Silent Night… really…???
During this Advent, we’ll be reflecting on the words of some of our Advent and Christmass hymns. We sing them lustily and with great gusto and so frequently that we can easily forget that the words have something to teach us. The best hymns make us think a little.
Today I want to reflect on the words of that classic silent night.
Silent Night is one of the world’s most famous Christmass melodies. The story goes that the carol was first performed on the evening of Christmas Eve in 1818.
Joseph Mohr, a young catholic priest at St. Nicholas church in Salzburg in Austria was in despair. The organ at his church had been incapacitated by mice, and the chances of fixing the instrument before the evening service were looking slim. But our enterprising young hero had an idea. A few years before, he had written a rather beautiful poem called ‘Stille Nacht’. So he asked Franz Xavez Gruber, a schoolmaster and organist in a nearby town, to set his six-stanza poem to music.
That night, the two men sang ‘Stille nacht’ (Silent night) for the first time at Church’s Christmass mass, while Mohr played the guitar and the choir repeated the last two lines of each verse. Maybe it’s just as well they couldn’t get an engineer on Christmass eve.
Listen as I say the words slowly
Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, all is bright.
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child.
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace
The image that these words convey is one of Mary and Joseph gazing adoringly and placidly at their darling child who is sleeping peacefully without so much as a murmur. The labour was swift and painless and Joseph remained unflappable. The animals of course did not make any animal noises or smells or do any of the other things animals usually do so all really is calming and silent.
And in a cave at night is all really bright and wonderful?
I have had the undeserved privilege of going to the labour ward 4 times in my life. It’s a noisy bloody place and silent and calm is not how I could or would describe it.
I had the joy of growing up on a dairy farm and then a wheat sheep farm and I know animals make noises and they smell funny and they can also taste pretty jolly good.
And no one could call the Holy Land silent today. In fact, with its bombs and tears and funerals, it is noisier than ever.
So what are we to make of this carol and why do we keep it when it is so very clearly and wildly inaccurate as to how things really were and are?
Two things
- First thing. I suspect that one of the reasons we love this carol so much is because the cutesy image of the Christmass card is how we wish it was, it is certainly how we wish things were and how we ache for them to be in the future.
- Secondly, at a deeper level,l I believe that the carol reminds us that when we glimpse God, when we come into his nearer presence when we are close to the virgin and child Silence is the only thing that really cuts it. No words come close to being an adequate or appropriate response. The quieter we are, the more silent we are, the closer we come; because the less noise, the less distraction, the fewer obstacles, the nearer we are to Him. The filters and blinkers are peeled away.
We are called to be completely silent both outwardly and inwardly and it is far harder to be quieter on the inside than the outside.
But sometimes we are stilled. Sometimes we can and do pause and in those rare and beautiful moments when we find ourselves being silent then
Glories will stream from heaven afar
Heavenly hosts will sing Alleluia,
And Christ the Saviour is born in us.