The \u201cSilent Night\u201d that begins\nwith Christmas Eve is actually a quite loud and noisy one (and I am not even\nthinking of family gatherings or parties here). In church too, there are lots of services, singing,\nreadings, and the obligatory \u201cSilent Night, Holy Night\u201d \u2013 especially this year,\nas the hymn turns 200 years old. There\nare also many words, especially the hundreds of thousands of homiletical\nattempts to spell out what it means that the Word became Flesh and dwelt among\nus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which leads me to wonder: How\nmany Christmas homilies from years past do you remember? In truth, I remember only one — mostly for\nits spectacular failure to deliver what I wanted it to. When I was growing up, our parish priest got\nup at one Midnight Mass to preach and opened with a quote from the philosopher Ludwig\nWittgenstein: \u201cWhereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.\u201d This sentence he followed with a pregnant\npause. I sat up expectantly, wanting the\npriest simply to turn around and sit down again, and invite us into silent\ncontemplation of the mystery of this, the \u201csilent\u201d night. Sadly, that was not to be, and we were\ninstead treated to many, many words \u2013 none of which I can remember. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, as we approach this year\u2019s\nChristmas Eve, I wonder what experiences people have with putting the \u201csilent\u201d\nback into \u201cSilent Night\u201d?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Putting the “silent” back in Silent Night<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":44759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-plaza-new-ws"],"yoast_head":"\n