O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, our king and lawgiver, hope of the nations and their Savior: come!  Save us, O Lord our God!

What do we see through the round window of O Emmanuel?

We find ourselves before the sign offered to Ahaz, deep as the netherworld and high as the sky.  He is shown a young woman who will give birth to a child, whose name is God-with-us.  There have been many annunciations.  An angel told Hagar that she would bear Ishmael, a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him.  Abraham heard an angel say his wife Sarah would have a child, and she laughed.  Another angel told the wife of Manoah that she would bear Samson, a man stirred by God’s spirit.  Our forebears were familiar with prophecies of birth.  Great men would come and go, but the yearning for the king and lawgiver, the savior and messiah, brought to fever pitch over centuries, was unfulfilled.  They knew God as totally transcendent, yet intimately involved in human affairs.  But they did not know that he would come even closer, putting on mortal flesh to transform it into his own eternity.

What are we asking for?  What is our need, our desire, our hope?

We need to be saved.
More than this: we need the Savior.  We need the One who knows us through and through to make known his presence among us and within us.  Not just in an imaginary way – a comforting thought with no more than a placebo effect – or as a wish-fulfilling myth – a vague fantasy, a dream, or a longing to see the divine manifest in time – but in a real and transformative way.  In a way that touches our flesh with transcendence.  We need to receive the sacramental presence of our Lord and God into our bodies and lives, that our world and those who live in it may become, not just a better place with better people, but radiant with his eternal image and likeness.

We stand in the name of the Church and for the people of the world we pray: Come to us, O Emmanuel, child of the virgin, make known to us the presence of the transcendent God in the intimacy of our bodies, hearts, and lives, but do not stop there.  Reveal in us the new humanity brought about by your incarnation.  Make us Christs.

Image: Linda Witte Henke, The Great O Antiphons