Meditation on the Fifth of the Great O Antiphons of Advent, the invocation of longing chanted at sundown on the Winter Solstice:
Lux Oriens! O Rising Sun!
O Rising Sun!
On the day of the least light
and the deepest dark
we call you!
Come to us O promised light!
Gazing upon the eastern edge
of the world
we thrill,
as from our long benighted being
the first dayspring spark is cast,
and a red dawn heralds
a conqueror’s coming!
O Rising Sun!
You who are light from light,
scatter upon us
the uncreated light by which our dull eyes
may even now behold
the dawn of your presence!
Illume us as lanterns,
kindle us as fires,
breathe your flame upon us as beacons
in a world so cold,
and a winter of the heart so dark,
we oft forget the dawn that has come,
is come,
will come again,
needing our annual remembering
to rekindle our rebirth in you
O Son!
O Rising Sun!
We long for your dawn
down the dark and ancient ways of ancestry
Feeling in our old yearning
the gathering of ghostly generations
who followed their deepest knowing,
that map,
long inscribed upon the centre
of our being
but written in a sacred script
unknown to eyes lost to Eden’s light.
For they,
So desperate for the
warming of a presence
they remembered
but did not know
wrought stone,
and marked ways,
and offered song,
and told story,
and gathered green,
and even spent
blood,
to charm back an earthly sun
while truly seeking
for the Divine Son
who would warm
the winter of our heart
and make of Himself
the sacrifice that brings
the light back
for an eternal day
O Rising Sun!
We call you by our evening invocation!
Kindling our vesper candles and vigil lights,
wrapping the wreath of time
in flames of rose and purple,
we sing now the soul song of
the Lady of the Light.
She whose heart blessed beacon
shone so bright in love,
it drew you from
the realms of everlasting day
to that sealed chamber in which,
with quickening touch,
you, the dayspring and the morning star
both
bestowed your spark of glory
and found your home,
issuing forth
as Word and Light
to bestow the blessing
of a dawn from our Midwinter night,
that re-orients us to righteousness,
and reveals the Light beyond all night,
Bethlehem born and blazing,
as the true and victorious
Son.
"O Rising Sun!
Splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death!"
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