O Holy Night
Brother Maynard is part of a group of bloggers who are blogging through Advent this year, and I’ve been reading along a bit when I have time (which isn’t all that often). A recent post caught my eye – it’s a look at “O Holy Night” as an Advent carol. He writes:
The carol I’ve selected for the week is, strictly speaking, not an Advent carol, but a Christmas carol. However, this being the start of the second week of Advent, the theme is Peace, and I’ve selected a carol about peace: O Holy Night.
In the past few years, “O Holy Night” has become my all-time favorite Christmas song, and it definitely ranks as one of my favorite hymns. Regarding the last verse, part of which reads, “Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother / And in His name all oppression shall cease,” Bro. Maynard (a pseudonym, by the way) writes:
…the last verse I’ve quoted here is in no small part what makes this a radical hymn… and a call for justice. This being the peace-themed week of Advent, it seems to me there is no peace without justice. Justice was a bit of a theme for Jesus… loving our brother, breaking chains, the end of oppression. Isn’t that the thing for which we wait? Isn’t that a theme for Advent? The theme?
He goes on to quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes… and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.
Bro. Maynard ends with this: “This Advent, whose doors do we stand outside with the power to open?” I like this progression: From contemplation on the fact that we are helpless, powerless to open the prison door ourselves, to reflection on this – if I have been freed, what do I do now?
Good thoughts.
Leave a Reply