O Morning Star: A sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (21 December 2025)
preached by the Revd Canon Professor Sue Gillingham, Deacon at St Barnabas Jericho
Download the accompanying guide to the sermon by clicking here
How often have you heard that phrase ‘Countdown to Christmas’? The shops and media ‘count down’ as early as October, so that we spend as much as we can for as long as possible. The Church’s Countdown starts at the beginning of Advent, which is usually in late November; at St Barnabas lighting our four candles week by week reminds us of our Christian journey from Advent to Christmas. Another Countdown, popular in Medieval and Tudor times, started on Christmas Day and worked forwards for twelve days to Epiphany on January 6th. The song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ is based on this: it begins with the Christmas Day gift of that partridge in a pear tree, and ends with Epiphany gift of the twelve lords a-leaping.
Yet another Countdown has its origins in fifth-century Italy. This lasts just seven days, beginning on December 17th and ending on Christmas Eve. It fostered a tradition known now as the seven ‘O Antiphons’ – and I’m grateful to Esther and the choir for singing, immediately before this sermon, the Antiphon for today, the fifth day, which was a plainchant version of ‘O Morning Star’ . I suspect many of you already know about these ‘O Antiphons’ before and may even have used them in your daily prayers; but many others may already be puzzled as to what I am talking about, so this sermon might be an aid to praying in a new way.
Let me take you back in your imagination some sixteen hundred years ago, to a monastery in Italy, where the monks are performing their canonical hours of prayer. The day is, as today, December 21st; the service is Vespers, or Evening Prayer, the last but one office before Compline. It is not only dark, with the only light from oil-lamps and candles, but it is also very cold, but this never deters the rhythm of monastic prayer. We are just about to hear the choir sing the Magnificat, or the Song of Mary, in Latin. Then, out of nowhere, a cantor begins to sing an entirely new Latin chant. It is short: we hear first an address to the Baby Jesus – as yet unborn, as we have not yet reached Christmas Day – using a title for the Coming Messiah used in the prophet Isaiah. We hear the word ‘Oriens’ - ‘Morning Star’. The antiphon develops into a short hymn, then a call to the unborn Infant Jesus to ‘Come!’, and finally a brief prayer. We forget the cold and the dark as the plainchant lingers in the night air: then, silence. The choir repeats the same antiphon; silence again, as in the flickering candlelight we pause for quiet reflection:
O Oriens - O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness
Come, and give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.
The Magnificat follows, and so the rhythm of evening prayer continues, and Vespers ends.
If we had been here four days ago, on December 17th we would have heard the first of these antiphons addressing the unborn Infant as ‘O Sapienta, Divine Wisdom!’. If were to stay on a further two days until December 24th we would hear the final address: ‘O Emmanuel, God with us’. The practice of speaking to a baby it its mother’s womb is not actually unusual; many parents admit to having conversed with their unborn child, trying out various names before their actual birth. What is unusual in what we have just witnessed in this Italian monastery is the names given to this child: they emphasise so vividly the portentous nature of Jesus’s coming into our world: here is a baby who is not only human in origin, but divine as well. It is no coincidence that all seven antiphons were sung just before Mary’s Song, the Magnificat: they remind us of the faithfulness, courage and obedience of the Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord, whose Physical Body made all this possible, and who is also the focus of our hopes and prayers this particular Advent Sunday.
We will never know whether what we have just heard was something spontaneously inspired, or whether it had been pre-planned. What we do know is that this liturgical practice spread to other monastic communities, including Rome, and was then later popularised throughout the abbeys and priories of Medieval England. The custom even survived the Reformation, with composers such as Thomas Tallis giving the monophonic plainchant a rich polyphonic setting. These haunting calls to prayer, calling to the unborn Baby Jesus from the dark and cold of evening Vespers, continued to echo down fifteen hundred years of liturgical history right up to the present day. I first heard them sung all together at Keble College when I was a graduate there, and I’ve never forgotten that mystical, spine-tingling moment as they lingered in the huge liturgical space of Keble Chapel. Some of you will also have encountered these seven antiphons together in the different verses of the hymn ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’: we’ll sing it just before Mass shortly.
Today, the 21st of December, marks the winter solstice, the longest period of darkness over twenty-four hours. Pagans called this day ‘The Celebration of the Unconquered Sun’, in the hope that the Sun would return again, bringing light and warmth to the world. This day might mark the longest period of darkness, but it also marks the start of shorter nights and longer days, and so suggests the beginning of hope. You can see how the focus on the Baby Jesus bringing light out of darkness was the Christian answer to these pagan rituals. It is no coincidence that the fifth ‘O Antiphon’ for the winter solstice is addressed to the unborn Jesus as the Morning Star, or the Rising Sun – and, by implication, the light of the world. The sun does not only bring Light, but Warmth: it will burn brightly in the life of this soon-to-be-born baby so that the world might be both enlightened and warmed by this divine spark of light. Again:
O Oriens - O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness
Come, and give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.
Most world religions have at least one festival which focuses on light overcoming darkness. In Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism it is Diwali, meaning ‘rows of lighted lamps’, which lasts five days at the start of the New Year. In Buddhism it is Thadingyut, celebrating Buddha’s return to the heavens. In Islam lights play a prominent part in Eid al-Fitr to celebrate the end of Ramadan. In Judaism it is the eight-day festival of Hannukah, when an extra candle is lit on the Menorah; as we all know from what happened on Bondi Beach a week ago, Hannukah is taking place at this time, too, and actually ends tomorrow. Again, this is why today’s ‘O Antiphon’ is again so profound and so potent:
O Oriens - O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness
Come, and give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.
It is impossible to do justice to the mysterious impact of these Advent Antiphons in a sermon. We have to hear them chanted or sung, or speak them to ourselves in an act of contemplation: they have a power of their own. To offer some help, I’ve created a short booklet which you can take away to use for the rest of Advent: it’s at the back of church. You’ll see the signs of all seven ‘O Antiphons’ on the front cover, and a short explanation of each one in the middle two pages. I suggest ways as to how you can use them in your own prayer life, especially through music, emulating the prayer lives of those countless Christians throughout the centuries who have sung them in this last week before Christmas.
I’ve offered something for the children, too: and in their area they’ll find the seven antiphons on seven circles of gold card: perhaps one or two of the children might colour them in, so that we can put them up on our Christmas Tree where they can be seen right up to the beginning of Epiphany.
And so our own Countdown to Christmas over these four weeks of Advent has taken us from the awesome belief that Christ will come at the end of time - as illustrated in our great blue mosaic of Christ in Glory at our East End - to the equally awesome belief that Jesus has come as a Baby within our time, as illustrated in the crib (as yet empty) at the West End of the church.
And today, on the darkest day of the year, in a world which is still as dark, as cold, and often as hopeless as it was in that monastery in fifth-century Italy, I pray that we too might discover new light and warmth and hope in reconsidering that portentous birth in Bethlehem. But there is one thing more: the light and warmth and hope of Jesus our Morning Star is something to share, not least over this Christmastide. So as I repeat today’s Antiphon one more time, let us prayerfully consider how we, too, might convey to others that mighty presence of the God who comes to us as a candle in the dark, expressing himself as the light of the whole world through the vulnerability of the Christ-Child in the manger.
O Oriens - O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness
Come, and give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.
