O Rex Gentium

Daily Reading for December 21 • St. Thomas the Apostle

O King of the nations and the Desire of them all, you are the Cornerstone who makes both one: Come and save the creatures whom you fashioned out of clay.

The figure of ‘the cornerstone’ is particularly apt to describe Christ’s role of reconciliation. The cornerstone is the place where two walls of a building at right angles to each other meet, and as such as a key function in holding the building together. Both St. Paul and St. Peter describe Christians as forming a building of living stones held together by Christ and growing up to maturity in him so that they may be a fit dwelling place for God through his Spirit. A world torn apart by conflicts based on colour, race, religion, inequality of wealth, and many other causes desperately needs the unifying power of Christ. In Christ differences need not be abolished, though injustice must be removed, but they can be combined into a rich and living unity. In that spirit, we pray to Christ, the cornerstone who binds us together, to come and deliver us form sin which separates us from God and each other.

The final words of the antiphon, ‘whom you fashioned out of clay’, have profound and subtle links with those which go before and beautifully round off this prayer to God. The ‘clay’ of our common humanity takes up and reinforces the thought of the universal reconciliation achieved by Christ the King. We are fully part of the material universe and Christ’s redeeming work does not cut us off from our earthly roots but is part of his gathering up of all things into one. Today, when human mastery over nature has advanced so far that we are in danger of destroying our planet, we can see more clearly the connection between human sin and the pollution of the environment.

The antiphon is the cry of humanity, in its earthly state yet longing for union with the divine, to be remade in God’s image and reunited through Christ, the king of the universe, with its source in God.

From O Come Emmanuel: Scripture Verses for Advent Worship by William Marshall. Copyright © 1993. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

O King—

King and Desire of the Nations,

made one by the cornerstone

of your coming,

of your being.

How can it be?

The cornerstone rejected,

misused as rubble for rocks and stones

to hurl and smash.

They didn’t understand then

(and often we don’t now)

that cornerstones are

for fastening onto,

for building up,

for foundations and transformation.

Come, O King,

Desire of the nations,

Cornerstone.

Save for us, formed of clay,

the opportunity of being transformed by your peace.

From Hasten the Kingdom: Praying the O Antiphons of Advent by Mary Winifred, C.A. (Liturgical Press, 1996).

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