THE ADVENT PROSE: DESOLATION, ABANDONMENT, PROMISE & LIBERATION Fr. Mark Greenaway-Robbins, December 7th, 2013. I first heard it sung in Jerusalem, that city where even the stones are filled with longing and desire; where the inhabitants live life in the imperative. It was the season of Advent. I was nineteen and living at St. George's Anglican Cathedral where I became immersed in the Liturgy of the Church and the politics of the Holy Land. I was sat near the nave altar in the Cathedral. In my mind's eye I can still hear and see a priest who during the Mass sang the following text: Pour down, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness.
(Isaiah 45:8)
This opening refrain is taken from the prophet Isaiah (45.8). The full text is known as The Advent Prose. It has been described as giving "exquisite poetical expression to the longings of Patriarchs and Prophets, and symbolically of the Church, for the coming of the Messiah". (Henry, Hugh. "Rorate Coeli." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912.) Curiously, in spite of its name, it is a poem of longing for Christ. The Advent Prose is a distinctive text from the Tradition of the Church which can be sung, or said, at Mass and also at Morning and Evening Prayer during Advent. This poem is a compilation of verses from the prophet Isaiah. It comprises four stanzas with a refrain which can be found on page four of your Sunday bulletin. Let's hear the first verse: Turn your fierce anger from us, O Lord, and remember not our sins forever. Your holy cities have become a desert, Zion a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation; our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you. Here the speaker is addressing God and describes an experience of desolation.
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(Isaiah 64:9-11)
The second verse continues: We have sinned and become like the one who is unclean; we have all withered like a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have swept us away. You have hidden your face from us, and abandoned us to our iniquities.
(Isaiah 64.6-7)
The text is taken from verses. The speaker continues to address God, now with a sense of abandonment. By the mid-point in this poem, with the speaker, we have a sense of the power of sin in our lives. The experience of wrong-choices and wrong-doing in our lives can lead us, and should lead us, into a place of desolation and abandonment. Our circumstances can seem hopeless. Then it is God who now speaks, in verse three: You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know me and believe me. I myself am the Lord, and none but I can deliver; what my hand holds, none can snatch away.
(Isaiah 43.10, 13)
God promises to save and deliver. God speaks a promise of salvation in the mist of desolation and abandonment. In fourth and last verse it is God again who speaks: Comfort my people, comfort them; my salvation shall not be destroyed. I have swept your offences away like a cloud; fear not, for I will save you. I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your redeemer. (Isaiah 40.1; 46.13; 44.22; 43.1, 14-15.)
Here God speaks as the source of our liberation.
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So in four verses the Advent Prose takes us on a journey from desolation, though abandonment to promise and a climax of liberation. And the refrain suffuses the poem with a plea for righteousness. Advent, the season of joyful expectation, is given renewed depth and meaning if we pray and ponder The Advent Prose. Please join me in praying and reflecting upon these words from the prophet Isaiah. Who among us today is in a place of desolation? Who today feels abandoned and distant from God? Let us pound upon the doors heaven praying: Pour down, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness. The promises of God have been guaranteed to us in the mystery of the Incarnation. Join with me in claiming our liberation by putting our trust in Jesus Christ! Our true and only hope is though faith in Jesus Christ. Cast off your false gods, don't bother practicing a spirit of optimism, rather put on the Lord Jesus Christ, the source of all our hope and joy. Comfort my people, comfort them; my salvation shall not be destroyed. I have swept your offences away like a cloud; fear not, for I will save you. I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your redeemer.
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