O Clavis - the unruly infant who unlocks our prison

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel, who open and no one shuts, who shut and no one opens: come and bring out the captive from the prison house, him who sits in the darkness and the shadow of death.

On each of the seven days before Christmas – in Catholic Churches – an antiphon is sung. Seven days, seven antiphons. Each of these antiphons is a kind of scriptural meditation on the meaning of Christ’s coming. Today’s antiphon speaks about Christ as a key and he is a key because he opens a door, the door to a prison. Human beings are in the prison house and in the darkness and in the shadow of death. This key opens the door and opens it from the outside.

So what is being said is something strong and sober. Christ is a liberator, he comes to set people free. There is no mincing of words in the antiphon about what life is sometimes like: it can be like a prison house. The antiphon does not shrink from the ills that assail us, from the fact of human guilt, from the horror of the ways in which people behave towards each other, from suffering, from all the ways in which people imprison themselves and through no fault of their own are imprisoned. But in the face of the bleakness, the antiphon amazingly proclaims a victory. There is no evasion; the antiphon has the realism of the gospels. Its hope may strike us in the same way that other aspects of the Incarnation may strike us: here was a man who lived through a human life with all that ordinarily entails (and much worse) and yet – in spite of everything – could still proclaim trust in his Father and the goodness at the heart of creation.

What this does mean, naturally, is that the antiphon jars with many of the traditional ways of talking at Christmas. While the antiphon speaks of the unfathomable power of Christ to set people free, Christmas carols often dwell principally on his infant dependency, and in a peculiar way. They talk about the child gentle and dear and talk of rocking him and letting him sleep. Perhaps all this seems harmless enough, just a bit of fun, something for the children.

It is only when you start to think about it, though, that you see a side to it that can be disturbing. Because the carols imagine a very domesticated faith. Everyone needs tenderness and gentleness, but there is a difference between that and the domestication of God. Sometimes the deep-seated human urge to trim God down to size has a field day at Christmas.

People tame God in all sorts of ways. Presently it is often done through sentimentality, people sometimes paint a very sentimental picture of God and then are surprised when he does not play the part. In the past perhaps people were more inclined to domesticate God through their intellects, by thinking they knew more of what he is and how he judges than they actually do. Sometimes the mechanism is more complicated and involves more of our life: sometimes it takes the form of systems of morality and religious observance or spirituality which are used to reassure us that they make us alright with God, to assure us of his approval, and to stop him saying anything to us that we don’t like. Then there are other more sinister ways of domesticating God. Sometimes God can start becoming our God, the God who belongs to us, our ally against others.

At a superficial level, Christmas can reinforce some of these ways of thinking. On occasion it can feel as though the child Jesus is being wheeled out to take part in our celebrations. He is conveniently meek and mild and so he is not going to say anything to disturb anyone. Certain questions need never be asked. While we sing, it sometimes feels as though God is silent, made an accessory to our needs and prejudices, but actually busy about his more pressing business.

There can be a basic lack of reality in faith. A refusal to see and to hear, those words which figure so largely in the gospels.

I recently read an essay, which dissected aspects of this lack of reality, and traced it back to the infant Jesus in the manger. The infant in the manger, in some of the carols anyhow, is not like a real human child at all. There are many examples but the funniest is ‘Away in a manger’ where – to put it bluntly – he is woken up by some cows, but no crying he makes. But everyone who has ever come across a real baby knows that it is not like that.

As this essay pointed out so well, babies may be dependent but they are not passive and are not usually silent. They make their presence felt, they make noise, they demand attention, they keep people up at night. They turn their parents’ lives upside down and inside out and change them forever. In a baby, people are faced with a life they can’t fully control. People’s lives are bonded closely to their infants and at the same time babies are hard to understand and can be unnerving: parents don’t know what babies want, whether they are cold or hungry or lonely or ill. You only get to know what they want, you only get to learn their mute language, through consistently attending to them.

Actually – in many ways – a real baby is a much better image for what the coming of the Son of God is like. The Son of God makes his presence felt in human lives in ways that are not anticipated and planned for. He disturbs us, and changes lives for good. He struggles in our arms as we try to hold him and turn him into a doll. His ways are strange. Anyone who wants to listen needs to listen closely to his language, before he even starts to understand.

This brings us back to the antiphon.

Christ comes into the world to set us free. Notice that the gospel says that he comes to the world (God so loved the world) and not just to a particular group of people. It is through his unruly presence that he starts to do that. It is he who acts first of all; it is he who unlocks the door from the outside. He promises to do what human beings cannot possibly do for themselves. He is not a fantasy child, who warms our hearts for a moment and then leaves them colder and deader than ever. He will not fit into our schemes and that is a relief because our schemes are not for the good and sooner or later we see through most of them ourselves. He does not give us certain kinds of answers: the prison house is still there. Yet his whole life speaks of an unsentimental and powerful compassion.




O Key of David, and sceptre of the house of Israel, who open and no one shuts, who shut and no one opens: come and bring out the captive from the prison-house, him who sits in darkness and in the shadow of death.