Of Angles and Head Lice

One of our songs for tomorrow, sung most wonderfully in rehearsal today by the Senior Girls, is listed in the bulletin as “Hark, the Herald Angles Sing.” After one of the girls noticed it, we speculated whether that meant early Germanic immigrants to the British Isles, or something from geometry class.

In the spirit of Scholastic Philosophy:
Q. Do Angels get head lice?
(For what it is worth as Evidence, I suspect that the Angles of the Germanic kind most certainly had them.)

Today was Pageant Rehearsal.

It was spiced up by the news that several of the choir and church families have Head Lice in their households. Two of the girls arrived with their hair wet, having worn shower caps full of olive oil overnight; they are (I think) the third family in recent weeks. Add Pageant costumes, including choir vestments and halos, and it gets interesting.

Mo, one of our choir mothers (whose children are among the Recently Afflicted), on Sunday took all of our youth choir vestments in garbage bags and washed them, along with paraphernalia such as the RSCM ribbons, hangers, etc. Blessings be on her!

At the end of rehearsal today, Jen H., another of the church mothers, checked all of the choir children individually for lice. She found four more children with the little passengers. She even checked me, noting that she had never done it on grey hair.


The youth choir sounded fine, even without several of our choristers. As they sang the Wexford Carol, tears came to my eyes, for they clearly understood the elegance and beauty of this melody; those with ears to hear in the congregation will get it, too. And this was just the rehearsal; I may entirely fall apart tomorrow night if they sing it so well.

As we rehearsed, with donkeys and sheep and Wise Men and (yes) Angels (the Choristers, dressed in their vestments with halos on their heads – tomorrow, not today, so there is no Halo-Swapping) and Mary and Joseph and all the rest, it struck me most forcefully: This is part of the Kerygma.

It seems clear that there is a Judeo-Christian underlay to the Birth Narrative in the Gospel according to St. Luke. It is full of Semitic turns of phrase that are found nowhere else in Luke/Acts. Following Benedict XVI (his book “Jesus of Nazareth: the Birth Narratives”), I find it believable that this began as a family tradition within the Holy Family. Much of it would have been known to only one person, who treasured these things in her heart. Benedict (I think following other scholars) suggests that none of this travelled very far while Saint Mary still lived on this earth because of her reticence. Everything we know of her implies that she never wanted much to be made of her; she wanted us to listen to her Son and follow Him, not her. But within her family and close circle of fellow-disciples, these traditions and stories survived, by the gift and grace of the Holy Ghost. After her Assumption into heaven, the story spread more widely, for such an account, such a Gospel, could not be kept silent.

And it may be that the form in which it spread was in something not that distant from our Christmas Pageants, involving children acting out the parts of shepherds and sheep and oxen and angels and all the rest.

It delights me to think that there have probably been annual Pageant Rehearsals from the earliest days, before the Gospels were written down. And they were probably as chaotic then as now.


Part of my Duty is to cue the Angels at the appointed time in the Story to stand and say their line (“Glory to God in the highest...”). As they sat there, more or less watching for the cue and as I itched to give it, I thought of their great Originals in the sky that night. There must have been one of them with the Duty of getting it started: “Now. It is Now, the Fullness of Time.” And the sky was filled with light, and nothing has ever been the same.


My organ prelude for the Midnight Mass is the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch by J. S. Bach. It is, in many respects, the Music of Angels; I will perhaps say more of this another day. After Sunday night's five-hour First Workout on the variations, my left leg hurt, mostly in the hip but also shooting pains down the leg. Monday morning it was just as bad, and as soon as I took the position to begin the First Variation, the pain returned with more intensity.

With the funeral, I had only one hour to work on the Bach, so I put up with it.

This morning on the bus, I thought of Tobias and his dog, and his friend Raphael the Angel, who gave him helpful advice in his Journey.

I got on the bench, praying for help; I did not see how I could get through these variations for today's essential practice, much less tomorrow's practice and the Holy Liturgy. And I knew immediately what to do. It was as if a Voice said “Uh... you don't HAVE to play the pedals here.” And sure enough, that did it: the problem is that for three of the variations, the chorale tune is in the pedals in long notes requiring an awkward shift to the high end of the pedalboard, and especially holding that position during the rests between chorale phrases without nudging the pedal notes and making them sound. With that Advice, I was able to do the rhythmic work in the manuals and add the pedals for the final playthrough of each phrase. It all fit together perfectly, and with a minimum of pain.

Whether it was an Angel helping me with the making of music, as I believe that they do, or the Spirit of God giving me a nudge partly because I had the humility to ask for help, I do not know. But I am convinced it was one or the other.

There is still no St. Anne Fugue. I have the recording of it in an mp4 file, but have not had the time to post it to YouTube. Nor do I have the time today. The journey continues...