The "O Antiphons", or Great Antiphons, is the name given to the seven antiphons that are sung or recited with the Gospel canticle, the Magnificat, at Vespers during Advent, in the eight days before Christmas, from 17 to 23 December, in the time of immediate preparation for Christmas. They express the dynamic of wonder, on the part of whoever sings them, before the mystery of the Incarnation.

The antiphon for 20 December, "O wondrous Key of David", depicts Christ's works, His power to open and to close, to free captives from the darkness. The antiphon calls upon the coming of the Messiah as the key that opens, as the Servant of the Lord in His absolute power - to open or to close - and in His role as the Liberator of those held captive by darkness.

The precise origin of the "O Antiphons" is not known. Boethius (480-524) mentions them, suggesting that they were already present in his time. By the eighth century they were in liturgical use in Rome. It is clear, then, that the "O Antiphons" have been part of the liturgical tradition since ancient times. In the time of Pope Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century, they are mentioned in the Liber responsalis sive antiphonarius, as antiphons for the Gospel canticle, the Magnificat, for the seven final days of Advent immediately before Christmas.

The significance of the "O Antiphons" is twofold: each of them highlights one title of the Messiah: O Sapientia (O Wisdom), O Adonai (O Lord), O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse), O Clavis David (O Key of David), O Oriens (O Dayspring), O Rex gentium (O King of the Nations), O Emmanuel (O Emmanuel – God with us). Each of them also refers to Isaiah's prophecy of the Messiah's coming.

Taken in reverse order, their initial letters form two Latin words: »ERO CRAS«: »I shall be tomorrow«, or: »I shall come tomorrow«. The God who comes into the stable, who becomes incarnate, is this Wisdom, the Lord, the Root of Jesse, the Key of David, the Dayspring, the King of the Nations, Emmanuel. To the messianic cries and prayers, Christ all but answers: »I shall come tomorrow.« As the Church's prayer grows, and Christ's coming is awaited, the certainty of His answer grows too - the promise from the end of the book  of Revelation: »Yes, I am coming soon« (cf. Rev 22, 20). These are texts that bear witness to the words of St Paul, who quotes the prophet Joel: "Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved!"

The Messiah's, that is, Christ's final coming is awaited at the twilight of the world, and the Magnificat signifies that the Saviour will come through the Blessed Virgin Mary.

O come, thou Wisdom from on high,
and order all things far and nigh;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go!

O come, O come, thou Lord of might,
who to thy tribes on Sinai's height
in ancient times didst give the law
in cloud, and majesty, and awe!

O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by thine advent here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death's dark shadows put to flight.

O come, Desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace.

O come, thou Rod of Jesse's stem,
free thine own from Satan's tyranny;
from depths of hell thy people save,
and give them victory o'er the grave.

O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home;
make safe the way that leads on high,

and close the path to misery.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear. 

We find ourselves in a unique time and condition of human history, one which almost every inhabitant of the earth has experienced, at least in part. Not even the memories of those who lived through the last two world wars recall a "loss of relationships" and a "loss of a safe environment" on this scale, nor such a restriction of freedom of movement. Under bombs and shells, in underground air-raid shelters, people ran together, often gathering in large groups in one place. Stories were told, music was played and songs were sung. Gathering and togetherness have, since the world and mankind began, undoubtedly been the most powerful means in the struggle against fear and anxiety.

The present "standstill of life" caused by the COVID-19 pandemic takes from human beings, even more than wars do, the thing that matters most: human contact. In the situation imposed upon us, everything obvious and customary seems to have come to a halt, reducing our human life to a few basic things: food, medical care and work (for those fortunate enough to have a job). This is therefore a rather radical time,  one that reduces human life to its "bare structure", much as in a prison. What affects some people most is the fact that they find themselves in complete solitude, without a single glance or a single contact, without the chance to greet or have close contact with those dearest and closest to them. For the great majority, this has been reduced at least considerably as well. Those who had more severe symptoms, and with whom we had the opportunity to speak, say  that they now understand what the word hell means.

Something similar was described by Michel Foucault, in the chapter he devotes to the Panopticon, the ideal prison designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1791. The same thing is now happening in villages, towns and cities alike, in rich and poor countries throughout the world: on a given day, everyone is ordered to shut themselves up in their own house;  leaving is severely punished, even on pain of death; the mayor personally goes to lock the door of every house, keeping the key until it is handed to an overseer who holds it until the quarantine ends; each household is provisioned with food and drink, and small wooden channels are set up between the street and the interior of the houses so that everyone can receive their ration without any contact at all; anyone who absolutely must leave the house may do so only one at a time, avoiding every encounter; each person shuts themselves in, each at their own window, answering only when their name is called. The order applies to everyone. Its purpose is to establish order and to overcome the chaos caused by a disease which spreads whenever people come into close contact - an evil multiplied by the fear and death that strike everyone, especially the infected.

The  antiphon "O wondrous Key of David" is founded on two citations: from Isa 22, 22 ("I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David: he shall open, and none shall shut; he shall shut, and none shall open"), directed against Shebna, the steward of the palace, and the installation of Eliakim (cf. Rev 3, 7: the key of David – Christ); and the first song of the suffering servant, from Isa 42, 7 ("to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness").

The Old Testament texts from which the antiphon is drawn belong to the period of the Babylonian exile and the people's longing to be freed from that deadly prison. God hears the people's cry and answers it through the figure of Cyrus, and their return to the land is made possible by the edict he issued. In this experience of liberation we cannot fail to find a figure of what Jesus Himself would fulfil for every human being: the final liberation from the darkest prison of sin and death!

The prophet Isaiah speaks of Eliakim, master of the royal palace of David in Jerusalem, who comes to that position in place of Shebna, who had abused his authority through his pride and vain glory.

In Isaiah we find this event described through the image of a key. As Chesterton says, "a key is, first of all, a thing that has a shape. It is something that depends entirely on retaining its shape. Even a small change can mean that it can no longer unlock the lock.

Second, the shape of the key itself is a rather fantastic shape. Yet the key is not a matter of abstraction or of some kind of interpretation. It either fits the lock or it does not. It can either open it, or it cannot.

Third, since a key is necessarily a thing made to a design, there is undoubtedly much in a key that seems complex. Only one thing about it is simple. It opened the door…because it fits the lock. After that, some new space opens up within us and before us. And the way lies open before us..."

The key is a sign of power. The keys were entrusted to the steward of the house. The king entrusted him entirely with the care of his estate, of all the treasure kept in the palace. The protocol for the handing over of the keys required that they be placed on his shoulder, as an expression of the weight of the responsibility he had taken on. Isaiah's prophecy probably refers to this gesture: "To us a child is born, to us a son is given. The government is upon his shoulder" (Isa 9, 5). Power is expressed in the image of opening or closing, an action that only one who holds such power can perform. This is the power that Christ holds as the new David, as the chosen and anointed Messiah - to save His people from the slavery of sin and death, which is accomplished through Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

The imminent birth of the Messiah is therefore the moment at which humanity discovered the lost key of its destiny. In the book of Revelation, the Messiah has already won the victory: "The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens" (Rev 3, 7). The Lord Jesus possesses the key of the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of David, that is, He holds supreme authority over it. And in the image of the city of David He holds power over every nation, city, house, and every person.

The authority to which the antiphon refers, with the expressions "key" and "sceptre", is Christ as the conqueror of death, as Rev 1, 17-18 reminds us: "I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades". This authority was given to Him for His final victory over death, which He achieved through His death and resurrection.

The expression "darkness and the shadow of death" recalls the times of the prison cell, of dungeons where no light of day ever reaches. These visions of darkness are often used as metaphors for the depression, sorrow and despair that afflict humanity: "to free the prisoners from the prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness" (Isaiah 42: 6-7).

When, shortly before Christmas 1944, Dietrich Bonhöffer put this same longing into words, he was in the prison of the Berlin Gestapo. When the key turned in the lock, and only a Nazi guard appeared, how must Bonhöffer have felt? The door slams shut again and the key turns once more in the lock. Once again he remains alone in the darkness of the prison cell. It is well known that the story has a tragic end for Bonhöffer, who nonetheless says: "Today let the candles burn, warm and bright, that you have brought into our darkness. Gather us together again, if it is possible, that we may be together. We know that your light shines in the night."

Dom Prosper Guéranger beautifully describes the invocation of Christ as the Key of David in this liturgical season: " Today, at least, a mother's breast still offers you a sweet and quiet refuge, in which you receive nothing but the witness of the tenderest and most reverent love. But, O Lord, you must go out from that blessed refuge. You, O eternal Light, must shine forth in the midst of darkness, for the prisoner whom you have come to free languishes in his prison. He lies in the shadow of death, and will perish if you do not come at once and open the door with your almighty Key! The prisoner, O Jesus, is the human race, a slave to its own faults and vices. Come and break the yoke that oppresses and degrades it! The prisoner is our heart, which too often remains enslaved to sins it will not renounce. Come, divine Liberator, save all those you have come to free by your grace, and raise up in us the dignity of your brethren."

 

In his book Waiting on the Word: A Poem a Day for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, the contemporary poet Malcolm Guite reflects on humanity's desperate need for the return of the Word, of Christ - the forgotten root, seed and tree of every living thing. This is the Christ who comes on the night of Christmas:

He speaks of crying out for a key he once threw away,

a key that  used to turn at a familiar touch

and lift the latch so gracefully,

opening his darkness to the light of day.

He longs for it to come again, quickly, to set him free,

a key that fits every wound of his life.

 

"O Clavis" (O Key) is, in fact, a vivid account of Guite's own experience of depression. He recalls accompanying his mother as a boy to have a key made. The key was large and old-fashioned, and when the locksmith began to cut the metal, he remembers a feeling of unease as he listened to the loud sound of the cutting. His sonnet "O Clavis" describes just such an image of a key, cut and shaped to measure,  for Christ's suffering. As he wrote his sonnet, he reflected on how much Christ had to suffer, to be "cut", in order to become the key that would open the door of freedom for the human race: he has described coming to see, in this image, Christ's Passion, the blows of the hammer he received, the seeking and finding  of his wounds - the cut, as it were, that makes Christ the key that finally fits, unlocks, opens and heals our woundedness.

There are situations with no way out. No solution. It is part of the human experience that one cannot help oneself, that someone else must come to unlock the prison and set one free. Not the actual gaoler, but the one who has power over real life, over the whole reality of life.

 

Come, Key of David! Come, Lord! The time of waiting will soon be complete. Come and tell us: " You are saved!"

You are the key that can draw us out from the prison walls of death and darkness, anguish and hopelessness. You are the key that can  open the prison of the whole world and reveal the white dawn of salvation. Your coming into the darkness of our life is the key to our salvation.