The Twelve Days of Christmas Carols: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Today I greet you with a wonderful hymn, which I hope will be as fruitful at midnight this New Year's Eve as it might have been a few days ago as we huddled into our parishes for the Midnight Mass of Christmas.

It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold;
“Peace on the earth, good will to men,
From Heaven’s all gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.

The silence of the earth in response to the song of the angels later gives way to the praises of every nation, people, and tongue, but for now the earth lay still and those aware of the goings on in that frozen moment in time kneel in adoration before the Lord.

Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever over its Babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.

Over a tired world, marked with the division of human speech, which forms through a hundred factions a challenge to human understanding of human words, the angels sing in one voice divine words, expressing the nature of the Word of God, who has come to bless the earth as Emmanuel.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing.

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!

The division of language is not the only thing distracting man from the Word of God who has at last come to speak into the ear words which could not be heard at a normal distance. Yet the wars between men are not the only types of strife among us. The war within man equally distracts him from God. The delays we place upon the worship of God stand in the way of authentic devotion. The mixed up priorities we all have serve to distract us as we put off the work of God. Pope Benedict pointed this out in his Midnight Mass homily. The carol calls us to rest and listen to the song of the angels, to put our priorities in proper order and to devote ourselves to God.

For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet-bards foretold,
When with the ever circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.

Man begins to resound the hymn of the angels in the response of the Blessed Virgin, of Joseph, of the shepherds and of the Magi, but this verse will not be complete until every tongue proclaims that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father, in that heavenly Kingdom where the lowly King born on Christmas Night will reign forevermore.

His Servant and Yours,

Micah