Silent night

Third Sunday of Advent (Joy), December 14, 2025

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Silent night

The desert and the parched land will exult;

the steppe will rejoice and bloom.

They will bloom with abundant flowers,

and rejoice with joyful song.

I’ve heard stories behind many Christmas carols. The story of “Silent Night,” which I thought I knew, turn out more complicated than what many of us have heard. Dan Graves of Christian History magazine sheds some light.

Joseph Mohr was born in Salzburg on December 11, 1792. He is remembered for his beautiful carol, “Silent Night,” beautiful in the otherwise silent corners of houses and churches and schools around the world.

However, during his childhood, Joseph’s name was associated with shame. Not only was he his mother’s third illegitimate child, he was godson of the town’s hated executioner. This came about because Mohr’s father, a soldier named Franz Joseph Mohr, deserted the army and fled when he learned Ann Schoiber was pregnant by him. Ann had to face the consequences alone. 

One of the consequences she faced was a fine. She earned little from her boarding house and knitting, so it would have taken her a year’s wages to pay it off. To spruce up his reputation, the town executioner said he would pay the fine and stand as godfather to the child. Unfortunately, this only meant more humiliation for the boy. He was ostracized and no school would accept him, nor would any employer hire him or teach him a trade. 

However, the boy could sing. Johann Nepomuk Hiernle, a Benedictine monk and choirmaster, overheard Mohr singing as he played games on the steps of a Capuchin monastery. Heirnle obtained Ann Schoiber’s permission to train the lad, and Mohr blossomed under this care. By twelve he was well on his way to mastering the organ, guitar, and violin. He held his own among elite students, always placing near the top of the class. 

Joseph continued his training until he was twenty-three and was ordained a priest. Because he was illegitimate, he needed a special dispensation from the pope to enter the priesthood. In 1816, he was stationed at the pilgrimage church in Mariapfarr, Austria. There he wrote the words to “Silent Night.”

The next year, church authorities sent him to Oberndorf, where he met Hans Gruber, the organist of a neighboring church who set the words to music. The carol was first sung at a midnight mass on Christmas Eve, 1818. Gradually it made its way into the larger world, where others modified a few notes. Today it is the most popular Christmas carol of all time, translated into over two hundred languages. 

“Silent Night” expresses the wonder of the light Christ brought at his incarnation, which was announced by angels to shepherds, and inspired wise men to follow a star and find the incarnate king. Early English translations differ from the familiar words we sing: 

Holy night! Peaceful night!

Through the darkness beams a light

Yonder, where they sweet vigils keep

O’er the babe, who, in silent sleep,

Rests in heavenly peace.

Joseph Mohr had a tender heart toward the needy and outcast. When he died at his last post—in Wagrain—he was penniless. For years he had given almost everything he earned to charities, among which was a school he had started for poor children.

—Dan Graves

As is often the case, lyrics and melody followed different trails into the final song. Fr. Mohr asked his organist friend to set the poem to music.

The church organ Gruber played each week was in fine condition, but the two men wanted to honor a yearly tradition of sharing a new carol. They sang Stille Nacht for the first time at Christmas Mass in St Nicholas Church while Mohr played guitar and the choir repeated the last two lines of each verse. For a long time, many thought that Silent Night was written by Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven.

How many composers have discovered the beauty God created only as they were forced by hte world around them to look deeper than the surface of their lives? And always there appears in the darkness a human to love them, God with skin-on, who is also listening to the sweet strains of the Holy Spirit. The splendid blend of shamed student and observant monk ended by surpassing the genius of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and gave us “Silent Night.”

Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return

and enter Zion singing,

crowned with everlasting joy;

they will meet with joy and gladness,

sorrow and mourning will flee.

(Isaiah 35, Psalm 146, James 5, Isaiah 61, Matthew 11)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

#