Pray for Peace, People Everywhere

 

Bellarmine University

Our Lady of the Woods 

Christmas Eve Vigil Mass 

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/122524-Night.cfm 

Pray for Peace, People Everywhere

 Merry Christmas, Bellarmine, to you and your families.   If you’re like my family you’ve been hearing and listening to Christmas songs for about a month nonstop.  We’ve heard them on our smart speaker, the radio, at Christmas concerts, piano recitals, and St. Agnes’ Christmas pageant.  

Miriam, Max, and Petra, who are all five years old, have been really into “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”  Something about the repetition in the song really appeals to their age … while also driving adults a little crazy. 

When EJ, our oldest, was three, he sang “Jingle Bells” for a solid year.  The next year, he started up on “We Three Kings.”  Again for a whole year, we were hearing  ”Woah … hoh....  Star of wonder…!”

Christmas songs can be overwhelming and inescapable.  Yet sometimes, amidst the repetition and suffocation of the season, these familiar carols can bring us closer to Christ and the mystery of God becoming human.  

One well-known Christmas song was written in October 1962 by a French composer named Noël Regney and his wife Gloria Shayne Baker who lived in New York City. I’m going to focus on Noël’s composition of the lyrics.  Noël was asked by a record producer to write a Christmas song, but he initially refused because he thought the holiday had become too commercialized.  (I imagine with a name like Noël, he had a conflicted relationship with Christmas). 

Another intrusion prevented Noël from writing: as he sat in the Manhattan record studio, terrible news from Cuba kept breaking on the radio.  Nuclear weapons pointed towards the United States had been brought from the Soviet Union.  Just 90 miles from Cuba, this new development was a serious escalation in the Cold War.  President John F. Kennedy ordered a blockade of the island.  The world came unbearably close to nuclear Armageddon during those thirteen days in October.  

Picturing intercontinental ballistic missiles flashing across the sky, Noël wrote:  

Do you see what I see?

A star, a star, dancing in the night

With a tail as big as a kite

This sounds like the star of Bethlehem, but in his mind he pictured a night sky lit up with the streaking fire of rockets.  Depressed and scared, Noël left the studio, intending to take the subway home.  While walking the streets of the city, he was struck by a very different site.

 He said, “I saw two mothers with their babies in strollers. The little angels were looking at each other and smiling. All of a sudden, my mood was extraordinary.” The adults on the streets were full of despair, yet these two babies, these two little lambs, were full of peace and joy.  

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy:

"Do you hear what I hear?

Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy

While Christmas is a joyous time, this is also a time of literal and symbolic darkness.  There is conflict and discord among people and nations. We are a people who have walked in darkness, who have dwelt in the land of gloom, burdened by the yoke, and the rod of the taskmaster, and trampled under the boot.  It has always been thus.  Jesus was born under the shadow of violence, with a king who wanted to kill him in his crib.  His parents fled with him to Egypt before Mary had even recovered from birthing him.  

Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king:

"Do you know what I know?

In your palace warm, mighty king

Do you know what I know?

A child, a child shivers in the cold

Let us bring Him silver and gold

Tonight, children in our world continue to shiver in the cold.  Yet the promise of Christmas is this: “Emmanuel,” God is with us.  He is with us even in the darkest and coldest places of our lives.  Today is born our Savior, Christ the Lord.  There is a light shining in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.  

Said the king to the people everywhere:

"Listen to what I say

Pray for peace, people everywhere

The angels appeared to shepherds, poor laborers sleeping outdoors with their flocks, a people on the margins of society.  These were the first to hear the Good News.  They were the first to perceive that the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, he was the longed for messiah.  

Listen to what I say

The child, the child, sleeping in the night

He will bring us goodness and light

Noël Regney, who wrote the lyrics to, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and his wife Gloria who wrote the music, could not sing their own song.  The threat of war and oblivion was too pressing.  When they tried to sing, they cried.  This Christmas as we listen to what they said, let us pray for peace, and let us believe the promise that the Christ child will bring us all to goodness and light.  God bless you and your families.