O Radix Jesse: O Root of Jesse
This evening we will meditate on the third of the great O Antiphons of Advent:
O Radix Jesse, O Root of Jesse!
We cry out to you O Root from which all springs,
first fecundity of the Divine!
Come and restore our fruitfulness so long shrivelled and sin wintered!
For we, obsessed only
with the flower that blooms
and is gone so quickly,
spill our tears upon the soiled surface
of the fading petal
and forget the virtue of the root!
O Root of Jesse!
Help us lest we forget that strong growth,
must come from a strong stock,
to come to know a flower that would
outlast the frost
must come from deep roots,
long buried,
and anchored in
the warm womb
of Mother Earth
resting down the long
ages in the divine dark!
O Root of Jesse!
Speak to us of Spring!
Of that new life you bring,
a quickening felt through all creation,
a gospeled spark,
begun in the deep pulse of a seed
now planted
in that gateless garden
so long prepared!
O Root of Jesse!
You are the point of origin
where all begins,
where from eternity time blooms;
where then comes forth from
Now;
until that sprouting moment
where all begins in you anew!
Save us for your harvest of hope!
O Root of Jesse!
Mixing your luminous seed
with the deep humus
of our muddied being
you bring forth new life!
Heal us
and raise us from our barren sleep
of sin and self
inviting us to bloom again
as first intended and
yet more so than even this,
for now,
our roots entwined,
grafted to your Divine stock,
made at last again
one people, one plant, one garden
in which you will walk, delight and dwell.
O Root of Jesse!
We call to you in our evening song
as Adam did,
our gardener father who knew the names of all
and saw your face reflected in his own
until our bloom withered in his hand
plucked from its sustaining root
by selfish desire.
O Root of Jesse!
We sing you our Magnificat,
first sung by Eve our earth Mother,
long silenced since the sundering of her stock,
until she who is Eve and Jesse’s daughter both
became the place of planting
where you,
divine root, and seed, and stock,
now born in time and lulled by her hymn
to sleep before your sorrows
renew in us your
love so radical that we are again
delivered into Eden, rooted in
peace,
God-grafted into grace.
"O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer!"
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