If you have not heart Melinda Reese’s rendition of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” then you have missed out. I have included a link here for you to listen. You can join the other over 13 million who have listened to it from around the world. She sings one verse of this Christmas hymn from a church in Montefrio, Spain built sometime between 1786 and 1802. It was modeled after the Pantheon of Agrippa in Rome.
“O Come, O Come Emmanuel”
More About the Hymn
There is a beautiful story behind this hymn. I will quote just a few lines and refer you to a longer blog with the story of the hymn in it.
British hymnologist J.R. Watson provides a context for the antiphons included on the second page after the hymn in the UM Hymnal: “The antiphons, sometimes called the ‘O antiphons’ or ‘The Great O’s’, were designated to concentrate the mind on the coming Christmas, enriching the meaning of the Incarnation with a complex series of references from the Old and New Testaments.”
Each antiphon begins as follows:
O Sapentia (Wisdom)
O Adonai (Hebrew word for God)
O Radix Jesse (stem or root of Jesse)
O Clavis David (key of David)
O Oriens (dayspring)
O Rex genitium (King of the Gentiles)
O EmmanuelPut together, the first letter of the second word of each antiphon spells SARCORE. If read backwards, the letters form a two-word acrostic, “Ero cras,” meaning “I will be present tomorrow.”
All of the Latin attributions to the coming Messiah are from the Old Testament except “Emmanuel,” which is found both in Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23. Matthew quotes Isaiah virtually verbatim—“Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel”—with the exception that Matthew adds the phrase: “which being interpreted is, God with us.”
The “O Emmanuel” antiphon was traditionally sung on the night before Christmas Eve, revealing the meaning of the liturgical riddle through the completion of the acrostic.
Here is a modern rendition of the full hymn.
