December 22 – O Rex Gentium
O Rex Gentium: “O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart; O Keystone of the mighty arch of man, come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust.”

The earliest ornament I remember seeing is a small, brown plastic triangle-shaped nativity with sparkles on the roof and a little scene inside the stable. They came in all shapes and sizes, and we had every variation in virtually every room.

Today a large porcelain nativity greets us in our foyer complete with shepherds, wise men, animals, hay, a well, Joseph, Mary and the baby. Our imagination places all these characters together even though the gospel stories do not. This tradition of creating a composite nativity dates at least back to the eleventh century and maybe earlier.

While most of our contemporary nativities focus on the main characters, Italian village nativities may include a host of other characters. They recreate a miniature Italian village humming with activity. There are hundreds of figurines including craftsman, village people, and more. It is as though Jesus is born in the midst of the busy activity of life.

These nativities may not accurately represent the way the story unfolds, but they do reveal a truth deep within the gospel story. The baby Jesus holds the scene together, and in Him the kings and shepherds, rich and poor, the Jew and Gentile are joined together.

This newborn King, attended by great and small alike, fulfills the very idea of king. Up until his birth, all kings were simply imperfect types. When he appears, the archetype appears and kingship is fulfilled completely in Jesus. The baby in the manger wields the power of heaven and earth. Wise men recognize this one having authority and bow down, offering homage to the source of their rule.

By claiming His throne through the cross, this king claims every throne. This king will claim all power and all rule and all wisdom and all grace and all might. In so doing, He will remove the walls of separation. We celebrate, and rightly so, the wall of separation he removed between humans and God. In Him alone, do we enjoy the mystery of the communion of love revealed in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Even as he removed the wall separating God and humans, he removed the wall between one human and another. A clear and definite wall existed between the Jews and the Gentiles, forbidding the Jews to have relationship with the Gentiles. Jesus removes that wall and literally forms one new man of Jew and Gentile alike.

At the same time, he removes the wall between all humans. Ultimately, sin isolates every person from every other person and true communion is impossible. The existentialists saw and felt this separation more deeply than most. In spite talking nonstop, we cannot penetrate the wall between us. We can sit in the same room and sleep in the same bed and still are separated by an uncrossable divide.

How could we ever hope to have peace between nations when we cannot even maintain peace between two human beings? We seem hopelessly separated by islands of thought. We use the same words but experience completely different worlds.

In the mystery of His rule, King Jesus enters into the breach between one soul and another. By the power of His Spirit, he binds us together. Our words do not simply drop into a void but the wind of the Spirit blows through our words and we enliven one another.

And now we speak of a mystery. The binding of two souls in one relationship points to the mystery of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in perfect, delightful communion.

Some feeling the weight of separation and dualism in this world, embrace the idea that we are all part of the same substance: it is only illusion that separates. I believe it is sin the separates us not only from God but also from one another.

Evil must be overcome. And King Jesus breaks the power of evil through His own life, death and resurrection. He invites us to sup with Him and with one another. By His grace alone, we are transformed to living by the flow of love. By His grace alone, can we enjoy true communion with God and one another.

From time to time, we experience but a glimpse of this perfect harmony of love in our worship and in our conversations, in our art, and in our relationships. These glimpses stir us to strain forward toward the day of His appearing when love will be made complete.

All things have been made in Him and all things will be gathered together in him. In the end, our nativities that bring together shepherd and wise men and craftsman and villagers will become reality and all will behold a cosmic nativity before the King of the past, present and future. The King who is all in all: over all, in all, exceeding all, sustaining all, filling all, ruling all.

O come let us adore Him.

O Oriens: “O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.”

In the deep dark of human depravity, the Son dawns. Light bursts up and out from the tiny babe and radiates the warmth of uncreated love. The Son has come and nothing will ever be the same.

Every tiny detail of His life illuminates the human heart with a love supreme. From His miraculous birth to His hidden childhood, from His impassioned preaching and healing ministry to His death, burial and resurrection, the Son reveals the beauty of the Lord.

This light shining and overcoming darkness is the standard of all that is beautiful. Without light, no beauty. Without light, nothing. Without light, formlessness and void. Light reveals shape, color, harmony, as well as the lack of shape, color and harmony.

Light exposes and defines all things. Thus light creates and reveals the distinction of each particular thing but it also integrates all particular things into a harmonious whole. Thus moving away from the light, the soul dis-integrates, stumbling into nothingness and chaos.

We were created for the light of His glory and in the deepest recesses of our hearts we long to behold His beauty. Like the psalmist we cry, “Whom have I in heaven but you O Lord, and to be near you, I desire nothing on earth.”

His beauty satisfies a hunger that cannot be fed outside Him. “One thing I have asked of the Lord, “One thing I have desired of the LORD, that will I seek: That I may dwell 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.” (Psalms 27:4)

The longing to behold the babe in the manger reveals the ever-longing heart’s desire to catch a glimpse of the beauty of the Lord. It is the beauty of the Lord that converts the soul: not morality lessons. It is the beauty of the Lord that transforms the mind: not rational discourse. It is the beauty of the Lord that calls us and strengthens us to love and be loved in return.

We may build a tower of words that give us some sense of mastery and control in this world, but deep inside we long for more: we long for the beauty of the Lord. Beauty converted the great saints of old. Augustine beheld a love beyond love and his soul found a rest beyond rests, so that he could utter, “My heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”

Thomas Aquinas spent a lifetime defending the faith. With brilliant erudition, He argued line upon line for the canons of the church. His voluminous writings established a way and thinking and responding to all the world. And yet, this genius of a man beheld just a glimpse of the glory of God, and he was speechless.

He uttered, “I’ve seen the Lord, and all that I’ve written is but dust.” So enraptured by the beauty of the Lord, this gentle giant quit writing and could only stare into the stunning wonder God’s love until he left this earth.

Jonathan Edwards, the great American philosopher, says the beauty of the Lord led him to repentance. It was the beauty of the Lord that captured His heart and broke his heart at the same time. In the majesty and splendor of Jesus’ love, we become aware of how desperately disintegrated and damaged we are by the ugliness of evil.

When Luther cries that he is a mere bag of bones, it simply because he has seen a glory that exceeds any beauty the heart could imagine and he is left to acknowledge his own deep deficiencies.

When we are blind, we simply have no grasp of the reality and repercussions of our deeds. But in the light of His love, we begin to realize the damage we have done and continue to do. Like ripples in a pond, our actions set in motion a chain of actions.

We honk at another person on the highway who happens to be having stressful day already. The honk irritates them and further worsens their mood, so that they are impatient and unkind to the clerk at the drive-in window. She has been having a bad day because of the impatient anger of every customer, combined with the problems of her own life. In her tears, she argues with the manager and then goes home early. And on and on the rippling effects of small offenses continue tear at the very heart of this world.

In a world that perpetuates pain, we long for healing and wholeness. We long to behold the beauty of the Lord. The beauty of His holiness binds up the broken-hearted and the broken world. The beauty of His holiness transforms us, creating ripples of love and harmony.

In the dark before Christmas, may we stretch toward the light, crying out for a vision of the Beautiful One. This is not simply an apparition or some earthly vision of the Lord, but rather it is the inward light of Jesus’ glory revealed by the grace of the Holy Spirit. As his beauty and glory shines into our hearts, our eye is filled with light and all we see is light. Then the wonder of this world returns, and everywhere we turn, we catch but a glimpse of His unfolding glory all around us.

And in joyous we wonder we sing, “O come let us adore Him.”

December 17 – O Sapientia
“O Wisdom, O holy Word of God, you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care. Come and show your people the way to salvation.”

“The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky proclaims his handiwork.”
Psalm 19:1

Everywhere the psalmist looks, he beholds the handprints of God. The rocks really do cry out, “Glory!” The world reverberates with the radiating glory of God’s unfailing love.

In spite of such all-encompassing love, we stumble blindly and curse the light as though it was darkness. Our proclamations of peace flow from hearts of violence. We know the rippling effects of chaos that tear through the heart of all things. As Bob Dylan says, “Everything is Broken.” From broken hearts to broken families to broken countries, we are hurt, and we hurt.

Every cruel word gives plants seed of pain that produces the fruit of cruelty. We long for companions and then we hurt those same companions through selfish acts and words. We long from acceptance but fail to accept others. Life seems to be an endless cycle of pain between humans. The heart aches for salvation.

Into this heart of darkness, shines the light of hope. The Word of the Father, sustaining all things, is made flesh and dwells among us in a frail, baby. The way of Salvation is the way weakness, of frailty, of risk, of humiliation. The way of Salvation comes by the way of death.

He becomes weak, so that we might become strong. He becomes sin so that we might become sinless. He is humbled, so that we might be exalted.

He is born as babe in the manger, so that we might be born as a child of the kingdom.

Into the chaos of creation comes the harmony of God. He bears the breach and reverberates healing love into all things. By His Word of Salvation, the Father calls us into the light, filling us with light and revealing the blinding glory of His radiating love in the heavens above and the earth below.

Come let us behold Him. The Word of God, the hope of humanity, the Savior of the world.

O Antiphons – December 16
We live in response to the resounding Word of God. His earth-shaping voice
shakes creation with the awful danger of unconquerable life. Our yearning
for the complete revealing of Jesus Christ, is merely a response to His
battering waves of love.

Tomorrow, our advent journey intensifies this call and response to the
Creator’s voice. Tomorrow begins seven days of “O Antiphons.” Antiphon
literally means “sounding against” and it calls to mind the alternating call
and response of the liturgy. The liturgy is but a formal recognition of our
human calling to take part in the grand call and response between heaven and
earth.

For seven days, we cry out for the coming Messiah.
O Sapientia (O Wisdom)
O Adonai (O Lord)
O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)
O Clavis David (O Key of David)
O Oriens (O Rising Sun)
O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations)
O Emmanuel (O God with Us)

Each day reveals yet another glorious title of the world’s only Savior. Each
day the intensity of longing builds for the appearance of the coming King.
When he finally comes, the world is scandalized. “For unto a child is born,
and unto us a son is given…”

The shocking fleshly, particularity of the Incarnation topples the towers of
the world’s wisdom. The Word that created the world now coos in the arms of
the virgin Mary. Only fools can proceed to this stable. Holy fools that is.
The powerful are angry, the wise mock, the worldly turn away in disgust. But
the holy fool walks up to the manger, like a humble servant approaching the
throne.

Come all you holy fools and join this motley throng as we respond to call of
God and worship the baby who is “God with us.”