Disaster struck at the Baptist Church back in the ‘80s. The majestic pipe organ stopped playing just days before the big Christmas Eve service. Our venerable organist, Miss Mabel (bless her heart), was in a tizzy.
Back in the day when I was working at the Baptist Church in LA (Lower Alabama), the organ quit and the deacons employed Leroy’s Machine Shop to rig up a replacement motor. That story did not have a happy ending so I advised our deacons to contact the organ company. But there was no way we would have an organ for the Christmas Eve service.
Miss bless-her-heart Mabel was inconsolable. She had planned a grand Prelude, a powerful rendition of Panis Angelicus that she had been rehearsing for months. I told her that while we were saddened we would not be able to hear her masterpiece, we could still make this a memorable service. I could tell the story of Silent Night—how the Priest discovered the organ was broken on Christmas Eve morning and he hurriedly wrote some words and then had the organist to compose a tune that they played on a guitar. Since our organ was broken we could close our service by singing Silent Night, accompanied by a guitar.
That was exactly what we did. People thought it was the best Christmas Eve service ever, much to Miss bless-her-heart Mabel’s chagrin! It would be 35 years before I discovered that I had the story all wrong.
In May, we visited Obendorf, the birthplace of Silent Night. The minute we stepped off the train we felt like we were in a fairy tale. This idyllic Austrian village was friendly, neat, and clean. The Salzach River winds through this beautiful hamlet with the breathtaking snow-covered Alps in the distance. Five months earlier they had celebrated the 200th anniversary of the iconic Christmas carol and it was evident they had gone all out to accommodate the multitude of visitors.
A small chapel rests on the site where Silent Night was first heard. A hand-carved nativity and two beautiful stained glass windows create a quiet and peaceful sanctuary. The windows honor Father Joseph Mohr, the Parish Priest, and Franz Gruber, the organist of St. Nicholas Church. Two centuries ago the town was in a crisis. The bargers made their living transporting salt down the river to Salzburg, but the river had flooded and the bargers were helpless.
Father Mohr was a man of the people. He visited their taverns where he ate and drank with them and sang their festive songs. On Christmas Eve he was thinking about their desperate plight when he remembered a poem he had written two years before during a time of crisis in a previous Parish. It was the year of 1816, the summer without a sun, as the entire Northern hemisphere was suffering from a global disaster resulting from a super-volcanic eruption in faraway Indonesia. The volcanic ash had circled the earth, blocking the sun and creating a natural disaster resulting in starvation, poverty, and death.
Father Mohr found solace in front of a painting of the holy family. He reflected on the contrast of the heavenly peace of the Nativity and the pain and suffering that he and his people were experiencing. He wrote “Silent Night, Holy Night, all is calm, all is bright . . .”
Finding the words he wrote two years earlier, he went to see his friend Franz Gruber. Agreeing to compose the music, they decided that they would sing the new song after the Christmas Eve service was over, for a guitar would not be appropriate for formal worship.
When the Christmas Eve service ended in Obendorf in 1818, no one left the church. Father Mohr and Mr. Gruber stood before the people and for the first and only time, sang the words that would touch millions of people for the next two centuries. It wasn’t that the organ was broken; it was that the spirits of the people were broken and this compassionate Priest wanted to leave them with comfort and hope.
Silent Night is now the most popular Christmas carol of all time. Tonight, on Christmas Eve, we will sing these beautiful words again. May they continue to bring comfort, hope, and heavenly peace.
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