For an Advent song, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is surprisingly somber, especially at the start. It doesn’t sparkle — there aren’t twinkling Christmas lights or a warm hearth; instead, it expresses the cold of night and an utter dependence on God for salvation. It opens heavily, identifying a world in need of “ransom,” and it spends some time hovering over these lines: “captive Israel / who mourns in lonely exile here.” Exile can feel interminable — which the song emphasizes, ensnaring listeners in its meter and rhythm: the word “exile” is stretched over multiple beats and is extended further by pinning the word “here” to the end of the line. We, along with Israel, are stuck “mourn[ing],” decrying our exile, removed from Eden, from the heart of our God, and longing for his return.
I love the transition from those lonely first lines to the next: This exile exists only “until the Son of God appear.” The pause between lines holds such weight: It spans the entire length of Advent and echoes the urgent desperation of a world aching for rescue, for salvation. To me, this pause between lines symbolizes more than just the length of the days and weeks of Advent. It’s ultimately the length of our lives, spent anticipating the return to God in heaven. The church teaches that Advent is a season of waiting and anticipation: The USCCB explains that it is “a time of preparation that directs our hearts and minds to Christ’s second coming at the end of time and to the anniversary of our Lord’s birth on Christmas.”
That’s why I love the line break after “lonely exile here;” our lives are spent at a distance from our Creator who wants nothing more than our joyful return to him in heaven. Of course, he offers glimmers of himself on Earth, and these sustain us; but it won’t be until the afterlife that we will fully realize the triumphant rejoicing promised in the song as well as in our Christian tradition.
I find myself overcome in a new way when I think about Christ made manifest in flesh. Built into his birth is already the promise of death — not an empty death but one that eternally opens up the gates of heaven. It’s not only a hope-filled birth (despite the suffering he already accepts at his birth), but it is an important reminder of the transience and purpose of life — that all life from the start was made solely to return to God.
Every evening in Advent, after saying a candlelight grace, my family and I sing the first few verses of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” around our dinner table. It’s during those moments of reflection that I am struck again: When heaven really arrives for us, when we are finally home in the place we were made to enter from the moment of our creation, our entire lives on Earth will feel like no time at all — just a brief rest between lines, a short pause between two notes of a song.
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