December 23

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

“O Emmanuel”: God with us!

I become speechless when I try to reflect on these words!

God Himself – the Second Divine Person of the Holy Trinity – became Incarnate (became man)! And He did this because of His unconditional love for humanity! The Supreme Being, the Creator, the Ruler of the Universe became one of us in order to save us!

God the Son became man! He lowered Himself to take on human nature and all that includes except sin. He had to be cared for by His mother Mary when a baby – changing His diapers, helping Him to eat, teaching Him to walk and talk. And at the end of His earthly life, rather than call upon legions of angels to come and fight His enemies, Jesus freely offered Himself up to endure the cruelest form of torture, to be humiliated having His clothes torn off and mocked, to be abandoned by those friends He loved and to suffer death by crucifixion. And to know God did this for you and for me! God came down to be one with us – Emmanuel – to demonstrate that without a doubt God loves us, cares about us and wants us to be with Him in heaven eternally. And in this act of becoming incarnate, God shows us that He can truly relate to our own earthly experiences of pain, sadness, loss, humiliation and suffering. But God shows us that He has a plan – a plan that will transform our lives if we only turn to Him with faith, trust and obedience to His will. And by uniting ourselves to Christ and conforming our will to God’s, we will receive an eternal reward – being in heaven with God along with the angels and Saints and experiencing happiness, peace, love and joy that we cannot even remotely conceive!

These 7 beautiful antiphons are now complete. We can look back over this past week and proclaim, “O Wisdom, O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Radiant Dawn, O King and O Emmanuel!” And now we await the celebration of Christ’s first coming in Bethlehem and eagerly prepare our hearts and minds daily for Christ’s Second Coming at the End of Time!

O Wisdom, O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Radiant Dawn, O King, O Emmanuel!