The Great “O” Antiphons – Adonai – Anglican Internet Church

Watch O Adonai, the second of 7 videos for the final days of Advent A.D. 2014, which is now available as a video on our You Tube channel. For those with portable devices intended for listening, you can also listen to the MP3 version Adonai is the only Hebrew word of the seven words or phrases in this 12th Century office. All the others are in Latin. The Latin (and Greek) equivalent of Adonai is Kyrie (as in the Kyrie eleison prayer and response favored by Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Christ as Lord is roughly equivalent to the classic Greek title of Jesus: Christ Pantokrator, or Ruler of the Universe, expressed in a mosaic at the Basilica of St. Ambrose in Milan around the 12th Century. I used perspective correction software to adjust his picture of the apse above the altar at the cathedral on the site of the place where the great St. Ambrose of Milan preached in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. Ambrose’s most famous pupil was St. Augustine of Hippo. He wrote one of the earliest complet expositions of the Christian Faith and was also a gifted hymnwriter. In the St. Chrysostom Hymnal at my former parish, I included nine of his hymns. His closing doxology is very well-known but rarely attributed to him: “O Father. that we ask be done, through Jesus Christ, thine only Son, Who, with the Holy Ghost and Thee, Doth live and reign eternally.”