In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
My dearly beloved in Our Lord,
In this “silent night”, I wish you all a blessed Christmas filled with true joy and peace!
In the first Mass at the middle of the night, the Church of Rome prays “at St Mary Major, at the crib” (station church), one of the four major papal basilicas where the rests of the wooden crib, the manger of Bethlehem, are kept and venerated beneath the main altar.
There is no fitter time than the middle of the night for the contemplation of the mystery of the eternal Son of God made man. The midnight Mass proposes to the regard of our faith, in the Psalm verses of the sung parts, the contemplation of the eternity of the divine Person of the Christ child.
The chants themselves are masterpieces. For example the Introit only uses five different notes, thus reflecting something of the life of the Blessed Trinity reposing in its own self, in the total beatitude of unchanging eternity. The same is true for the Communio.
I want to draw your attention for a brief moment to another passage sung in this night, in the divine Office at Matins. It is a verse from the 9th chapter of the prophet Isaias: “For a child is born to us, and a son is given to us, and the government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counselor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace.” (v.6)
All these are most fitting names for the Emmanuel, the God with us, the Christ-child.
He is Wonderful and God the Mighty: for who else but God in His infinite wisdom could have devised such a wonderful plan for the Redemption of the fallen human race, and executed it with such might as to set into motion the entire world by the census of the Roman Empire?
Our Lord is the Counselor, foremost by giving us the evangelical counsels of perfection. He himself gives us the most eminent example from the first hour of his earthly life: The poverty of the manger; the chastity of those closest to him, namely his Virgin Mother and his foster-father, a virgin also; the obedience through which at every instant he offers his sacred humanity to the Father: “Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith: Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldest not: but a body thou hast fitted to me: Holocausts for sin did not please thee. Then said I: Behold I come: in the head of the book it is written of me: that I should do thy will, O God.” (Heb 10,5-7; Ps 39,7-8)
The Christ-child is the Father of the world to come, for he through his life, death and resurrection sets the stage for the final condition of the world which he will bring about by his last coming.
And he is the Prince of Peace. “In the 42nd year of the reign of the Emperor Octavian Augustus, in the 6th age of the world, while the whole earth was at peace, Jesus Christ, Himself Eternal God and Son of the Eternal Father (...) was born of the Virgin Mary at Bethlehem of Juda made Man”, we have read from the Roman Martyrology. God had given peace to the entire world at the moment Our Lord entered the world. And as he is about to leave it again, he says to his Apostles: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you.” (Jn 14,27) The peace the world promises or gives, is always relative and short-lived. “They said: peace, peace; and there was no peace.” (Jer 6,14) But God gives the true peace of heart and of mind to those who hear and follow his voice, and the voice of the Church which Christ has founded.
So let us be grateful for the coming of Christ. Let us make good use of the spiritual and mystical gift that God has granted us through the birth of His Son, Our Lord Jesus-Christ! Let us follow the light of Truth which Our Lord has come to kindle in the world, and which he wants to burn through the works of the Faith. Let us not diminish or betray the light of the world; but follow it, as the Holy Kings did, until we find Our Lord himself, to adore him at the day of eternity.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski
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