O ROOT OF JESSE
YOU STAND AS A SIGN FOR ALL PEOPLE
BEFORE YOU ALL RULERS KEEP SILENT
FROM YOU EACH NATION SEEKS HELP
O COME
FREE US; DO NOT MAKE US WAIT.
The great urge is to get political about this antiphon, probably
because it does actually sound political. It sounds like the Root of Jesse is
somehow a source of help and freedom for all nations and their leaders. It is
political, but it is also personal, and also cosmic. It is central to most
spiritual traditions and an archetype of the collective unconscious of
humanity. I was awake most of last night meditating on this, this sacred tree.
I’m a dreamer and several weeks ago, before I was thinking about O
Antiphons at all, I woke stunned by a dream of this tree. I stumbled into the
Morning Room at Casa Chiara and, still reeling from what I can only call an
encounter, I wrote the dream like this:
“I’m with a group of women, and we are entering into a deep forest by a
large body of water. The mood is one of awe and discovery. The deeper we go,
the more the canopy of trees covers the sun and the forest is cast into shadow.
Through the shadows I see two overwhelming giant redwood trees—the biggest in
the world. A person standing next to the larger one would seem the size of an
embryo, or a bean, or a tiny river stone. I call out to the others and all of
us attempt to move closer to the majestic trees. However the closer I get to
the larger tree, the more dense the feel of it becomes—the less space there is
around it—until I’m feeling crushed by the presence of the tree itself. It’s
almost as though I am being weighed down “under” it, as though I am among its
roots, part of it. I’ll be subsumed if I go farther, and yet the attraction and
magnetism of the tree is profound.”
Most ancient cultures envisioned a “world tree” at the core of their
spiritual life, of their cultural mythology. This image connected the earthly
realm with the heavenly. It was the totem pole, the sacred oak, the Tree of
Life in Eden, the tree of generations with Jesse as its root. The early
Christians traced the genealogy of Jeshua (Jesus) back to Jesse, the
grandfather of King David, and saw him as the flowering of that Root, the new
World Tree that would reach out beyond a nation to include in its branches the
“Others” or strangers then called Gentiles. Jeshua himself would be the Sacred
Tree on which the opposites of the world would be reconciled. This is a lot to
put my mind around. No wonder my dream stunned me.
The Sacred Tree, though, is even more than a human tribal or world
genealogy. In the mystical Jewish Kabbalah it becomes the flowing of God into
and through the created world. From Ein
Soph, the divine emptiness, to Shekhinah,
God among us, the tree’s branches are the energies or emanations of Being
itself called the Sefirot. I recommend Daniel C. Matt’s book, The Essential Kabbalah, for meditations
on each of these divine emanations, or as Matt says, “stages of God’s inner
life, aspects of the divine personality…emerging from Ein Sof, the Endless.” They are the branches of the Sacred Tree and
are:
1. Crown/Will/Nothingness,
3. Understanding/Womb,
4. Love/Grace,
5. Power/Judgment,
6. Beauty/Compassion,
7. Eternity/Prophecy,
8. Splendor/Prophecy,
9. Foundation/Covenant,
10. Presence/Kingdom/Communion/Queen.
Here is the sign before whom rulers keep silence and nations seek help.
Personally we enter through the roots and are drawn upwards. God does not change
as we ascend, but we do, and as we share in the higher emanations of Being our
hearts are transformed and our spirits overflow. IF we are willing. IF we dare
to be absorbed into the roots of the Sacred Tree, even though there’s fear in
it of oblivion. It will not be oblivion for the person, the nation or the
ruler. It will be presence, covenant, splendor, eternity, beauty and
compassion, power of right judgment, love and grace, understanding, wisdom and
union with the Unending One.
O Root of Jesse, Come.
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