Please follow these links to last year's posts about the first of the Great O-Antiphons, which, as Guéranger asserted, contain the very marrow of the Advent liturgy:
- O Sapientia (the plainchant anthem, with a Baroque Magnificat to match);
- O Sapientia - II (the Latin text with an English translation, plus quotations shewing its derivation from Scripture passages).
Now, I'd best say Vespers...
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Nothing so beautiful as Vespers, the Evening Office of the Church...
How appropriate, too, it is that the lesser doxology, the Glory be, when in worship one bows the head at least if not the upper body, is sung or said seven times in this Hour - after the opening versicle, after each of the five psalms, and after the glorious canticle of the Blessed Virgin, her very own magnifying of the Lord. (In the Monastic Rite, the number seven is preserved, for there is one less psalm, but after the little chapter a short responsory with doxology instead.)
Together with the doxology that concludes the Collect, the Trinity is praised eight times; and if - as usual - the hymn ends with a doxology, the Three-in-One is hailed nine times in total; which surely has a mystical significance. The mediævals would have delighted in this!
I decided to sing the Advent hymn and versicle, and the O Sapientia also...
(It is my custom, for what it's worth, to genuflect at the words of the 4th stanza: Et cælites et inferi / Tremente curvantur genu, with its evident echoes of Isaias xlv, 24 and Philippians ii, 10.)
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