Does it ring a bell?

 
Recently many of us were awakened by the sound of our chapel bell ringing out loud and clear into the silence of the calm night.   With deliberate confident strokes it spelt out the Angelus pattern: 3 strokes by 3 and then the long uninterrupted 9 strokes, as it always does, but... this was Midnight!   This had never happened before... What could be wrong??? What must the neighbours think of us disturbing them at this hour of night???

Relieved that the striking had stopped we returned to bed , but I was sleepily beginning to wonder...What was the meaning?   Who could have rung the bell?  For me it had special significance because this Advent I‘ve been struck as never before how this prayer of the Angelus draws us into the whole mystery of the Incarnation...of God becoming Man, which is what Christmas is all about...

                 And the Word was made flesh...and dwelt among us

As we pray the Angelus together in community three times every day, I want to stay with those words and let the wonder of them take hold of me...Yes, Jesus the Son of the Father, truly became Emmanuel, God-with-us... and He is still Emmanuel, God with us in the here and now of our lost, anguished, violent, upside-down yet beautiful world... 

Doesn’t that mind-boggling reality call for the ringing of bells to let the world know this Good News?  It wouldn’t be the first time that someone rang her Monastery bell to alert everyone and call them to ’wake up’ to the astounding fact that ‘Love is not loved’ (St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, Carmelite mystic of 16th century!) 

I will never forget the emotion that welled up in my heart when I heard church bells ringing in the distance for the first time after the deadening silence of the long Covid lockdown.  Back again too are joyous wedding bells and the slow grave toll of funeral bells...

But Christmas is above all the season of bells.. .Every child knows the sheer magic of ‘Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells’ and the tinkling of sleigh bells.  Bells feature big in Christmas decorations, cards, stamps etc...

Each evening at 6 p. m. RTE TV and Radio mark a respectful pause for the Angelus...fittingly before the daily news.  How appropriate, because this is the greatest Good News there is, and it’s a new reality every day: the Word is made flesh and dwells among us, Emmanuel...

But to get back to our mysterious nocturnal Angelus bells...we never discovered the cause. Could it have been the Angels reminding us of the greatest news ever told?  In the coming days when you hear the Angelus bell, I hope something of the wonder of the real meaning of Christmas will fill your heart with Joy and peace...

When I apologised to our neighbours for the intrusion, they kindly made light of it saying they thought it must have been to mark ‘a special feast day’   How right they were!

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