Praying the O Antiphons, day 1: December 17- O Sapientia (Wisdom)

To be prayed at Evening Prayer or Vespers with the Magnificat

Question for meditation:
How does Jesus and his ministry embody the Wisdom of God and call us to do likewise?

Antiphon for December 17:
O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.

Then pray the Magnificat:
And Mary said,
My soul overflows with your greatness, O Adonai;

        My spirit rejoices in you, O Savior of All the Nations!
For the light of your countenance has dawned over me
        despite my humble state.
From now and throughout eternity
        even those yet born will call me Blessed
                and sing of the great things you have done for me,

                exulting in the holiness of your Name.

You pour out your mercy on those who stand in awe of you
        those who revere you,
                from ages untold to ages yet to come.

Your strong arm shields the humble
        and levels the proud in their isolating conceit.
You have razed the thrones of those who rule by might
        while setting the lowly and gentle upon seats of honor.
You have satisfied the hungry with abundant delights
        while giving the rich a begging bowl, 

        sending them away empty-handed.
You have come to the aid of your people unfailingly
        fulfilling your promises to our ancestors,
                to the children of Hagar, Sarah, and Abraham forever,

                standing among us from time immemorial.

Repeat the antiphon:
O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.



Prayer references for the antiphon:
Ecclesiasticus 24:1-3:
“Wisdom praises herself, and tells of her glory in the midst of her people. In the assembly of the Most High she opens her mouth, and in the presence of his hosts she tells of her glory: ‘I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist.'"

Wisdom of Solomon 8:1:
“She [Wisdom] reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other,
and she orders all things well.”

Isaiah 40:10-14:
“See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has directed the spirit of the Lord, or as his counsellor has instructed him? Whom did he consult for his enlightenment, and who taught him the path of justice?Who taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?”

Praying the O Antiphons

An antiphon is a sentence or phrase that is sung or chanted before and after a psalm or canticle in the Daily Office.

Since the 6th century, it has been traditional for Christians to pray the “O Antiphons” before and after the Magnificat (traditional prayed during evening prayer) during the octave—the last 8 days—of Christmas.

There is an antiphon for each of the seven days from December 17 through December 24.

You can find each antiphon and the date to sing or pray it in the Hymnal 1982, hymn 56.

Please join in praying these each evening during these next 7 days, and spend some time meditating upon each title of Jesus.

Expansive language Magnificat

 And Mary said,

My soul overflows with your greatness, O Adonai;

        My spirit rejoices in you, O Savior of All the Nations!
For the light of your countenance has dawned over me
        despite my humble state.
From now and throughout eternity
        even those yet born will call me Blessed
                and sing of the great things you have done for me,

                exulting in the holiness of your Name.

You pour out your mercy on those who stand in awe of you
        those who revere you,
                from ages untold to ages yet to come.

Your strong arm shields the humble
        and levels the proud in their isolating conceit.
You have razed the thrones of those who rule by might
        while setting the lowly and gentle upon seats of honor.
You have satisfied the hungry with abundant delights
        while giving the rich a begging bowl, 

        sending them away empty-handed.
You have come to the aid of your people unfailingly
        fulfilling your promises to our ancestors,
                to the children of Hagar, Sarah, and Abraham forever,

                standing among us from time immemorial.

(reimagined LBS)

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a journey I must take
Alone into my childish fears, and there
Confront my fathers for my children’s sake.

I must go back before I cease to care,
And the world darkens and I cannot move.
Forgiveness is a journey from despair

Along a path my ancestors approve.
I must go back and with them make my peace:
Forgiveness is a journey into love.

-- Alistair Te Ariki Campbell

Place

Once in a while

you may come across a place
where everything
seems as close to perfection
as you will ever need.
And striving to be faultless
the air on its knees
holds the trees apart,
yet nothing is categorically
thus, or that, and before the dusk
mellows and fails
the light is like honey
on the stems of tussock grass,
and the shadows are mauve birthmarks
on the hills.


-- Brian Turner (1944- ), New Zealand poet

This poem was printed on a signpost at Lake Matheson at the place to see this view.

Grace

We cannot buy it in bulk at Trader Joe's,
Swap it for gold, or hoard shares of Grace, Inc.,
To hedge against bad luck. We acquire it
Without contract, promissory notes, or IOUs,
Neither codicils nor fine print. We gather
Grace safe from litigation or severance,
And though we might breach the strictures of creed,
It cannot be forfeited or suspended. Rather,
Grace is asymmetric, parabolic, skewed to love,
Immanent and absolute, but also unpredictable
As quantum particles, both here and there,
Both full and empty, so it might arrive
Inopportunely and thus slip under hope,
Upsetting the earnest prayer, teasing our faith,
Like some rain bands, copious cumuli,
That appear astray, unbidden, in stagnant skies
To drench at last the drought-scourged earth.

--Orlando Ricardo Menes (1958- ), Peruvian-born Cuban poet

Looking West, Late Afternoon, Low Water

The typical tidal range, or difference in sea level between high and low tides, in the open ocean is about 2 ft (0.6 m), but it is much greater near the coasts.—Desk encyclopaedia


Our beach was never so bare. Freak tide,
system fault, inhuman error, will it

never stop falling? After dark, said
the tables of high water and sunset

pasted on the wall, which don’t deceive.
Come on down for a walk while there’s light.

A wall of pale green glass miles above
head high alongside, complete with fish

crossing, is what will have been the wave
once it has broken. Leviathan is

the beached cachalot we left Bob Falla
filleting for science, the ebb to wash

away these fifty years, each one smaller
than the last. Come down, this is today

delivered factory fresh, in colour
heated by the late sun. Time to try

looking on the bright side, or join those
Great God! (says the poem) who’d rather be

suckled in a creed outworn: but whose
cast-off cult’s to be the lucky one?

Great waters, unfinished business, done
blind to the deadline. From that rock, to

this tree was tapu and it sticks. Thin
pickings, Tangaroa, this is pakeha

story time, only Okeanos and
sister Tethys having it off; the way

they love makes hairy cliff-hanging seas
roll drums on the sand, the 3-metre swell

flat on the seabed bangs the pubes,
very ancient and fishlike they smell

close to. Divine all the same. Dangerous,
not to be approached, least of all by

mortal man whose years are four-score plus
tomorrow night. While I count the three

strong swimmers carried past out of sight
round the North Rocks the whole shoreline shakes

underfoot again, dead friends call out
not to be heard. Look west, what looks

back is blood-orange nightfall, the stooped
sky drowning another sun overboard

where the horizon was: till it snapped
those deep-sea moorings and will be heard

oncoming, the sound of a scream, tsunami!
tsunami! splintering deadwood of the boat

I lost half a life ago, swept
away with a judgment on the work

she’s amateur built but your friends won’t know.
Last seen, one inflatable rescue

craft stood on its tuck, bows to skyward
in fast failing light, a turning tide.




-- Allan Curnow (1911-2001), New Zealand poet, teacher, and reporter.

Tangaroa Nui

Last night I dreamed again of tides,
not those tides rocking soundlessly
in caves that shuffle old men off
in their extremity, but those inner
tides that have their source in dreams
where my father, astride the passage,
reins them in with outstretched hands …
I saw again the tides plunging
in harness, sea and sky boiling
together, and myself a child flipped
high into the air by a dolphin,
to float down softly as a feather
past my father’s smiling eyes, past
the wheeling seabirds, to settle
on the sand and fall fast asleep
with the tide beating in my ears
as surely as the heart of him
who checks the pulse and flow of things
and holds time in his hands.


-- Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (1925-2009), New Zealand poet of Cook Islands and Pakeha ancestry

Tangaroa is the god of the sea.

Image: surf at Napier, Hawke Bay

Among the Redwoods

Farewell to such a world! Too long I press
   The crowded pavement with unwilling feet.
Pity makes pride, and hate breeds hatefulness,
   And both are poisons. In the forest, sweet
The shade, the peace! Immensity, that seems
To drown the human life of doubts and dreams.

Far off the massive portals of the wood,
   Buttressed with shadow, misty-blue, serene,
Waited my coming. Speedily I stood
   Where the sun wall rose roofed in plumy green.
Dare one go in?— Glance backward! Dusk as night
Each column, fringed with sprays of amber light.

--E. R. Sill (1841-1887) published in The Atlantic in 1884)

Today's Adventword was "peace."

Snap

What if the wave were to stop
just as it is, snap-frozen?

What if the blowsy wave flowers stopped,
a rip in the valance, each fine blue stitch
and still holding its silver needle?

What if the sea did indeed stop
and all the vegetable armies, the grasses,
mad bunches on the stony dike,

the lupins, their heavy perfume stopped,
the starfish, pale asterisk on the stony page,
the polyps stopped, their strange juices frozen?

What if the gulls and all the terns all stopped
and the tiny black swallows
that zip up and down the midnight lagoon?

What if the sun itself were to stop,
no longer rinsing blue from the loveliest ice chamber?

Then we would be the wonders here,
like the seals, little fallen angels in the dry valley.
The bones in our hands smoothed
like long white gloves, our fine pelt wind-dried,
gravel in our brain pans and our eyes.

-- Bernadette Hall, New Zealand teacher and poet, from Fancy Dancing, 2020