The 'O' Antiphons: 23rd December

O Emmanuel – You are our King and Judge,
the one whom the peoples await and their Saviour.
Come and save us Lord Jesus, Come.

The time of waiting is coming to an end. Soon the mystery of the Incarnation will be re-enacted once more in our liturgical celebrations and especially in our hearts. What have we to offer the Christ Child this year? Maybe not much, and yet the whole raison d’être for his coming hinges round the question – why is the Father about to send his own Beloved Son to take on our humanness, our earthiness, our poverty?
God sends his Son for one reason only: because he loves us – in fact he is madly in love with us.

Will we ever fathom this reality? He comes in silence, in lowliness, in poverty to knock at our door and asks us to give him a lodging for the night – for every night.
All he asks of us is an empty space where he can rest and find us waiting and watching for him.
Wouldn’t you think that we should come to God laden with the gold of good deeds? No – definitely no – the gift I must give my God is my brokenness. The thing God is waiting for me to offer him is the point where I am characteristically weak. This is the place, the stable where Jesus knocks with his baby hands and pleads with me -- may I come in? Give me lodgings in your inn.

For the past few weeks the cry Maranatha - Come Lord Jesus has been our spoken and unspoken prayer. But there is another side to this longing desire. While looking for a quotation in my bible I chanced to open Chapter 2 in the Song of Songs, where the Bridegroom speaks to his Bride: “Come my lovely one, come.”
It came home to me very forcibly - not only am I pleading with Jesus to come but far more earnestly is he saying to me:
“Come then my love, my lovely one come,
Show me your face,
Let me hear your voice”
Two hearts were meeting and held momentarily in stillness.

How well Blessed Teresa understood the need Jesus has for our love, when she wrote:
“We need to know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for us.”

And so, when he comes may he find us watching in prayer, our hearts filled with wonder and praise as we look at Mary who bore Jesus in her womb with a love beyond all telling.

My God, what a mystery,
Maranatha - Come Lord Jesus come
Delay no longer.