Pastor's Blog: It Never Gets Old
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Each of us has his or her favorite Christmas carol, and to paraphrase Luke’s birth narrative, we are “sorely disappointed” when it doesn’t get sung during the season. Of course, some we enjoy more than others, but the carol that most likely rates a place on everyone’s list is the old standard, “Silent Night, Holy Night,” which we sing at MBBC every Christmas Eve.
I read this week that this beloved carol turns 200 years of age this year. On Christmas Eve 1818, in, of all places, the church of St. Nicholas in the tiny town of Oberndorf, Austria, not far from Salzburg, “Stille Nacht” (Silent Night) was sung for the first time. Written by Rev. Joseph Mohr, a young priest in Oberndorf, the song originated as Mohr’s reflection on peace after a string of summer violence in Salzburg. Mohr enlisted the assistance of the church’s organist, Franz Gruber, to set the words to music, and on Christmas Eve of 1818, Mohr sang the carol to Gruber’s guitar accompaniment, because the church organ was not working. Immediately, the song struck a chord with the gathered congregation, and a tradition was born.
For a while there was some question as to who actually composed the carol. Some years later, the Royal Hofkapelle (choir orchestra) in Berlin contacted the Archabbey of St. Peter’s in Salzburg to confirm the composition’s origins. Felix Gruber, Franz’s son, was a member of the boy’s choir in St. Peter’s at the time and when he shared the story with his father, Franz Gruber wrote an explanation of the carol’s origins, which today can be viewd at the Stille Nacht Museum in Hallein, Austria, near Salzburg.
The carol has been translated into 300 languages, the first English translation appearing in New York in 1851. Along the way it has brought untold comfort and assurance to countless hearts that have found themselves on the verge of collapse. Perhaps it has sustained even you in a critical season of life. The verses invite our celebration of how on that holiest of nights, “love’s pure light” illumined our darkness “with the dawn of redeeming grace.”
So, when the time comes to break out in that particular song this Christmas Eve 2018, know that you are participating in a magnificent tradition and giving voice to a signal truth that still settles anxious souls today, some 200 years later – “Christ the Savior is born.” “Christ the Savior is born.”
"And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7).