced by the sunrise. The beauty of the first trace of the sunrise has captured the attention of poets for millennia, from the prophet Malachi's "sun of righteousness" to Francis Scott Key's "by the dawn's early light."

It is no accident that the Church prays O come O Bright and Morning Star on December 21st. This is the winter solstice; the day that contains the shortest period of daylight and the longest night of the year. And on this winter solstice, Fr. Guite's poem helps us remember that Jesus is our Bright and Morning Star.

O Oriens / O Dayspring
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”.

Come, O Key of David

Friends,

Today’s O Antiphon is below—in its Latin, English, and adapted forms. Subscribers can keep reading below the image for a short reflection and another response poem by the brilliant Fr. Malcolm Guite. I hope these brief moments of reading and reflection help you capture the heart of Advent in this busy final week before Christmas.

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

English Translation
O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel Adaptation
O come, O Key of David, come
and open wide our heavenly home.
Make safe for us the heavenward road
and bar the way to death's abode.

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A Poetic Response, by Fr. Malcolm Guite

The ancient O Clavis David verse describes Jesus as the Key that locks and unlocks life's ultimate mysteries; opening to us the way of life, while closing to us the way of death.

In today's poem by Fr. Guite, that same theme is also highlighted. But Guite also helpfully reminds us that there is only one key for our lock. Without that specific key, we have no hope.

We know our problem, and want a solution. And so we cry out for the advent of our Key.

O Clavis / O Key
Even in the darkness where I sit
And huddle in the midst of misery
I can remember freedom, but forget
That every lock must answer to a key,
That each dark clasp, sharp and intricate,
Must find a counter-clasp to meet its guard,
Particular, exact and intimate,
The clutch and catch that meshes with its ward.
I cry out for the key I threw away
That turned and over turned with certain touch
And with the lovely lifting of a latch
Opened my darkness to the light of day.
O come again, come quickly, set me free
Cut to the quick to fit, the master key.