“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere I go.” I’m humming along with the music as I look up from my study books to glance at the window. The Italian winter sky outside is darkening. It is beginning to look like Christmas!
This morning, during a break between two theology courses, it had started snowing. An extremely rare phenomenon in Rome. Several of my fellow students from central Africa ran outside. They had never seen snow before! They just stood there on the square in front of the Gregorian University, smiling, bedazzled by the sight of thousands of small, white snowflakes that melted and disappeared when they touched the pavement.
No snow this evening though, but the cloudless, dark blue sky is foreboding a very cold winter night. I force myself to concentrate on my books again. It’s my first year in Rome, and I’m working under a deadline on a paper for a course on the theology of communication. I’m frantically trying to finish the thing so I can drop it off at my teacher’s office before the university closes its doors.
I’m browsing through the dictionary to look up the Italian word for ‘hermeneutics’ when the phone rings. I cringe. “NOT NOW!!” I yell at the telephone on my desk. “I’m busy!” Since the phone ignores my frustration and keeps ringing, I decide in turn to ignore the phone. If it’s really important, they will call again.
If I don’t hand in this paper tonight, I’m dead. Some of my fellow students study at a Franciscan university, and they always rave about the kindness of their teachers. But I happen to study at ‘The Greg’, run by Jesuits. The oldest university in the world, and, according to some, also the coldest university. Teachers at The Greg are strict and demanding.
In fact, if I were to make a film about my life, Jeremy Irons -’Simon’ from ‘Die Hard With a Vengeance’- would be perfect for the part of my teacher. “I am going to tell Fr. Roderick what to do, and Fr. Roderick is going to do it. Noncompliance will result in a penalty.” If only I could be in control of the situation like Bruce Willis always seems to be…
I am startled by the sound of loud knocking on my door. Oops. Is this a fellow priest who wants me to lower the volume of my Christmas music? I turn off the CD. Another impatient knock on the door. “I’m coming!” I say as I walk to the door to open it.
A fellow Dutch priest, dressed in a thick coat and wearing a woolen winter hat points at his watch. “Hey, we are waiting for you down the stairs! Have you forgotten about our final choir rehearsal for the Christmas concert?”
Oh crud. I completely forgot. I have to hand in that paper first, or Jeremy Irons will cave my head in! “Uhm, why don’t you guys go ahead and take the bus, I’ll be joining you by bike – I have to drop something off at the university”.
“Fine, but hurry up, will you? You are one of the few who can read sheet music, the others depend on you!”
I look at the clock. The university is closing its doors in 25 minutes.
Red Alert. Battlestations!
About 15 minutes later, I jump on my bike and head down the hill towards Circus Maximus, the paper and the sheet music tucked away in a shoulder bag. Man, it’s COLD!! As I gather speed, the freezing air feels like pins and needles on my face and hands.
I speed alongside the Collosseum and turn left onto the Via dei Fori Imperiali. The ancient cobblestone road full of holes shakes and rattles my bike like the bridge of the Enterprise during a Klingon attack.
I park my bike against a lantern post in front of the University, and rush up the stairs. Thank God, the building hasn’t closed yet. I run through the empty, marble hallways to my teacher’s office, drop the paper in his mailbox and run back to my bike.
Disaster averted. Back to yellow alert.
Another fifteen minutes later, I arrive at the Frisian Church where the rehearsal takes place. I park my bike and take a minute to catch my breath. After navigating the crazy Italian traffic to get here, my heart beat slowly returns to normal. Standing at the foot of the stairs that lead to the entrance of the Church, I look left and see the huge pillars that surround Saint Peter’s Square. I can’t see the facade of the basilica, but it’s only a three minute walk from where I’m standing.
As I move up the stairs to the entrance of the Frisian Church, I can already hear the Christmas carols coming from the inside. I open the door and walk in. The priest who knocked on my door earlier tonight is directing the choir. The beautiful Austrian version of ‘Silent Night’ suddenly comes to a grinding halt as the men in the choir miss a beat. “Let’s do that again,” the director sighs. “Gentlemen, please pay some more attention, okay?”
The choir consists of several fellow Dutch priests that are studying in Rome, as well as some other members of the Dutch-speaking Catholic community that live and work in the Eternal City.
Marina, the Italian spouse of one of the men, helps me to find the right page of my sheet music. “Ciao”, I whisper, “so how are things tonight?” “E un disastro, a disaster,” she whispers back. “This song is too difficult for us; we are only dilettanti, amateurs, but he expects us to sing as ‘choristi professionali’!”
“Father Roderick, please don’t distract the others, will you?”
“Sorry, I was looking for the right page.”
“We only have this last rehearsal before the Christmas concert. If we don’t get it right tonight, we might have to cancel the concert. I’m not going to allow these beautiful songs to be butchered by a bunch of unfocused, distracted, lazy singers like you!”
I know that he is only half joking. The last couple of weeks, this priest has pushed us way beyond what we thought we were capable of, but some of this music is just *too* difficult. We lack the professional training needed to pull it off.
Despite my skepticism, we successfully work our way through the various songs and carols before we finally return to ‘Silent Night’. The melody is so familiar, and it should be easy to sing. But not this particular version. I bet you it was arranged by a Jesuit musician as a special punishment for his students who failed to meet the deadline for their papers. “I told you. Noncompliance will result in a penalty.”
Time after time, we mess up. Our director gets desperate and raises his clenched fists in the air as we derail for the twentieth time. “STOP!” he cries. “I give up. This just won’t work. I’m canceling this song.” I can tell he is sorely disappointed. A Christmas concert without ‘Silent Night’ just isn’t complete.
Right at that moment, the door of the Church opens and Cristina walks in, carrying a pile of white pizza boxes. Cristina is married to Robert, who works for an international tech company here in Rome. “Ciao tutti!” she says. “I can’t sing, but I can bring you pizza! You must be starving after all that hard work!”
We all follow her to a room in an adjacent building, and our frustration over our failed attempts to sing ‘Silent Night’ is quickly forgotten. The pizza tastes delicious. I eat two slices, and drink a glass of Prosecco, Italian sparkling wine.
“I wonder what the Pope is doing this evening,” I say. “It must be lonely in the Vatican during these long winter nights.”
“We should invite him to come over and have some wine and pizza with us!” someone else says.
“Yeah right. Why don’t you give him a call on his cellphone. I’m sure he will join us,” I laugh.
“Hey, why don’t we go over to Saint Peter’s Square to sing a few songs under his window. That might cheer him up!” Robert says.
Everybody agrees that that is the best idea since sliced pizza. We quickly put on our winter coats, put the left-over pizza in one of the boxes and grab our sheet music.
Saint Peter’s Square is completely empty. It’s several degrees below freezing point, and even the security guards must be sitting inside where it’s warm. The facade of the basilica is beautifully lit thanks to hundreds of white spotlights, and the rest of the square is bathing in the orange light of the street lanterns.
We walk up to the center of the square where, every year, a life-size nativity scene is constructed. A huge Christmas tree, complete with lights and silver decorations, dwarfs the Egyptian obelisk next to it.
The lights are still on in the Pope’s private quarters on the right. We are giddy with excitement – and the sparkling wine might have helped too – as we look up the sheet music of our first song.
Our breath freezes in the air as we sing one Christmas carol after the other. A group of Japanese tourists takes dozens of pictures, and a homeless person asks if we have some food. We give him the box with the left-over pizza slices.
“Hey, let’s try ‘Silent Night’ one more time,” I say. “After all, only the Pope is listening, and I’m sure he’ll forgive us if we mess up again.”
We all look at our director. “Hmm.. well, okay. We will give it a try.”
“Do, or do not. There is no try,” I reply. Nobody gets the joke. Oh well.
We look up the right pages in our sheet music, and start to sing.
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft; einsam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilige Paar.
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!
We sing the whole thing, without making a single mistake. The smile on the face of our director fills us with pride.
At the end of the song, we look up at the windows of the Pope’s private quarters. He is still there, the lights are burning. He must have heard us.
Perhaps, right now, the Holy Father is wiping a tear from his cheek, touched by our singing…
Then again, perhaps the Pope is sitting on the edge of his bed, praying to God to please strike us with lightning so the singing stops and he can finally GET SOME SLEEP, for Pete’s sake!
We don’t know. We will probably never know. But it doesn’t matter. We are singing Christmas carols under a starry sky, next to the nativity scene on Saint Peter’s Square.
This is one Holy Night!
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