Silent Night (3 page)

The snow is falling on Christmas Eve (the carol tells us), and nothing need disturb our sleep. God’s angels are attentive and His love is all-encompassing. He is sending His Son to be born for our sake, and when we wake in the morning, everything will be different. Our problems will have a solution. Adam’s fall will be redeemed.

So sleep and don’t worry. God has it all in hand.

A beautiful and comforting promise—one we are reminded of every Christmas.

Overly simplistic, perhaps? Well, of course, it
isn’t
as easy as all that; we still have our very important part to play. We have to allow ourselves to be loved.

So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, Hold your peace, for the day is holy; neither be ye grieved
.

N
EHEMIAH
8:11

What means that star?”
the shepherds said …
And angels, answering overhead, sang
,
“Peace on earth, good-will to men!

J
AMES
R
USSELL
L
OWELL

Angels from the realms of glory
,
Wing your flight o’er all the earth
.
Ye who sang creation’s story
,
Now proclaim Messiah’s birth
.

Come and worship. Come and worship
.
Worship Christ, the newborn King
.

J
ames Montgomery, author of “Angels, from the Realms of Glory,” was a gentle man, but he didn’t shirk from criticizing the status quo if he thought there was a better way. In a gentle dig at popular hymn writers, he suggested they often started off with a good idea but wandered on from there until they lost sight of their original intention.

Montgomery, on the other hand, liked to find a powerful theme and stick with it. The idea that God would come to earth through Jesus Christ struck him as an awesome one, well worth rejoicing over. He left the theme for one stanza only, to tell what this miracle meant to humankind. Repentant sinners, he said, had been set free. Mercy had broken their chains.

An orphan boy who eventually became a newspaper owner, Montgomery found himself in chains more than once. His views on poverty, social conditions, and slavery earned him two spells of imprisonment in York Castle. Undaunted, he would go on to champion many causes that bettered the plight of the ordinary man and woman.

His earthly reward, for his reforms, his poetry, and his hymns, would eventually come in the form of a royal pension.

Asked which of his works would survive him, he replied in a way that clearly showed his priorities. “None, sir. Nothing except, perhaps, a few of my hymns.” “Angels, from the Realms of Glory” is still sung all across the English-speaking world, more than a century and a half after his death.

Growing up without a family may have brought Montgomery closer to the realms of charity. Spending his childhood with no place to call home may have brought him closer to the realms of eternity. The day after completing his four hundredth hymn, at age eighty-three, he went to his real home and his heavenly family.

The angels must have rejoiced in the realms of glory when James Montgomery arrived.

Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts. Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light
.

P
SALM
148:2–3

Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart and soul and voice
.
Give ye heed to what we say:
News! News!
Jesus Christ is born today!
Ox and ass before Him bow
,
And He is in the manger now
.
Christ is born today!
Christ is born today!

W
ell, what would
you
do if you stumbled upon some angels having a singsong? Henry Suso (no doubt after he had picked himself up from the floor) joined right in the singing and did a little dance for good measure. Then, once the angels were gone, he wrote down the lyrics.

Try taking that to a copyright lawyer!

Suso (or Heinrich Seuse) was a student of the German monk Meister Eckhart, and his angelic encounter is said to have taken place just before the song’s publication in 1328.

“
In Dulci Jubilo
,” the original title of the piece, means “In Sweetest Rejoicing.” It concentrated on the wonder that was Christ’s birth and what it meant for humankind. The music, by the same name, has to be one of the most recognizable of all Christmas melodies. J. S. Bach wrote a choral prelude around it, and Franz Liszt included it in his Weihnachtsbaum piano suite. Nearly 650 years after the song was first published, Mike Oldfield, composer of
Tubular Bells
, took the tune to number four on the British pop charts.

The Suso version of the song was written in Latin. In the early nineteenth century, English composer Robert Lucas de Pearsall widened the song’s appeal by producing a version combining Latin and English lyrics. Shortly afterward the English hymn writer John Mason Neale “freely” adapted “In Dulci Jubilo” into “Good Christian Men, Rejoice” and gave the world the version we now know.

Neale’s words differed considerably from the original, but in the spirit of the song, he deviated not at all. Both versions are full of wonder at the fact that Christ would be born for us—and would die to save us.

Suso’s version mentions the joys to be found “
in Regis curia
” (in the King’s court), and Neale has Jesus call us to “His everlasting hall.” Whether the song is in Latin or English, the joy therein surely gives good Christian men and women cause to sing “in dulci jubilo,” in sweetest rejoicing.

And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth
.

L
UKE 1:14

O come, all ye faithful
,
Joyful and triumphant
.
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem
.
Come and behold Him—
Born the King of angels!
O come, let us adore Him!
O come, let us adore Him!
O come, let us adore Him—
Christ, the Lord!

F
ans of books like
The Da Vinci Code
will appreciate the story behind the Christmas carol “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

Originally written in Latin as “
Adeste Fideles
,” the origins of the piece are tantalizingly obscure. The lyrics may have originated in the thirteenth century, or they may have been written in the seventeenth century by a Portuguese king. But the best claim to authorship is held by the man who first published the hymn. John Francis Wade, a Jacobite sympathizer in exile in France, published his
Cantus Diversi
, including “Adeste Fidelus,” in 1751.

A supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who attempted to capture the British crown in 1745, Wade decorated his manuscript with imagery that held significance for the Jacobite “faithful.”

According to the theory, “Bethlehem” was a well-known code word for England, and
angelorum
(“angels” in the hymn) would be replaced with
Anglorum
, meaning “English.” So “born the king of angels” became “born the king of the English.”

It is always possible that the song had a hidden meaning, but it’s more likely that Wade, who also wrote other hymns, was a man of God celebrating the birth of his Savior.

Frederick Oakley, a canon at Westminster Cathedral, translated the first four verses into English, and William Brooke, a hymn writer, completed the job. The version modern carolers would recognize as “O Come, All Ye Faithful” appeared first in
Murray’s Hymnal
in 1852. Since then it has been translated into more than 125 other languages.

Any political dimension, if there ever was one, has long since been rendered obsolete, and the song remains a firm favorite among the real faithful at Christmas.

So all the ingredients for a mystery are there … or are they? And even if the conspiracy theory was true, it wouldn’t be the first time God had taken something worldly and turned it into something sublime.

This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church
.

E
PHESIANS
5:32

Infant holy, Infant lowly
,
For His bed a cattle stall
.
Oxen lowing, little knowing
Christ, the Babe, is Lord of all
.
Swift are winging angels singing
,
Noels ringing, tidings bringing:
Christ, the Babe, is Lord of all!
Christ, the Babe, is Lord of all!

I
nfant Holy, Infant Lowly” sums up the contrasts in the life of Jesus Christ. How could He be both?

Originally a Polish hymn called
“W Zlobie Lezy”
or “He Lies in a Cradle,” it was the work of Piotr Skarga, a sixteenth-century Jesuit priest. A man of contrasts himself, he founded a college, a pawnshop, and a bank, all for the aid of the poor, but still managed to be a major force in Poland’s political history.

The music for the hymn reached England long before the text did, being attached to several other songs. It took a war to finally unite the music with an English version of Skarga’s words. Two years after the end of World War I, perhaps influenced by the songs of displaced Poles, Edith Margaret Gellibrand Reed turned “W Zlobie Lezy” into “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly.”

Edith Reed was a traveler and editor of music magazines. She also wrote mystery (or miracle) plays about the birth of Christ, exploring the “mystery” of God becoming man. The similarity between the plays and the hymn may have been what inspired her to work on the translation.

“Infant Holy, Infant Lowly” leaves listeners in no doubt that even though this child was born in the lowest of circumstances, He was still, mysteriously and miraculously, “the Lord of all.” The Creator became part of His very own creation. And even though He came to save the whole world—well, He isn’t going to do that in a straightforward way either. With the salvation of humankind as His holy mission, He, mysteriously and miraculously, has one lowly human as His priority. As the song says in its last line, “Christ the Babe was born for you.”

And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God
.

L
UKE
1:35

Lo, He comes with clouds descending
,
Once for favored sinners slain;
Thousand thousand saints attending
Swell the triumph of His train
.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
God appears on earth to reign
.

L
o, He Comes with Clouds Descending” was very much a Methodist hymn—but no faith or denomination owns the copyright to beauty. Divinely inspired, songs like this become gifts to the whole world.

John Cennick, author of the original version, spent his early teens living the low life in London, gambling, lying, and stealing.

A meeting with John Wesley, a founder of the Methodists, turned Cennick’s life around. Wesley found him a job and Cennick became the first Methodist lay preacher, though he would spend the greater part of his life founding Moravian churches in Ireland.

His meeting with John Wesley also introduced him to Charles, John’s brother. The junior Wesley, a hugely prolific hymn writer, would take Cennick’s hymn “Lo, He Comes with Countless Trumpets” and rewrite it as “Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending.” Charles Wesley published his version in
Hymns of Intercession for All Mankind
in 1758.

The hymn was changed yet again by Martin Madan, a young lawyer described as living “an uninhibited life.” That is, until he, too, met John Wesley. Under Wesley’s influence Madan became chaplain to Lock Hospital in London. The music played in his chapel made it quite the fashionable place to worship. In 1769 Madan published
The Lock Hospital Collection
, or
A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, Extracted from Various Authors
. In this volume he combined Cennick’s hymn with Charles Wesley’s and gave us the version we know today.

“Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending” is very much a part of the Christmas repertoire these days, but it was originally a hymn of the Second Coming. When carolers sing, “God appears on earth to reign,” they aren’t referring to His first earthly appearance, but to His second.

While the Nativity is seen as the beginning of Jesus’ story, “Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending” celebrates the end. But, in true Messiah style, that ending is also a new and more wonderful beginning!

And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory
.

M
ARK
13:26

In the little village of Bethlehem
,
There lay a Child one day
,
And the sky was bright with a holy light
O’er the place where Jesus lay
.

Alleluia! O how the angels sang!
Alleluia! How it rang!
And the sky was bright with a holy light;
‘Twas the birthday of a King
.

H
ow many kings have lived and died in the history of humankind? How many could you name? Countless kings have been welcomed into the world with processions, bands, and celebrations, only to have their reign end up as a footnote in an obscure history book or, worse, forgotten altogether.