A Christmas Hymn by Richard Wilbur

As a child I had only a rudimentary understanding of the Incarnation. The Christmas crib, the Holy Family, giving rather than getting, and the fact that so many people had so little and we should be grateful—these were part of the Christmas experience. Jesus as redeemer and savior remained on the fringe of my awareness until much later. I must have filtered out the Advent texts of Isaiah.

Richard Wilbur’s text A Christmas Hymn or A Stable Lamp is Lighted has edged out many traditional carols for me. We visit the stable at Bethlehem briefly, then move to Palm Sunday. As the Pharisees tell Jesus to make his disciples stop singing Hosanna, Jesus responds, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would cry out.” Throughout the hymn Wilbur repeats the phrase “and every stone shall cry”. These stones pave the roadway to the coming kingdom, they cry for hearts made hard by sin and for the times God’s love is refused. They cry in praises of the child “by whose descent among us the worlds are reconciled.”

In an interview Richard Wilbur remembered the challenge set to him by composer Richard Winslow. If you write a hymn and you’re serious about it, you have no business filling in with maverick notions of your own. A hymn has to be perfectly orthodox so that a congregation can belt it out with one voice. He commented that Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts had met this challenge many times, and we who sing their texts know this well.

It is a gift to be able to encompass in one hymn Jesus’ coming among us, his life, death and resurrection. After I learned this hymn years ago, I began to notice the text of other Christmas hymns and carols. Some are fixed on the nativity scene, as in a tableau. Others engage us in the wholeness of the mystery.

Sr. Christa Kreinbrink, OSB

To listen to A Stable Lamp is Lighted click here.