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Last year, on December 18, Steve Runner from the Phedippidations podcast took us along on his daily run as he reflected upon the Christmas Star and shared one of the O’ antiphons. Today, we again join Steve on his run through the same park in rural Massachusetts while he explains more about the O’ Antiphons and sings the O’ antiphon for today.
This is Steve Runner from a small town in New England, right in the center of rural Massachusetts. I’m a father, engineer, marathon runner, wine appreciation nut, baseball fan, podcaster, and of course a practicing Roman Catholic…which I’ve always thought was a kind of a strange term; sounds like I’m in training for Catholicism, and maybe I am: I mean, I’m always learning something new during the liturgy of the word.
Last year I talked to you about the Star of Bethlehem, and the importance of it’s light in finding our way to Christ. …and I probably scared you, your small children and many of the woodland creatures here in this park that I’m running through: when I sang for you the O Antiphon for December 18th, the one that names Christ as Lord of Might, who to his tribes on Sinai’s height, in ancient times did give the law, in cloud and majesty and awe…
Well, I’m going to scare you again I’m afraid; I might have some talent in being able to run the Boston Marathon or record my podcast…but singing? Ahhh, probably not…but I’m going to do it anyway because I think there’s something important to be learned from the words. I’ll ask you, upfront: to excuse my poor pronunciation of Latin, I have enough trouble with my own language, it’s a wonder that I’m able to produce a podcast each week.
I’m a huge fan of Catholic podcasting, especially those produced for SQPN; and I don’t know if he’s listening to this: but Father Seraphim Beshoner from Catholic under the hood: you’ve probably talked about the O Antiphons on one of your earlier episodes…so I hope I’m not covering some of your old material here, but I’ve always loved the Great O Antiphons as part of the Advent tradition.
In the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours, Evening Prayer, or Vespers, always includes the great prayer of Mary known as the Magnificat. Every night the Magnificat (mag-nih-fee-cat) is preceded by a short verse or “antiphon” that links the prayer to the feast of the day or the season of the year. In the last seven days of Advent (December 17th through the 24th), the antiphons before the Magnificat are very special. Each begins with the exclamation “O” and ends with a prayer for the Messiah to come. As Christmas approaches the cry becomes increasingly urgent.
These Great O Antiphons were written in the seventh or eighth century when monks put together texts from the Old Testament which looked forward to Christs birth and our salvation.
One of the really cool things about the O Antiphons is that the first letter of each verse, when read backwards, spells out a hidden message in latin….it’s kinda like a Dan Brown novel, except this one is based on fact and reality:
The O Antiphons, starts with Sapientia, which means wisdom, then there’s Adonai, which means Lord of Israel, Radix Jesse, or “Root of Jesse”, Clavis David, or “Key of David”, Oriens, “or Radiant Dawn”, Rex Gentium “which means “King of the Gentiles”, and Emmanuel “which of course means God with Us”
So if you take the first letter of each O Antiphon: Sapientia, Adonai, Radix, Clavis, Oriens, Rex and Emmanuel, you get S, A, R, C, O, R, E…which spells Sarcore…and means NOTHING!
But if you put them in reverse order; do you know what you get?
You get an answer…in fact, you get THE answer…the most important answer, the answer we all crave, the answer to our prayer for Christ to come into our lives and save us from death; the answer to the urgent cries of millions upon millions of faithful for a thousand years, all singing with one voice to ask God to be with us…and his answer is
E, R, O, C, R, A, S….Ero Cras….which is latin for “Tomorrow I will be there”.
Veni, Veni O Oriens,
Solare nos adveniens,
Noctis depelle nebulas,
Dirasque mortis tenebras.O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer,
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
And drive away the shades of night,
And pierce the clouds, and bring us light!Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuelshall come to thee,
O Israel.
I’m Steve Runner from Oxford Massachusetts, host of the Podcast Phedippidations at SteveRunner.com wishing you a happy, holy and meaningful Christmas.
Join us tomorrow and every day in December for more reflections produced by great Catholic New media personalities.
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Send me your feedback on the blog at http://cc.ductapeguy.net by email at (catholicroundup@gmail.com) catholicroundup (at) gmail (dot) com or by calling 206-337-0611.
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