Silent night...holy night... The Nativity of Christ is frequently presented to us as a silent thing, and even I’ve referred to it as such. In some long-ago piece, I describe it being “as if God had put His hand over the wails and sobs of a suffering world and said, ‘Sshh, it will be all right...’”
But of course, Christ’s coming was no silent affair. Between the bells of the shepherds and the angelic songs of the heralds, between the braying animals and the crackle of the veil being rent, all around, how could it be? The night was certainly holy, but it likely wasn’t silent.
Silence, of which we sing so wistfully at midnight Mass, is at an all-time premium at Christmas. It is so difficult to find a quiet night, let alone sit within one and become immersed in it, that the possibility of a seasonal soothing of the heart seems the stuff of illusion and myth.
Christmas has become the equivalent of an overdone theme-park vacation. By its end, one is knock-kneed with exhaustion and desperately in need of a genuine opportunity to rest.
If you have turned off the television and tempted your child away from his games with a good book, you can hear other things: the chatter and call of cardinals who have found the birdseed; the crack of a log in the fire; hot coffee being poured into a cup; the ticking of your last nondigital clock; the rhythmic breathing of a tired child (or parent) who has dozed while reading; the soft thud of a book sliding to the floor.
You can hear life, forced into a slow-down; life less deliberate; life lived as it was for centuries, before the busy inventiveness of the last six or seven decades; life acquiescent to uncontrollable nature, and hunkered down.
We have allowed silence to become a gift forgotten, one we only consent to unwrap when all of our alternative bows and strings have been unraveled, and our diversions have been utterly played out. Our inability to be silent puts our minds and our souls at a disadvantage, because it robs us of the ability to wonder, and if we are not wondering at the impossible perfection of the world in its creation – if we are not wondering at spinning atoms and Incarnations, especially at this season – then we are lost to humility, and to experiencing gratitude.
And without gratitude, we cannot develop a reasoned capacity for joy.
For 2023, resolve to be here now and to serve yourself, but do it in this way: by cultivating silence and overcoming time within one of the classic disciplines of daily prayer – where the pulse of the Psalms calms the breath, pockets of silence center the spirit, and the liturgical calendar frees us from the shackles of time.
For many Christians, this means the Liturgy of the Hours – a gift that, unwrapped and utilized, trains us in the procurement of silence and lures a time-out-of-joint into lustrous submission.
And it reminds us of the real time in which we live, or should be living.
Though the secular holiday is past for another year, Christmas is far from over. Rather, in the breviary, its prayers are continued, renewed each morning and again at Vespers: “In the beginning, before time began, the Word was God; today He is born, the Savior of the world.”
The mystery, the wonder, the gladness: It has not ended. Each day in the Octave of Christmas, the words are cast again upon the air, resonating out into the world and reclaiming time from its insistent march away, always away, from what is before us.
Elizabeth Scalia is a Benedictine Oblate and author of the award-winning “Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life” (Ave Maria Press) and “Little Sins Mean a Lot” (OSV). She blogs as “The Anchoress” at www.theanchoress.com.