Music and Silence

Dr. Laura Scow and I have had great fun creating our Favorite Advent & Christmas Hymn Podcast series--you can find the first five episodes (we have three more to go) on the Music @AllSaints YouTube playlist. More than any other holiday, Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without its music.

But silence, too, is an important part of our preparation for the celebration of the Feast of the Incarnation...silence in Advent prayer, silence away from the bustle of the world. (Perhaps one of the unexpected things you've found, as I have, about this pandemic Christmas is that it is easier to stay disconnected from the distraction and noise of our typical consumer-focused secular holiday season?)

I'm reminded of one of the letters from the demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood in C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, in which he describes how much he hates both music and silence:

Music and silence-how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell-though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express-no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise-Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile-Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it.

I'm praying for us all that we will, now in this time of Advent and Christmas and always, escape that infernal noise, and immerse ourselves in the beauty of music and the power of silence.

Fr. Keith