O holy night,
the stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth;
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
'Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn;
Chorus
Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices!
O night divine! O night when Christ was born.
O night, O holy night, O night divine.
Some days, mostly when I’m tired or weary, my mind plays this game with the words. I think it’s a game my mind has played most of my life.
It’s sort of the way a song can be an ‘ear worm’, you know? The way you get a song in your ear and it goes into your head and it plays over and over again and you can’t get it out? That’s the way this word game plays in my mind.
Maybe that happens when English isn’t your first language, but I don’t remember it happening until I spoke English. Maybe that’s because some words sound so strange to me – still.
Sugar. Why would you name something that tastes sweet and, when sprinkled on another food, makes it taste better something that sounds so harsh? Isn’t there another word that sounds, well, sweet? And, if it’s pronounced ‘SHU-gar’, why isn’t there an ’h’ in it? Why isn’t it pronounced ‘SUE-gar’?
Oh, I know. It depends on the language from which it was derived, but as a child, questions like these used to keep me up a night.
There’s a word that has been visiting me off and on all day today.
Holy.
We use it a lot in church circles. When I was a child, I
“made first Holy Communion.” I’m not sure why it was that I “made” first Holy
Communion, and why I didn’t “take” my first Holy Communion, but that’s the phrase that was used.
It's been a long time since I've been out of Roman Catholic circles but I suspect kids are still "making" their first Holy Communion. (If anyone knows why it's said this way, please let me know. I'm thinking it's just the way some immigrant families translated it and it stuck.)
One of the first hymns I learned in preparation for making my first Holy Communion was, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty. Early in the morning, our song shall rise to thee.” I loved to sing that song.
Still do. It makes me smile when I see that the organist/choir director has randomly chosen it. One of the “golden oldies" that almost everyone knows - even if just the first three words.
When the son of one of my dear friends was about 4 years old, he used to giggle himself to the point of tears when I would say, “Holy Moly”. He just thought it was the funniest expression he’d ever heard.
“Again,” he’d say.
“Holy Moly!” I’d say.
And, he laugh and laugh and laugh, finally coming up for air but acting like a drunken soldier, slurring his words and say, “Again!”
“Holy Moly!” I’d say, and he would laugh until his tummy would hurt and we’d have to stop before he made himself sick.
This afternoon, I heard a commercial on the radio for a channel that was “all Christmas music all the time”. I suppose they felt it was necessary because, in these days of ‘spiking’ and ‘surging’ pandemic numbers, you can’t get your fix listening to Christmas Musak in the department store as you walk around doing your Christmas browsing and shopping.
In the background I heard “Silent night, holy Night” and my mind was off on its little word game. I looked up ‘holy’ in the Oxford English dictionary. There are four and a half columns dedicated to the word ‘holy’. I don’t know if you’ve had the occasion to use an OED but the print is Very small. Tiny. Teeny-weeny-tiny. And, the paper is almost onion-skin thin.
That’s a whole lotta ‘splainin’, Lucy, for one little four-letter word.
The OED says that the pre-Christian use of the word ‘holy’ is not entirely clear, but it does seem to be a derivative of the adjective hailo meaning “free from injury, whole, hale,” and “inviolate” (free or safe from injury or violation).
The word hailag meaning ‘consecrated, dedicated’ is found on a Runic inscription generally held to be Gothic. It seems that, somewhere along the line, “the church” claimed the word as its property, as the rest of the four columns of definition in the OED have to deal with that which is of – or has been set apart for – God.
I very much like the connection between holy and whole. As well as ‘hale’ (strong and healthy), and ‘inviolate’ (free or safe from injury).
I like having those definitions in my head as I sing, “Silent night, holy night.” It describes a moment when the veil – or whatever it is – between heaven and earth was lifted and and the two realms touched.
It stirs something deep in my soul to think of ‘O Holy Night’ –when “the stars were brightly shining” – and a lonely cave on a hill outside the city of Bethlehem as what the Celts call “a thin place”.
There will be more on this later, but I want to note that on December 21, 2020, in addition to being the Solstice, sometimes called “the longest night”, when the Sun magically begins her way back around the cosmos, another magical event will occur.
The planets Jupiter and Saturn will be in the closest proximity to each other for the first time in almost 800 years. This produces what astronomers call “The Christmas Star” – the one that reportedly stopped over that Holy Cave on a hill outside the Little Town of Bethlehem on that Holy Night where the Holy Family had found refuge.
The Christmas star symbolizes the star of Bethlehem, which according to the Biblical story, guided the three kings, or wise men, to the baby Jesus. The star is also the heavenly sign of a prophecy fulfilled long ago and the shining hope for humanity.
It reminds me of the last few words of the Quaker hymn, "'Tis a Gift to be Simple"
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed;
to turn, turn, will be my delight.
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
There is something simply and wonder-fully holy about heaven and earth "turning, turning " and "coming round right" - being made whole again. There is a promise, implicit in that wholeness and purity, for a return to Eden, to the way it was supposed to be, the way it is described in the first words of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis:
“In the beginning, God created heaven and earth, and the earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light,’ and there was light.”
Advent is the time to gather up the broken pieces of life and sort through them, one by one in the Light. It is the process by which we decide what to leave behind, what is beyond repair, and what to try to mend together again.
We might also decide that the broken pieces cannot be mended into what it once was, so we take the pieces we need and build with them something new. Something strong. Something hale. Something healthy.
Advent is the time to seek wholeness and thus, holiness of life. Indeed, I don’t know another way to be holy than to work at being whole – to mend together all of my brokenness, or create new parts of myself with the old, and invite God’s spirit to hover over it and call from it something new.
On
this twenty second day of Celtic Advent, this second Sunday in Advent and the
sixth day on the Advent Calendar, I leave you with the last verse of that
marvelous hymn “O Holy Night” as your meditation. Maybe there is a word here that your mind will play with and lead you deeper into the meaning of Advent
Truly He taught
us to love one another;
His law is Love and His gospel is Peace;
Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother,
And in his name all oppression shall cease,
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful Chorus raise we;
Let all within us praise his Holy name!
Chorus
Christ is the Lord, then ever! ever praise we!
His pow'r and glory, evermore proclaim!
His pow'r and glory, evermore proclaim!
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