O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti. "O King of the Nations for whom they long, the corner-stone who makes of both one, come and deliver man whom you made from clay." It is the first phrase of this antiphon that I find most striking. The translation doesn't quite capture the force of "desideratus". To invoke Christ as the Desired of All Nations is to make a strong claim for his universality. This title for the Messiah rests on the second chapter of Haggai, and the promise that the temple will be rebuilt: "I will shake the earth and the Desired of All Nations shall come and will fill this house with splendour" (following the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew text). As though to say, there is in all of us, whether overtly religious or not, an impulse towards what is good and beautiful and true which will be gloriously fulfilled. The reminder that we are divided among ourselves, needing a Saviour to redeem and reunite us, is hardly news but so often we think salvation is some kind of D.I.Y. process. The antiphon ends with a reference to our creation from the dust of earth. It is full of hope. Who can forget that, according to the Christian understanding of things, our very humanity has been transformed:

I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.