Silent Night

For a refresher, you can find the lyrics to Silent Night here.   To listen, look to the right and click "play".

Have you ever have a Christmas song that ...just ...gets ...on ...your ...nerves?  That one carol that rubs you the wrong way?  A Christmas song that even Stevie Nicks can't fix?  I usually reflect on songs I have a postive response to, but sometimes it is worth reflecting on lyrics that provoke a strong negative reaction.  Silent Night is my yearly dose of fingernails on a chalkboard.

The lyric is just so much wishful thinking!  Like a mirage, it is an image of what we wish the birth of Jesus was like:  a lush image that, ultimately, is not rooted in the reality of incarnation.  Calm and bright?  Tender and mild?  Heavenly peace?  Silent radiant beams of glory?

Give me a break!  First of all, I was raised in farm and ranch country.  Mangers and stables are NOT silent and peaceful.  Sheep are neither clean nor quiet.  If Jesus' first bed looked like our popular, rustic, and ultimately romantic images:  well, let's just say that stable hay is a less than sanitary choice of bedding for a newborn. Secondly, the lives of too many people look like the reality of what stables are.  I think of the lives I've met as a Priest of the Sacred Heart:  at risk children, immigrants, victims of abuse, those struggling to find a place in society, workers concerned for their economic future.



Battle Of Shanghai Baby - Retouched

Photo By Bellhalla;  Original by Office Of Emergency Management

   

I can't help but believe that Christ's incarnation was more, well, carnal.  That is the word we use:  incarnation.   We are talking about taking on flesh, of choosing a life that, all too often for far too many, means suffering.  Pain.   

Was the night of Christ's birth a silent night?  Did Mary smile down upon a peacefully sleeping baby?  We wish that for newborns, but that image is not incarnate.  

I ask you:  what is the reaction of babies who find themselves in the last place one would choose for a child?  And, I believe that Fr. Leo Dehon would ask us all:  if this a season of light and redemption, what is our response to a world too often filled with darkness, cries, and screams?