“If you are silent, you will have peace wherever you live.” — Abba Poemen
In one sense, the carol “Silent Night” is an odd thing to sing about Christmas. Most of the time, the holidays are anything but “silent.” Shopping, traveling, cleaning and preparing for guests, decorating, shopping, cooking, caroling, rehearsing, and did I mention shopping? — all of these activities are pretty noisy, especially with the constant muzak airplay of that dubious (and probably non-consensual) number that has nothing to do with Christmas, “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”
And, if you think about it, the very idea of “birth” usually has nothing to do with “silence.” When a baby comes into the world, there is always a tumult of the mother in hard labor, the father pacing in anxiety, the obstetrician and nurses scurrying about. The critical moment of birth is punctuated by Lemaze sounds from the about-to-be-new-mom, instructions from the staff, and finally, a first cry after a very first breath.
It’s all beautiful, to be sure, but usually not at all silent.
Usually, that is, except for one totally unusual birth.
Gazing into the Nativity Icon, you get an entirely different sense of birthgiving. There is quiet written into the entire scene. Mary, the Mother of God, is resting in tranquility, with her swaddled Infant at her side, “no crying He makes,” as Martin Luther, for once, correctly states in his lyric, “Away in a Manger.”
The Nativity of Jesus Christ — when the Son of God also became the Son of Man — happened in silence. It was a mysterious quietude, because this moment was a profound junction of Eternity with Time, of the Divine with the non-divine … when the Creator — and let us be amazed here — became Creature.
The Righteous Joseph, foster father of Jesus, was not in the Cave at the moment of the Nativity. He was looking for a midwife to assist the birthgiving.
The Protoevangelium of James, a document written around 150 AD as a compilation of reminiscences of Mary, her parents, and Joseph (see the very good article about the Protoevangelium by Protopresbyter Lawrence Barriger at the ACROD.org website), recounts Joseph’s firsthand memory of the moment of the Nativity:
And he [Joseph] found a cave and led her there and stationed his sons to watch her, while he went to a find a Hebrew midwife in the land of Bethlehem. Then, Joseph walked, but he did not walk. And I looked up to the peak of the sky and saw it standing still and I looked up into the air. With utter astonishment I saw it, even the birds of the sky were not moving. … And suddenly everything was replaced by the ordinary course of events. (Protoevangelium of James, 18.1-4, 11, emphasis added)
Everything stopped. Everything was stilled by silence, the silence of the eternal descending into time. This was the crucial moment Jesus described later to Nicodemus in the Gospel of St John: “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven” (3.13).
This Holy Night of the Nativity was not the first moment of eternal silence. It had happened before (as described in a recent presentation by Eric Vanden Eykel at the Society for Biblical Literature this past November). When God gave the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, the mountain was covered with smoke and God’s voice is heard by the people, far down below, as thunder. In an old Hebrew commentary on the book of Exodus, dating from the eleventh century, the Shemot Rabbah says this:
When God gave the Torah no bird twittered or flew, no ox lowed, none of the Ophanim [i.e., the mystical wheels seen by Ezekiel] stirred a wing, the Seraphim did not say ‘Holy, Holy,’ the sea did not roar, the creatures spoke not, the whole world wash hushed into breathless silence and the voice went forth: I am the LORD your God” (29.9).
Even further back, there is another Silence, and this was at the very beginning. Philo, or someone associated with him, writes this in the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (dated from around the time of the birth of Christ): “There were darkness and silence before the world was, and the silence spoke, and the darkness became invisible.”
It seems that Silence prevails whenever (and wherever) divinity descends into humanity. And since humanity, in turn, lies at the heart of all Creation, then Time and Space are drawn into that mysterious, mystical silence that lies “at the still point of the turning world” (T S Eliot, Four Quartets).
Whenever does Divinity descend so far into the extreme of Humanity lostness and despair, as when Jesus Christ descends into Hell and Death on Holy Saturday?
“Let all mortal flesh keep silent,” we sing at the Cherubic Hymn in St Basil’s Liturgy on that day, referring to the original lyric in Habbakuk 2.20, “and stand with fear and trembling, and in itself consider nothing of earth; for the King of kings and Lord of lords cometh forth to be sacrificed, and given as food to the believers; and there go before Him the choirs of Angels, with every dominion and power, the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim, covering their faces, and crying out the hymn: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.”
It is more than interesting that our Protestant friends sing this hymn mainly at Christmastime. There is a beautiful old French folk melody (called “Picardy”) that was joined to these words by the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. Perhaps you’ve heard it.
And finally, at the end of all things there will be Silence. In his vision of the Apocalypse, St John the Theologian has already seen the terrifying judgments that God has wreaked upon the world. Now, however, God is turning to usher in the new heaven and the new earth, where everything is utterly transfigured, where nothing is lost and everything is gained.
What do you think happens before the dawning of this New Creation?
“And when He [i.e., the Lamb] had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour” (Apocalypse 8.1, KJV).
You guessed it: Silence.
What are we to make of this still silence, this suspension of time and utter quiet of space?
At the beginning of every New Creation, silence covers the world and the created universe. At each of these “birthgivings” of new life — the Creation of the World, the Giving of the Law, the Nativity of Christ, His Destruction of Hell at the Passion, and the Universal Transfiguration at the Last Day — the Divinity of the Trinity is revealed. Just because that revelation is unearthly there can be no earthly noise.
Ask any mother: at every birthgiving, there is always a sacrifice of pouring out one’s own life. For humans this always involves a lot of noise.
But for God, it is always the sound of silence. Why? Because the Nativity is nothing new for God: it is a working out in the created world what is already a reality in the divine world. The Three Divine Persons give all of themselves away: and in that fact alone are they known as Persons.
God, in turn, pours out Himself in the creation of the seen and unseen worlds.
God gives Himself away in every revelation, especially the revelation of the Old Law and the New: St Paul says that Jesus Himself is the Law’s “completion” or “goal” (Romans 10.4).
God gives Himself in the Incarnation, which is climactically fulfilled in the Passion and Resurrection. And at the Ascension, God assumes human nature into the Godhead for all eternity.
This “assumption” was done in Silence, and one day, that same bright Silence will cover the heavens and the earth.
Indeed, “let all mortal flesh keep silence” in the face of Divinity.
So, then:
In this Christmas season, practice the advice of the old Desert Father, Abba Poemen: “If you are silent, you will have peace wherever you live.” Pray this season. Fast for silence. Give freely, as God gives Himself to you. Sing as an Angel. Feast as a Shepherd. Watch the stars like the Magi.
Practice the Silence of the Manger.
If you do, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll come to know, more than ever before, the actuality of “Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.”
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