O Come, O Come, Emmanuel—the O Antiphons!

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 20, 2024

You may have heard about the seven “O Antiphons” that close Advent and lead up to Christmas. One is assigned to each day from December 17th through December 23rd. Since all Sundays and Solemnities are celebrated beginning the evening before their calendar dates, and since Christmas is very definitely a Solemnity, there is no Advent O Antiphon on December 24th. Our in-house specialist in the liturgical year, Jennifer Gregory Miller, has been drawing attention to the “O Antiphons” ever since she developed the liturgical year resources on CatholicCulture.org.

But if you are anything like me in having only the very tiniest of liturgical brains, you may not ever really have paid much attention to them. At the same time, though, you are already very familiar with them if you know the song “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”. Each of this hymn’s seven verses is simply a longer, more poetic, and more musical way of expressing its corresponding antiphon. The only significant difference is that the very first verse of the song is actually the seventh or last of the antiphons. Thus, the title “O Come, O Come, Emmanual” is drawn from the final and climactic antiphon: “O Emmanuel, our King and Giver of Law: come to save us, Lord our God!”

We owe the current English translation of the hymn primarily to John Mason Neale (1818-1866), an Anglican priest who was profoundly influenced by the same Oxford Movement in England that propelled St. John Henry Newman into the Catholic Church. This text is based on the Latin antiphons that accompany the Magnificat canticle of Evening Prayer from December 17th through December 23rd. They date back to at least the eighth century, and were apparently versified in the eighteenth century, from which Neale made his translation.

Seven recognitions of the Messiah

Through these successive antiphons, the Church expresses her yearning for the coming of the Savior by praising Christ as the wisdom of God, the lord and ruler of Israel, the root of Jesse, the key of David, the Dayspring, the king of nations, and Emmanuel—the name prophesied by Isaiah (7:14), which means “God is with us”, and which St. Matthew applies to Christ in his gospel (1:23). As has been justly noted by many writers, the meaning of this name is also emphasized in the last verse of Matthew’s gospel (28:20): “Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

As the O Antiphons developed historically they became the seven antiphons surrounding the Magnificat in the Office of the seven days preceding the vigil of Christmas. They were so named (obviously) because each of these antiphons began with the reverent “O”, a one-letter word used in the vocative sense of “an invocation”. The term suggests awe in the presence of the Holy, that is, a sense of wonder and devotion. Sometimes in today’s informal spirit we may consider “O” to be over-used in formal prayers—an attempt to infuse an intensity that may be only rarely felt—but it can be an important pointer to how we ought to approach God in prayer, and of course it works wonderfully in a hymn.

Indeed, hymns by their very nature are supposed to reflect a certain spiritual intensity, and when the syllable fits the poetic meter it strikes just the right note of adoration. When we reflect that this series of “verses” has far more than a thousand-year history of usage in the Church, suddenly the singing of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” takes on new spiritual depths, the depth not only of God Himself but of His Church both awaiting and welcoming Him down through many hundreds of Christian years.

Advent and Christmas?

This raises the question of whether “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” should be sung also during the Christmas season. After all, during Christmas we should be welcoming Our Lord ever more deeply into our lives, yet a minor problem for Advent itself is that there seem to be so few really good Advent songs as compared with Christmas songs. And among the ten recommendations of Advent songs from the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” heads the list.

Still, there are others. A great example, while not written by a Catholic and more often performed than sung by friends and family, is Elanor Farjeon’s “People Look East”. As a caution to music directors, I would note that this one tends to lose its charm without a fairly quick tempo. While many recordings can be found on the Internet, it is hard to find one of truly superb quality. The first verse will give you a taste:

People, look east. The time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the guest, is on the way.

A third excellent Advent selection is the far simpler “Comfort, Comfort, O My People”. Whatever the choices, I would suggest that it is an excellent practice for families to sing “carols” not only during Christmas season but in other seasons as well. The songs I have cited here will help with Advent, which is probably the next singing season most people would add. We tend to rely on “videos” to create our family entertainment nowadays, and that dependency has many obvious drawbacks—most especially in that it does not include the same degree of genuine participation and it involves very little personal interaction. Singing together more frequently would be a large step forward in family life and among friends.

The verses

To conclude, then, here is a table showing the O Antiphons* as paired with the verses of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”:

Dec 17

Antiphon 1: O Wisdom of our God Most High, guiding creation with power and love: come to teach us the path of knowledge!

Verse 2: O come, O Wisdom from on high, who ordered all things mightily; to us the path of knowledge show and teach us in its ways to go.

Dec 18

Antiphon 2: O Leader of the House of Israel, giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai: come to rescue us with your mighty power!

Verse 3: O come, O come, great Lord of might, who to your tribes on Sinai’s height in ancient times did give the law in cloud and majesty and awe.

Dec 19

Antiphon 3: O Root of Jesse’s stem, sign of God’s love for all his people: come to save us without delay!

Verse 4: O come, O Branch of Jesse’s stem, unto your own and rescue them! From depths of hell your people save, and give them victory o’er the grave.

Dec 20

Antiphon 4: O Key of David, opening the gates of God’s eternal Kingdom: come and free the prisoners of darkness!

Verse 5: O come, O Key of David, come and open wide our heavenly home. Make safe for us the heavenward road and bar the way to death’s abode.

Dec 21

Antiphon 5: O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come and shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Verse 6: O come, O Bright and Morning Star, and bring us comfort from afar! Dispel the shadows of the night and turn our darkness into light.

Dec 22

Antiphon 6: O King of all nations and keystone of the Church: come and save man, whom you formed from the dust!

Verse 7: O come, O King of nations, bind in one the hearts of all mankind. Bid all our sad divisions cease and be yourself our King of Peace.

Dec 23

Antiphon 7: O Emmanuel, our King and Giver of Law: come to save us, Lord our God!

Verse 1: O come, O come, Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.

* Note that there are many versions and translations of the O Antiphons. For example, in our liturgical year section for the dates December 17th through December 23rd, we list both a Traditional Antiphon and a Vespers Antiphon. For the table above, I’ve used the texts currently provided by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. There are also many published versions of the song “O Come, O Come, Emannuel”, some of which do not include all seven verses. The J. M. Neale translation used here was done in 1851.