Christmas Novena
Dec. 18, 2015
“O Sacred Lord”
Provincial House, New
Rochelle
On the Christmas novena, see http://sdbnews.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-novena-starts-probably-most.html
3 variants of tonite’s O antiphon are in regular use—2 in the general liturgy and 1 in our novena.
3 variants of tonite’s O antiphon are in regular use—2 in the general liturgy and 1 in our novena.
We’ll sing the novena version shortly: “O Adonai, leader of the house of Israel, to
Moses in the flaming bush you appeared and gave him your law on Sinai. O come and do ransom us in the strength of
your arm extended.”
The “official” text of the breviary reads: “O sacred Lord of ancient Israel, who showed
yourself to Moses in the burning bush, who gave him the holy law on Sinai
mountain: come, stretch out your mighty
hand to set us free.”
In the traditional text of everyone’s favorite
Advent hymn, we sing: “O come, O come,
great Lord of might,/ Who to thy tribes on Sinai’s height/ In ancient times
didst give the Law/ In cloud and majesty and awe/ O come, O come Emmanuel,/ And
ransom captive Israel.”
If those 3 variants weren’t enuf, the Magnificat gives us yet another (p. 276): “O Adonai and Leader of the house of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the flames of the burning bush and gave him the law on
Sinai: come and redeem us with
outstretched arm.”
Of course they’re all translated from the same
Latin text, which—having mercy on you—I didn’t look up.
All of these versions have in common an address
to the powerful Lord of Israel, and all invoke his past use of his power to redeem
his people, begging him to come again and save us. 3 versions refer to the Lord’s appearance to
Moses in the burning bush (“O Come, Emmanuel” doesn’t), an appearance
intimately linked to God’s freeing Israel from slavery in Egypt thru the
instrumentality of Moses.
All the versions refer to the giving of the Law
on Sinai. We probably don’t often think
of laws as liberating. You’ve heard the
joke about the Russian, American, and blonde who were discussing space
exploration. The Russian boasted, “We
were the first in space.” The American
responded, “We were the first on the moon.”
The blonde said, “So what! We’re
going to be the first on the sun.” The
Russian and the American looked at each other and shook their heads. “You can’t land on the sun, you idiot! You’ll burn up,” remarked the Russian. To which the blonde replied, “We’re not
stupid, you know. We’re going at night.”
 |
| Moses with the 10 Commandmends (Jose de Ribera) |
Astrophysics and the other laws of the physical universe
are liberating when we know and accept their parameters, their limits. Our acknowledgment of the law of gravity saves
us from smashing ourselves to pieces when we go near cliffs, up on roofs, or down
the stairs, while our acceptance and use of the laws of aerodynamics allows us
to overcome gravity, in a manner of speaking.
The Law given on Sinai likewise attunes us to the universe, the
religious or moral universe; it’s liberating when we let that Law remind us of
our Creator, his relationship with us, and our relationships with one another. St. Paul says that “consciousness of sin
comes thru the law” (Rom 3:20), i.e., the Law makes us aware of right and
wrong—and such awareness is liberating for those intent on pursuing the
right. Failing to acknowledge the moral
universe has given us, e.g., 30 million dead in WWII (a commonly accepted estimate—no
one can say for sure) and, less dramatically but closer to home, the breakdown
of social order that has followed the breakdown of family life. A story I read the other day[1]
comments on a court decision in Utah that requires 2 women to be listed as the
parents on the birth certificate of a child born to one of them. It’s a biological impossibility, of course,
that a woman father a child. The
commentary notes that such misleading records—she also references birth
certificates more benign in their intent, related to other forms of artificial
conception as well as to adoption—deprive a child of a fundamental right by
masking who the child really is: its
ancestry, its genetic origins, and so on (how many times has a doctor asked you
about your family’s medical history?). I’d
say that adherence to the natural law would be liberating for the child;
following a social trend, instead, binds the child in a chain of ignorance.
Our antiphon, our hymn, our prayer is that we be
saved now, ransomed or redeemed now, by the Mighty One. That plea harmonizes with what we pray every
evening in Mary’s canticle: “He has
shown the strength of his arm…. He has
cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.” Antiphon and Marian hymn note the Lord’s
mighty arm as the means of our rescue.
Like ancient Israel in their dealings with the Egyptians and their other
enemies, we are too lowly, too feeble, to save ourselves.
Of course, in our case we’re talking about
redemption from an unearthly power, from something more nefarious than
ignorance of universal laws. We all know
that, in broad terms, we need to be redeemed from our sins. Presumably we bring such an awareness, with
gratitude, to our daily celebration of the Eucharist, when we approach the
sacred Lord of Israel who reached out to his people on the slope of Sinai (in
the burning bush) and on its summit (thru the Law) and, most decisively, thru
his beloved Son. Presumably we bring
that awareness and gratitude to Reconciliation every month or so.
But we might also seek the Mighty Lord’s help in
being set free from our less fortunate spiritual or emotional or behavioral
qualities: our impatience, our
arrogance, our sloth, our rudeness, our faultfinding, our closemindedness
(isn’t one of the banes of community life “we’ve always done it that way”?), a
tendency to speak or act without thinking, an insistence on being right, a
tendency to dominate a conversation—so many habits, not necessarily sinful (but
sometimes, yes), that to some degree enslave us, and at the same time enslave
our confreres, e.g., by placing demands on their time or patience, etc. We need the Mighty One’s help to see
ourselves as we are and to work to change what might seem so intractable in us;
we need him to lift up the lowly, lift us to more gracious speech and action,
and sometimes even to silence.
That may sound more like Lent than Advent; but
we await a Savior because we need to be saved.
Come, O Adonai, and do ransom us in the strength of your arm extended!
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