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Welcome to breakpoint, a daily look at an ever changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Coulson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. Though much of America celebrates today as Black Friday, Christians anticipate this time of year for a very different reason. This Sunday begins Advent, a season set aside in the Christian calendar to reflect on the coming of Jesus into the world the first time and also that he will return again a second time. Now, for many Christians, Advent is thought of as just kind of an extended Christmas, but it's much more than that. In fact, this season is one of the greatest gifts from the early church to us. I've asked my friend and colleague Dr. Glenn Sunshine to share his thoughts about this very important time of year. Here's Dr. Sunshine.
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As Christmas approaches, I always find myself connecting to the past, both my family's history and beyond that, to the more distant history of the church through the ages. Perhaps I do that because the theme of Advent is waiting for God to fulfill his promise to save his people. We think back to the centuries the people of Israel waited for the coming of the Messiah, and we look ahead to Jesus return and remember the centuries the Church has been longing for his coming. And pondering those long centuries of waiting gives me a feeling of connection with the past and makes me want to join in with the history and practices of those who, like me, were looking ahead in hope for Jesus return. In line with this, I'd like to introduce you to the O Antiphons, an Advent practice that goes back at least to the 8th century and possibly to the beginning of the 6th century or even earlier. An antiphon is a short response recited or sung during a church service before or after a psalm or canticle. A canticle is a scriptural song, not part of the psalms. The O antiphons were recited before the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, during the Vesper service. That's evening prayer. Each evening from December 17th to December 23rd, the seven days preceding Christmas Eve, one antiphon is recited each night. They are called the O antiphons because each begins with O followed by a name for the Messiah drawn from the Book of Isaiah, supplemented with other scriptures. The O antiphons are an acrostic. If you take the first letter of each of the names of the Messiah in the antiphons in order and then read it backwards, it forms the Latin words ero cross, which means tomorrow I will be there. Since the last antiphon is recited the day before the Christmas vigil, the acrostic is a clever and subtle way of signaling the end of Advent and the arrival of the one predicted by Isaiah and the other prophets described in the Antiphons. The O antiphons are also the basis for the hymn O Come o cum Emanuel. The hymn was originally composed in Latin and was first published in 1710. Only five of the seven antiphons were in the first edition. Additional verses were added, and by 1878 all seven antiphons were included. The Latin hymn was translated into English in 1844 by John Mason Neill. Since the final two verses had not yet been written, most versions of the hymn only have four or perhaps five verses. Eventually the two missing verses were translated into English as well. The melody we use for the hymn first appeared in the hymnal noted in 1851. Thomas Helmore, the compiler of the hymnal, claimed the melody came from a French missal in the National Library, Lisbon, but if it did, no one has been able to find it since. This has led many to suspect that Helmore composed it himself in the style of a chant. O Come, O Come Emmanuel has a tremendous amount of meaning to me personally as it helped me get through the death of my beloved father in law just before Christmas nearly 30 years ago. Pondering the words gave me great comfort as I tried to sort through my feelings about why he had to die and the feeling that the memory of his death would overshadow Christmas for years to come. What the hymn told me was that Eddie's death was precisely the reason for Christmas, that Christ came to deal with the problem of death once and for all and and to open wide our heavenly home. I'd like to suggest that you join the Church through the ages in using the O Antiphons in your personal worship this Advent. They can be found along with relevant scriptural references on the web. I recommend reading the antiphon in order to understand what it is saying, then spending some time reading and meditating on the scriptural texts associated with it. Then pray the antiphon in light of your reading of the Scriptures and and end by singing the verse of the hymn. Spending time with these scriptural texts is a powerful way to prepare you for Christmas and will give you a greater appreciation of just who it is that was born on that night in Bethlehem. And praying the antiphons and singing the hymn will help connect you with the people of God in all times and in all ages who have prayed and sung these very same words to the honor and glory of our savior.
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That was Dr. Glenn Sunshine describing the season of Advent in for the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. And from all of us, Happy Advent. Today's Breakpoint featured Dr. Glenn Sunshine. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources to live like a Christian Today, go to Breakpoint.org.