Oh! Key of David and Scepter of the house of Israel, which you open and no one can close, you close and no one can open it, come and free the captives who live in darkness and in the shadow of death!
Christ is the key of David. Once again this antiphon refers us to the themes of the Ancient Testament and the person of David. For Saint Augustine the mysteries of Christ are the key to open the hidden meanings of the Holy Scripture, particularly the mysteries of the Old Testament. Saint Augustine writes that the cross of Christ is the key with which it is necessary to open the mysteries of the Holy Scripture: “[…] the cross of our Lord was the key to open what was closed, we believe that He will help us to reveal these secrets to us” (Commentary on Psalm 45, 1).
Everything acquires its full meaning from the mystery of Christ. That is why Christ himself it becomes the key that opens and unravels the mysteries hidden in the Bible. Saint Augustine in his youth had approached the Holy Scripture and had rejected, because he did not have the elegance of the classical authors he studied in his rhetoric classes in Carthage:
“In view of this I decided to apply my spirit to the Holy Scriptures and see what they were like. Further Behold, I see a thing not made for the proud nor clear for the little ones. Something which at first is humble, but on the inside sublime and veiled in mysteries, and I was not such that he could enter through it or bend his neck as he passed through me. However, at I pay attention to them, I did not think then what I say now, but simply they seemed unworthy of being compared to the majesty of Tullius’s writings. My swelling challenged his style and my mind did not penetrate its interior” (Confessions 3, 9).
He had also rejected them because, as the Manichaeans had told him, in the Old Testament there are a series of texts and passages that narrate immoral actions writings that, according to the Manichaeans, could not have been written by the Finger of God, by the Holy Spirit, but, according to the Manichaeans themselves, the Old Testament It was the work of the god of darkness. For this reason the Manichaeans invited Saint Augustine to discard the Old Testament and keep only the New Testament, removing from him everything that could have an Old Testament flavor.
It will be the notable figure of Saint Ambrose who teaches Saint Augustine to approach the Bible with the eyes of Christianity and to discover the key of David, that is, to Christ, his cross and his mysteries, as the keys to understanding all of Scripture.
From that moment Saint Augustine realized that Christ is the center of the Holy Scripture, and everything that has been written in the Bible should lead us to two things: to know the will of God and to exercise ourselves in the love of God and neighbor:
“He who judges to have understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, and with this intelligence does not build this double love of God and neighbor, he did not yet understand them. But he who would have deduced from them a useful sentence to build double charity, although it does not say what the person who wrote it is shown to have felt in that passage, nor is he deceived with harm nor does he lie” (Christian doctrine. 1, 36, 40)
Christ as the key of David, not only fulfills in his person and in his mystery the promises made in the Old Testament, but his own cross and its mysteries they are those that open the meaning of Scripture, since not every biblical text must be read in a literal sense, but all texts can be interpreted in a spiritual sense.
May the key of David, Christ himself, lead us to approach the Holy Scripture with faith in these days of Advent, but also throughout our entire lives, to discover the presence of Christ in his own word, and know the will of God about each of us.
