People of the Book – Zephaniah
Inextricable from the Catholic liturgical season of Advent is the reappearance of the hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” The song is to my mind so identified with the season that I always feel deprived if they skip it at Mass for a week this time of year, since we only get four cracks at it!
Believed to be at least eight centuries old (some scholars think as many as 12), the original Latin lyrics reflect upon not only the coming of Emmanuel (in English, God-with-us), but also other beautiful names for Jesus in the later, often skipped, verses stemming from the O Antiphons at traditional vespers services: Sapientia (Wisdom), Iesse Virgula/Radix (Rod of Jesse), Oriens (Dayspring), Clavis Davidica (Key of David), Adonai (Lord), and Rex Gentium (King of the Nations). All of these titles serve as interpretive readings of the Christ event and encourage the People of God to “Rejoice” (Gaude) since the God who has promised redemption has taken his place with them within the very confines of the human drama itself.
In some liturgical cycles, the prophet Zephaniah is read during this season, and an intrinsic connection between his life and prophecy and that of the hymn is fairly self-evident. The prophet predicts the coming “dies irae, dies illa” the day of wrath and mourning that was such an important part of funeral requiem Masses focused on God’s terrible judgment before the liturgical reforms at Vatican II. Zephaniah claims in words that always remind me of the poem Ozymandias “This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that with pride in her heart said ‘I am and there is none beside me’: how is she become a desolation…I have cut off the nations, their strongholds are demolished… made their streets waste, they lie in silent ruin: their cities are destroyed, no one will be left, not one inhabitant” (3:6). The inescapable power of divine judgment resounds throughout the dire prophecy of those who focus only on the self and turn away from God.
However, the Lord does not abandon his wayward people. Zephaniah goes on to exult “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion! Shout for joy, O Israel! Rejoice with all your heart, Jerusalem! For the Lord has taken away your punishment and turned back your enemy; the Lord is in your midst, you need fear disaster no more” (3:14-15). God promises on that day to gather the nations, to save the outcast, “to change shame into praise and renown throughout all the earth” (3:20).
It is the perennial Christian claim that God has achieved this victory in Christ with the Incarnation and Resurrection, and so we yearly remember his coming into our midst. But we also look forward eschatologically to the completion of this victory on that last (quite literally) awesome day; one when, much like Good Friday, we as a people will experience the most terrible and best of all possible moments within time and history. This is the ever-astonishing web of Christian teaching which we must interiorize within our own hearts. God’s fulfillment will cause some to say to the mountains “fall on us” and to the hills “cover us,” begging to “hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb” (Lk 23:20, Rev 6:16). And yet at the same time “The Lord God in our midst is in fact mighty, he has come to save, he will rejoice over thee with singing” (Zeph 3:17).
It is important for us not to be consumed with trying to decipher into which of these groups others can be divided, who’s in and who’s out. It is rather a constant call to associate ourselves with both of them, to realize God’s sovereign unapproachable majesty over creation and our tiny niches of free will he has carved out of a much more complex reality, and our utter dependence on his saving and redeeming love. The prophecies of the O Antiphons and Zephaniah are not about the inhabitants of an ancient civilization or the “sheep and goats” at the end of days; they aren’t about Osama bin Laden or Judas Iscariot. Even less are they about your nonreligious neighbor or twice divorced cousin. As with all calls to spiritual betterment and fortification, they are rather concerned with you and with me. Gaude, Emmanuel! Nascetur pro te Israel.
Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
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