O Key of David

O Key of David, scepter of the house of Israel, what you open none can shut, and what you shut, none can open: come!  Bring the prisoner out of his dungeon where he sits in darkness and the shadow of death!

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

We find ourselves before a symbol of authority, a royal scepter, a key resting on the shoulder of one who wields dominion, the sovereign freedom to go in and go out, to bring in or to shut out, to bind or to loose.  This key can only be given by God to one who will stand as a father to the people, a servant of the servants of God.  Our forebears knew God as one who took it on himself to enter their place of darkness and gloom, their imprisonment in misery and chains, with power to bring them forth from under the shadow of death, to break their chains asunder.  They experienced this historically as a people led out of exterior straits to a broad place of peace and freedom, but they also experienced it more deeply on the level of each one’s inner being, led out of the captivity of sin, the illusory freedom that only closes in.

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

We need to be released.
We need the key to unlock the prisons in which the people and societies of our time lie captive.  We need to loose the tight and suffocating circle of addiction, the endless craving for that which cannot satisfy but only sucks life out of body and spirit.  We need to open the deathly dungeon of chronic violence that eats at the moral fiber of one’s being, at the fabric of society.  We need release from seemingly inescapable poverty that erodes the person, one’s self-esteem, the capacity to grow beyond one’s limitations, the possibility of creative action.  We need a way out of the hell of abuse of every kind and its soul-destroying effects.

We stand in the name of the Church and for the people of the world we pray: Come to us, O Key of David, Christ crucified and risen from the tomb, enter the confinement of those under the shadow of death and release us from our misery and shame.  Unlock our captive hearts and be yourself our key to the freedom of the children of God.

Image: Linda Witte Henke, The Great O Antiphons