24 December 2018

The Irish Times view on Christmas 2018:
the sound of peace

A Nativity stained glass scene at the Abbey Stained Glass Studios in Dublin. Photograph: Alan Betson / The Irish Times

The Irish Times carries this full-length editorial this morning [24 December 2018] to mark Christmas Eve 2018 (page 13).

Christmas:
The sound
of peace


At carol services in cathedrals and churches across these islands, the celebration of Christmas Eve truly begins with the well-loved carol Once in Royal David’s City, often with a boy chorister singing the opening stanza as an unaccompanied solo.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth in Dublin of the author of this hymn, Cecil Frances Alexander, who first published this all-time Christmas favourite in 1848 in her collection, Hymns for Little Children.

The author of more than 400 hymns, she was born at 25 Eccles Street, Dublin, in 1818. Her early work was strongly influenced by John Keble and the Oxford Movement, as was her husband, William Alexander, who later became Bishop of Derry and then Archbishop of Armagh.

This year, it is also 100 years since the ‘Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols’ in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, began with this opening hymn as a Christmas Eve service in 1918.

This Christmas Eve service was introduced just weeks after the end of World War I by Eric Milner-White, a highly decorated former army chaplain, as a response to the still-echoing clamours of war.

A story of rejection and poverty

This carol and this service have been broadcast by the BBC almost with fail since 1928, and this carol was the first recording made by the King’s College Choir 70 years ago in 1948. Today, it remains the opening message of Christmas Eve when it is broadcast live from Cambridge by the BBC Radio 4 and from Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, by RTÉ.

Despite the glitz and the glamour, the shopping and the over-spending, this carol is a reminder that the first Christmas is a story of rejection and poverty, the story of a family forcibly made homeless by officialdom, the story of a child who is born in poverty and humility in a ‘lowly cattle shed,’ and who grows up to live ‘with the poor, and mean and lowly.’

It is the story of a family forced into exile and to cross borders in the eastern Mediterranean because of cruel and capricious political leaders.

The Christ of this carol, who is ‘weak and helpless,’ even when he becomes an adult, is a counter-cultural challenge to leaders who assert they are ‘strong and stable.’

The Christ who is at one with those in ‘sadness’ has more in common with migrants and refugees than those who build walls and barriers to exclude them.

For many, this carol remains a reminder that love and goodness are rare and wonderful gifts, and for many to hear this message on RTÉ or BBC Radio 4 this afternoon still marks the true beginning of Christmas.

This year also marks the bicentenary of another favourite carol that retains its affection among people with nostalgic longings for an old-style Christmas. Silent Night (Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht) was written 200 years ago by a young Austrian priest, Joseph Mohr, and set to music by a local schoolteacher and organist, Franz Xaver Gruber, for the Christmas Eve Mass in 1818 in their village near Salzburg.

When the guns fell silent

The lyrics of Stille Nacht were becoming popular globally in their German original when they were translated into the best-known English version in 1859 by John Freeman Young, later Bishop of Florida.

A second translation that never gained the same level of popularity, Still the night, holy night, was written by an Irish-born Anglican priest, Stopford Augustus Brooke, a poet and graduate of Trinity College Dublin who was born near Letterkenny, Co Donegal.

It would be simplistic to dismiss the lyrics of this carol and its authors as pious and sentimental. But Mohr was born in poverty and died penniless, having given away any money he had earned to care for the elderly and to help the education of poor children. Young expended his energies combatting racism and prejudice in Florida in the aftermath of the American Civil War. And Brooke, a cousin of the nationalist historian Alice Stopford-Green, used his position in English society to promote the values of Irish literature.

This carol became so popular in both English and German that when the guns fell silent in the trenches on Christmas Eve 1914, the German troops sang out Father Mohr’s Stille Nacht, and the British and Irish troops responded with Bishop Young’s Silent Night.

The story has been moved to the following year by Cormac MacConnell in his song A Silent Night Christmas 1915. Today, the ‘glories’ that ‘stream from heaven afar’ on that first Christmas night proclaim a peace that is radically different to the aggressive bellicose tweets that emanate from the White House night after night.

This song, and the carol it is based on, are reminders that the message of peace at Christmas can still the sounds of guns and silence the calls to war:

Sleep in heavenly peace,
sleep in heavenly peace
.

Praying in Advent with USPG
and Lichfield Cathedral
(24): 24 December 2018

‘The dawn from on high will break upon us’ (Luke 1: 78) … the light of a winter dawn on Beacon Street in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

Today is Christmas Eve and we have arrived at the end of the Advent season. Christmas begins later this evening [24 December 2018], and I am celebrating the Christmas Eucharist this evening at 8 p.m. in Saint Brendan’s Church, Kilnaughtin (Tarbert), Co Kerry, and at 10 p.m. Castletown Church, Kilcornan, Co Limerick.

But we are still in Advent, this time of anticipation and waiting for the coming of Christ, this morning.

Throughout the season of Advent this year, I have been spending a short time of prayer and reflection each morning, using the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency, USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), and the Advent and Christmas Devotional Calendar for 2018 being used in Lichfield Cathedral.

USPG, founded in 1701, is an Anglican mission agency supporting churches around the world in their mission to bring fullness of life to the communities they serve.

USPG is the Anglican mission agency that partners churches and communities worldwide in God’s mission to enliven faith, strengthen relationships, unlock potential, and champion justice.

Under the title Pray with the World Church, the current USPG prayer diary (7 October 2018 to 16 February 2019), offers prayers and reflections from the Anglican Communion.

The USPG Prayer Diary began this week with yesterday’s reflection on Anglican Heritage by Bishop Dato’ Dr Charles Samuel, Suffragan Bishop in the Diocese of West Malaysia.

The USPG Prayer Diary:

Monday 24 December 2018, Christmas Eve:


Give thanks for 200 years of the Anglican Church in Malaysia and for its influence throughout the Anglican Communion.

‘To give light to those who sit in darkness’ (Luke 1: 79) … lights on a dark winter night on Bore Street in Lichfield last month (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Lichfield Cathedral Advent and Christmas Devotional Calendar:

Lichfield Cathedral’s Advent and Christmas Devotional Calendar for 2018 suggests you light your Advent candle each day as you read the Bible and pray. It suggests setting aside five to 15 minutes each day.

Buy or use a special candle to light each day as you read and pray through the suggestions on the calendar. Each week there is a suggestion to ‘eat simply’ – try going without so many calories or too much rich food, just have enough. There is a suggestion to donate to a charity working with the homeless. There is encouragement to pray through what you see and notice going on around you in people, the media and nature.

The calendar is for not only for those who use the Cathedral website and for the Cathedral community. It is also for anyone who wants to share in the daily devotional exercise. The calendar suggests lighting your Advent candle each day as you read the Bible and pray.

Today’s suggested reading is Luke 1: 67-79, which is familiar to many as the canticle Benedictus. The priest Zechariah, father of Saint John the Baptist, is filled with the Holy Spirit, has his voice restored and speaks the prophecy that concludes, ‘By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

The reflection for today suggests:

As we prepare for the joy of tomorrow, pray that God’s healing light and love may be revealed in the darkest places.

Readings morning (Revised Common Lectionary, the Church of Ireland):

II Samuel 7: 1-5, 8-11, 16; Psalm 89: 2, 19-27; Acts 13: 16-26; Luke 1: 67-79.

The Collect (morning):

Almighty God,
Make us glad with the yearly remembrance
of the birth of your Son Jesus Christ:
Grant that, as we joyfully receive him as our redeemer,
we may with sure confidence behold him
when he shall come to be our judge;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Heavenly Father,
you have given us a pledge of eternal redemption.
Grant that we may always eagerly celebrate
the saving mystery of the incarnation of your Son.
We ask this through him whose coming is certain,
whose day draws near,
your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection.

Series concluded.