The ‘O’ Antiphons

news from Issue No. 49/2007 for Sunday 16th December

These are seven short versus, one of which is sung in turn before & after the Magnificat(See the diary).

Composed in the 7th or 8th century from texts out of the Old Testament, each looks forward to the coming of our salvation and, together, form a rich mosaic of scriptural images popular in the Middle Ages. A curious feature of these antiphons is that the first letter of each invocation in Latin spells out a reverse acrostic. So the first letters of Sapientia, Adonaj, Radix, Clavis, Oriens, Rex and Emmanual, spell the Latin words: ERO CRAS, the Christmas Eve response of Christ himself to his people : “Tomorrow I will be with you”. Today the ‘O’ Antiphones are most familiar to us in the hymn “O come, O Come Emmanuel”, as each verse of the hymn parallels one of the antiphons.