Dear Friends,
We have arrived at our last week of Advent. Just a bit more time to prepare. If you have been doing any shopping out and about, then you have been hearing the melodies of Christmas carols being played ahead of Christmas. If we focused on the words of the songs, then we may find them helping us prepare and, perhaps, reveal a truth that speaks to our hearts the reason for our joy. In contrast to the lightness of holiday cheer stands the reality of this manger-cradled, new-born who we claim to be our Messiah. While Christmas cards show a peaceful scene, it was anything but peaceful for those involved.
In the words of the songs, we hear descriptions of a Christmas vision, which like Advent itself, dwells in darkness as it awaits light. In the days of December, we acknowledge that we are “captive, in lonely exile, under Satan’s tyranny, beneath gloomy clouds of night, within death’s dark shadows, next-door the depths of hell”; from here comes the cry, “O come, O come, Emmanuel”. And it is into this dark world that “the Light of light descendeth / from the realms of endless day” as “all mortal flesh keeps silence…”
Advent points the Church towards Jesus’ Second Coming: there—just ahead! —is the Resurrection, the Judgment, the final Victory; and we rejoice in anticipation. Christmas itself tells the story of God entering into our suffering, taking on our flesh, coming to dwell among us. The long-expected Jesus has “Come to earth to taste our sadness, / He whose glories knew no end.”
The theme of deliverance runs through many of the Christmas carols. We are those “beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, / who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow.” But “Light and life to all He brings, risen with healing in His wings,” for He is “Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the earth . . . / dear Desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.”
One Christmas carol that is greatly misunderstood is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. When it was first sung, more than five hundred years ago, they understood what the words meant. We think of the merry as meaning happy, but merry at the time the song was written meant “great or mighty” – like Robin Hood’s merry men, they were not happy but mighty. The word rest does not mean sleep, but it means to “keep or make.” Therefore, the line should read in today’s English “God make you mighty, gentlemen.” The remainder of the song makes more sense if we understand what the words were meant to mean. The birth of Jesus changes us and makes us different, makes us mighty. That is the reason for our joy. Not our doing, but God’s.
God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,
remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day,
to save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray,
O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
O tidings of comfort and joy.
Peace,
Fr. Damian
PS – “Long wait the world, in sin and error – pining. Til he returned and the soul felt it’s worth!”