Christmas Eve 2024
Twas our family’s 20th Christmas Eve at Trinity, and here were a few of my highlights.
Lighting the candles at the messy manger service at 4 PM. The kids were so sweet. I wish I had a clear audio of them singing the GLORIA refrains in Angels We Have Heard on High. Also, they were just naturally conversant during the lighting. Asking questions. Offering observations. At home. What could be more joyful to our Father than his children all at home, celebrating his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Holy Is His Name. We sing versions of Mary’s Magnificat more than any other song at Trinity. We normally sing Marty Haugen’s version every Wednesday night at Holden Evening Prayer and we sing Sr. Miriam Therese Winter’s version on Monday and Friday nights in the Prayer Chapel. On Christmas Eve, Joy introduced John Michael Talbot’s version from 1988. Joy went searching for parts that would work for the violin and oboe, and couldn’t track them down online for purchase. She was connected to Michael Zabrocki, Director of Music Ministries at Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in Whitestone, NY, as well as John Michael Talbot’s Director of Public Relations. Zabrocki generously provided the verdant scores for the song. One of my favorite Talbot albums is Quiet Reflections, and this version is available there. Here is Brenna reading the account of the Annunciation followed by Talbot’s Holy Is His Name.
Commonplace common life. “Prosaic settledness.” Parish life is common life. It is life in common, as in shared. We share stories, and songs, and sadnesses, and joys. We share the same neighborhood, newspaper, and mission. And parish life is common, as in ordinary, everyday, familial-familiar. My gratitude for being a parish pastor grows every year. The commonness of our life at Trinity doesn’t feel like something to outdo or overcome, but something to treasure. The old words and songs and rhythms hold us—they shape us. It is liberating to minimize behind-the-scenes planning sessions. Come Advent, come Christmas, come Lent, come Easter, the question, “How will we outdo what we did last year?” is never asked. What freedom! Our special effects are not that special—but shared in common with our mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers:
beeswax, wick, and flame
wine, bread, and water
reed, string, and voice.
Rowan Williams describes the holy life in similar terms. Here are a few quotes from his chapter God’s Workshop from his book, Holy Living: The Christian tradition for Today.The holy life is one in which we learn to handle things, in businesslike and unselfconscious ways, to ‘handle’ the control of the tongue, the habit of not passing on blame, getting up in the morning and not gossiping (53).
Simone Weil wrote somewhere about how the tool is for the seasoned worker the extension of the hand, not something alien. Benedict’s metaphors prompt us to think of holiness that is like that, an ‘extension’ of our bodies and our words that we’ve come not to notice (53)
And what does it feel like to imagine holiness as an unselfconscious getting-used-to-others? The presence of the other as a tool worn smooth and grey in the hand? The prosaic settledness of some marriages, the ease of an old priest celebrating the Eucharist, the musician’s relation to a familiar instrument planing a familiar piece—these belong to the same family of experience as the kind of sanctity that Benedict evokes here; undemonstrative, as Mayr-Harting says, because there is nothing to prove (55).
I don’t wear a chasuble very often, but it feels appropriate at the 11 PM Service at Trinity. Pastor Christianson wore one occasionally here, but it doesn’t feel indigenous to the piety here. Plus, it is often too warm :) This old (and I mean old as in a couple hundred years old?) chasuble was a gift from Johan Hinderlie, who received it from his dad (Carroll Luther Hinderlie), who received it from an old priest in the Church of Norway. It is the least “stiff” vestment I use, because it has been so used—like a comfortable sweater. 
Merry Christmas dear ones!
