Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

The great Anglican scholar and priest John Mason Neale (1818-1866) not only founded a nursing order of Anglican nuns, helped social welfare organizations care for orphans and young woman, and was a warden of Sackville college, but he translated early and medieval Greek and Latin hymns in his spare time—focusing on the ancient ones that were written around “the feasts and the fasts of the Christian year.”

The most notable of these is “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”

While the hymn as we find it today was first published in the mid-19th century, its origins are actually found in a Benedictine Gregorian chant from the late 8th and 9th century. Beginning the week before Christmas, the monks would sing a verse a day to prepare their hearts and minds for Christmas.

What’s fascinating about the original seven verses is that each began with a Messianic title from the Scriptures that prophesied and foreshadowed Jesus’ coming.

The hymn builds to the fulfillment of the prophecies in Christ.

In some ways, the hymn echoes the hope of the whole Christian life. Our lives and longings find themselves drawn, by fits and starts, to Christ over the course of the Christian journey. We pray and hope that Christ finds in us a place fit to dwell.

This accounts for some of the penitential character of Advent. It’s not quite Lent in its examination of conscience. It’s focus is less on what we’ve done wrong than what we might yet get right as we prepare for the coming of Christ.

In our exile and wandering we fix our hope on Christ. We look for his coming again in, as my grandmother always called it, the consummation of bliss.

That expectation is complex and both individual and corporate. I’m going to spend the next four weeks preaching each Sunday, concluding with Christmas Eve, looking at the messianic expectations of the early Jewish communities, the early Christian churches, the promise we hear in the Magnificat, and the revelation we find in the Incarnation.

This series of sermons takes its launching point from “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” but will find its way through history, theology, prophecy, and a bit of current events too. I hope you’ll join me this Advent in praying with the verses of the hymn and join us Sunday mornings as we explore both its hope and ours.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert