"O Adonai" is today's antiphon. Moses experienced God in the Burning Bush and God told him to go and help the Israelites to escape from Egypt. Moses then said to God, "Look, if I go to the Israelites and say to them 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they say to me, 'What is his name?' what am I to tell them?" God said to Moses,"I AM WHO I AM." (Exodus 3:13-14) The Hebrew letters for this in our alphabet are YHWH and scholars think it was pronounced YAHWEH. Sometime after the Babylonian Exile (6th century BC) as what we now call Judaism was developing, devout Jews stopped saying God's proper name out loud. Instead they substituted other words, one of which was the Hebrew "Adonai" which means "Lord."
I am impressed that those who wrote the O Antiphons many centuries ago showed the same respect. It's not a bad idea. It helps us to realize how illusive God is, beyond any name we can come up with. I think that God's response to Moses was really a refusal to be named.
"O Sacred Lord of ancient Israel,
you showed yourself to Moses in the Burning Bush.
You gave him the holy law on Mount Sinai.
Come, stretch out your mighty hand to set us free."
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