O Emmanuel!
- O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
- the hope of the nations and their Saviour:
- Come and save us, O Lord our God.
As the days and now hours until Christmas draw near our prayers seem even more urgent. Come and save us, O Lord our God! The hymn O Come O Come Emmanuel, which draws entirely upon these O Antiphons begins by saying, ransom captive Israel. Often I believe Christians have taken this idea of God’s paying a ransom of his son in the wrong way. Too many times we have allowed ourselves to see God and the devil on an equal playing field and wonder what kind of God would demand the death of his son as expiation for our sins. A better explanation of the ransom idea is that God indeed sent his son to rescue us from the power of sin and death, but that once the trade has taken place there is a surprise awaiting those same powers. Christ is infinitely more powerful than the forces of evil and they have no power to hold him.
The second part of this final O Antiphon is found once again in Isaiah,
The Lord himself will give you this sign: the Virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)
Matthew goes on in his Gospel to remind us that the name Emmanuel means, God is with us. Christmas is a time to remember that Christ is indeed with us and that we are never left to battle the forces of sin and death alone. We have, as one of us, a savior who has triumphed over every power that holds us captive.
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