Connect 12/08/16

Hey everyone,

Each week leading up to Christmas Eve, we're looking at a major title given to Jesus. Last week we looked at "Emmanuel" (God with us) and this week we're looking at the "Rod of Jesse" from Isaiah 11. These titles come from each verse of the Christmas Carol "O Come Emmanuel".

The person who "discovered" this carol from the 12th century was an Anglican priest named John Mason Neale (1818-1866). Because of a lung disease, Neale was unable to serve as a parish priest so he began a nursing order of Anglican nuns and helped social organizations care for orphans and young women. Neale liked doing something else too. He started a project in which he translated for his fellow Anglicans the great early and medieval Greek and Latin hymns for all the feasts and fasts of the Christian year!

Here's how he described "O Come Emmanuel", appearing in Medieval Hymns and Sequences (1851). “This Advent hymn is little more than a versification of some of the Christmas antiphons commonly called the O’s.” His translation of the hymn appeared first in the Church of England’s hymnal of1861 and from there spread throughout Protestantism. The tune came from a 15th -century processional funeral hymn for French Franciscan nuns found in a manuscript in the National Library of Paris!

In preparing for this Sunday, you may want to take your hymnal or download a copy of this Christ-centered carol and sing it around your dinner table!

Warmly in Christ, the Rod of Jesse,

Steve