You can hear the antiphon sung in Latin here, along with the Magnificat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt4ZkVqooLs
O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their saviour,
come and save us, O Lord our God.
O Emmanuel (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23)
Our king and our lawgiver (Isaiah 32:22, following the translation of the Vulgate)
The hope of the nations (Genesis 49:10, following the translation of the Vulgate)
And their saviour (1 Timothy 4:10)
The O Antiphons are associated with the singing of the Magnificat during the Church’s prayer at
evening. Of course, we also pray in the morning. For the last few years, we’ve been praying
Morning Prayer on Zoom, originally due to COVID restrictions, but now mainly as a way of
making common prayer accessible to more people. I prepare a series of PowerPoint slides to
take us through the liturgy. For each reading I look for an image that reflects some aspect of the
text. As a result, I’ve looked through scores of paintings and sculptures (thank you Google!).
One artist who comes up over and over again is He Qi whose nativity scene is above.
He Qi is a Chinese Christian who grew up as a teenager during the Cultural Revolution. His
ability as an artist was noticed and he spent many of his days painting portraits of Chairman
Mao, something very popular at the time. Somehow, he came across a copy of Raphael’s
Madonna and Child and was so moved by it that he took to painting Madonnas during his free
time at night. The encounter with Raphael’s art contributed to his decision to become a
Christian. He went on to study mediaeval art at the Hamburg Art Institute in Germany. He later
earned a Ph.D. in religious art from the Nanjing Art Institute in China. One commentator on Qi’s
work says “It is Chagall meets Matisse meets Picasso meets the East” (Richard Melheim, Preface
to the Art of He Qi). The image above is a good example of this fusion of cultural expression. He
achieves a synthesis of traditional Chinese folk painting with mediaeval and western forms. The
painting embodies what it proclaims: Emmanuel. God with us — God contained by no single
cultural form, not limited to people from only one part of the world. The gospel proclaimed to
and embodied by the Chinese, not just Europeans.
We usually sing the O antiphons as they have been woven together into the hymn “O Come, O
Come, Emmanuel.” When we sing this antiphon in the hymn, we sing it “mourn[ing] in lonely
exile here, until the Son of God appear.” We are brought back again to the paradox of Advent
expectation and hope. The promise has already been fulfilled. Christ was born, he lived, died,
and was raised from the dead. What can it possibly mean then to sing of being “in lonely exile”?
It helps to remember that world that is full of all kinds of exiles. Exiles are not people who are
just wandering around, flâneurs, folks on package tour. Exiles have been separated from home
and their orientation and concern is to be able to return there.
Christians know where home is, or who home is, for our hearts are restless until they rest in
God, as St. Augustine says. Perhaps our challenge in prayer is to embrace being exiles. “For here
we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). “Our
citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). Though we know where we belong, we recognise
that there are still things that hold us captive. Perhaps that is why this antiphon’s cry is the
most basic and primal of all: Save us!
We have been praying for God to come to us. We in turn now come to God. Our prayer is to
sharpen not dull our longing, to align our thought and action Godwards. Though exiled, we
rejoice for God is indeed with us.
At this time, mercy itself came down in Christ for sinners, “truth” itself for the straying,
and “life” itself for the dead … God born of God becomes a human being born of a
human being. (Leo the Great, Christmas homily, 443)
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