O Rex Gentium, O King of the Nations

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator

O King of the nations, and their desire, the cornerstone making both one: Come and save the human race, which you fashioned from clay.

This antiphon is based upon two different oracles from the Prophet Isaiah, both of which are familiar to all of us:

For a child has been born for us, a son given us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4)

The sentiments expressed here try to find a commonality between the political and spiritual realities of our human experience. As people who live in a secular state that espouses the separation of politics from religion, we tend to forget that the Israel of Jesus was a "theocracy," not a democracy. God was the King. The man who sat on the throne of David was but a human representative of God. In Jesus, all of that changed because Jesus was both man and God. Just as his person united the human and divine, the Church attempted to unite the governance of nations with the spiritual desires of all of humanity. As we all know too well, the human often won out over the spiritual.

So as we pray this antiphon today, we are mindful of the fact that we are still striving to join the two together, to let the moral foundations of the Judaeo-Christian way of life permeate our laws and our dealing with other nations. Only when we realize that God is the center of all our lives and king of all nations will we be able to live in peace and harmony with all peoples.