Advent

Peter, a member of our church tells us about Advent.

I love Advent, every year I look forward to it. Amongst other things it means that there are 4 weeks to all the hustle and bustle of Christmas. But what does Advent mean? There is a big clue in the first line of some of the traditional Advent hymns. It comes from the Latin words 'advenio' and 'adventus' which means 'to come' or 'coming, it is the anticipation of the expected coming or promise of the Messiah, Jesus. Hence the hymns 'Come, thou long expected Jesus' 'Hark the glad sound! The saviour comes' and 'On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry announces that the Lord is nigh'

 As a small boy brought up in the Roman Catholic tradition I could say or sing many prayers and hymns in Latin before I could do so in English. One I particularly loved and still do is 'Veni veni, Immanuel' or as we sing it now 'O come, o come Immanuel'. It is a hymn of great promise and speaks constantly of the coming of Jesus. Each verse calls on this coming using a different style or name used in the prophesies of the Old Testament as euphemisms for Jesus. Verse one speaks of 'Immanuel' 'God is with us', verse two of 'Lord of might' self explanatory I suppose! Verse three starts 'Thou Rod of Jesse and refers to Isaiah 11:1 (KJV) 'And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow from his roots' (Jesse was the father of King David, Jesus was a direct descendant of David), verse four calls Jesus 'Thou key of David' which is found in Isaiah 22:22 (NIV) 'I will place on his shoulders the key to the house of David...' and verse five starts 'O come thou Day-spring' which appears in the Song of Zechariah - Luke 1:78 (KJV) 'Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring (Jesus the new dawn) from on high hath visited us' This hymn is based on the 'Oh Antiphons' which refers to the seven antiphons (hymns or prayers) which are chanted before the Magnificat (My soul doth magnify the Lord... Luke 1:46-55) at Vespers, usually by the abbot and/or other leaders in monasteries. Its exact origins are pretty vague but there is evidence of its use at the abbey at Fleury, now known as Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire as far back as the early 5th century. Each of these highlights a title for the Messiah; O Wisdom, O Lord, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Rising Sun, O King of Nations and O God is with us. The original hymn in Latin was probably written by either monks or nuns in the 11th or 12th century, and translated to English by John Mason Neale in the middle of the 18th century. In the original translation Neale started the hymn with the line 'Draw nigh, draw nigh Emmanuel'. Originally written with seven verses it was reduced to five. The title of this hymn is based on Isaiah 7:14 'Therefore the LORD himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.'

So much for the academic explanation - what does this hymn say to me? I like to look at this hymn in two parts the first two verses referring to the past and the remaining three look ahead to the second coming of Jesus. Verse two describes the giving of the ten commandments to Moses. If we read the account of this event in Exodus 19:16 we read that on the day Moses received the commandments there was thunder and lightening (a sign of God's power and majesty), with a thick cloud over the mountain.

Verse three looks at the appalling state of our world today with the awful secular and in some cases such anti-God attitudes which are prevalent in our society today, '...free thine own from Satan's tyranny. From depths of hell thy people save...', is a cry to Jesus to change the way of things and to save us from falling into the ways of the world and to forgive us for our sins.

Verse four calls on Jesus in forgiving us our sin to aid us in our journey through life guiding us in our spiritual life giving us the strength of the Holy Spirit to block us from temptation so that we can gain God's wonderful and personal gift of salvation. I hope you will agree that this hymn has given a great start to this very special season.

1/12/09 MH