O Come O Come Emmanuel

I have been posting what are known as the O Antiphons on their appropriate days; I discussed them in more detail here. Most people are not all that familiar with the O Antiphons, but they are familiar with the classic hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel, which was written to incorporate all the O Antiphons into a digestible hymn.

If you read the original Latin O Antiphons, you will notice there is an overarching message, beseeching God to come.

Monastic humor is seen if you look backwards at them in reverse order:

O Emmanuel
O Rex
O Oriens

O Clavis
O Radix
O Adonai
O Sapientia

The capital letters spell ERO CRAS in an acrostic that roughly spell out in Latin: ‘Tomorrow I will come!”.

You can witness this in the original Latin form of O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

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