People of St. John’s Church, Rockwood gathered around the town’s War Memorial on Sunday, November 7 and sang ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’. An array of wreaths provided an appropriate symbolic background. The wreaths were laid at the area Remembrance Day ceremony held on Saturday.
It is part of a Canada wide happening in the Anglican Church of Canada, where all parishes are asked to videotape the singing of ‘Silent Night’, which will be made into a documentary, to be shared online.
On Christmas Eve 1914, during the First World War, soldiers on both sides of the conflict called a truce, laid down their weapons and met in ‘no man’s land’. They exchanged greetings and gifts and sang the one Christmas carol known by all – ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’.
The organ in St. Nicholas Church in the Austrian Alps was silent in 1818; some say mice had chewed through the bellows, so the prospect of music at the Christmas worship was indeed bleak. Joseph Mohr, the assistant priest, accepted the challenge and wrote the lyrics to ‘Silent Night’. He asked his friend, Franz Gruber, to set his words to music. Later at the Christmas Midnight Mass, the people sang ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’, accompanied by a guitar, for the first time.
It has been translated into more than 140 languages.
People participating in singing ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’ in Rockwood donated a ‘toonie’ to support the work of the Military Chaplains in the Canadian Forces.
To view our SILENT NIGHT video, and the many others from across Canada, go to http://www.anglican.ca/ and follow the link.
No comments:
Post a Comment