With my hands curled up in the pockets of my grey wool coat, I walked briskly through the bone-chilling breeze toward the magnificent Margaret B. Parker Chapel. The first Sunday in December is the night of the oldest and most popular tradition on Trinity’s campus: Christmas Vespers. I hadn’t participated in Vespers since my last year of college, but marking my fifth year as an alum and mentoring several current seniors made me nostalgic and eager to attend.
With 30 minutes remaining before the prelude music began, the chapel was bustling with rosy-cheeked collegiate women, dapperly dressed gents, and a smattering of faculty and staff and alumni like me. Clutching my program with anticipation, I searched the crowd for my seat-saving friend—and took my place next to her about eight rows from the front on the left side of the sanctuary. [I’ve always preferred the left side because of its view of the choir loft.]
After a few minutes of small talk and crowd-watching, I fixed my eyes on the tapestry that graces the front of the sanctuary. It seemed to have faded since the last time I saw it. Finally the organist welcomed everyone and requested our silence during the musical prelude. After an a cappella soloist rendering of O Holy Night came a series of instrumental selections, including pieces featuring the violin, cello, and organ. I tried to focus on the texture of the melodies, the intricacies of the harmonies between instruments, but I was distracted by the cacophony wafting down from the balcony —and the conversation of three people in the row behind me. As my irritation grew, I feared that the sacred moments would be lost from this time of worship and I wondered if I had chosen the right way to spend my evening.
At that moment, the organ’s toccata rose in exultation to a fanfare that signaled the opening processional—following the bearers of the banners and the crèche were the chapel choir members, whose voices joined with ours to fill the air with the familiar words of “O Come All Ye Faithful” as they entered. I was startled to discover my vision growing blurry as we reached, “come and behold him” and it took all my strength to continue to sing without my voice cracking with emotion.
Not once in 4 years had the beauty of 800 people united in joyous, reverent song over the birth of Christ moved me like it did last night. And as the sanctuary dimmed for the lighting of the candles and the singing of Silent Night, my heart soared with fullness of hope for the coming year—for though the darkness in our world is great, the true Light shines and darkness shall not overcome it.
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2 comments:
my friend Barry Brake wrote these words about the Parker Chapel in a recent post about architect O'Neil Ford. Barry writes:
"One of the many pleasurable things about our wedding was that the ceremony was at the near-perfect Parker Chapel, a room that was designed by O'Neil Ford. Any San Antonian has seen several buildings of his: plain-to-ugly exteriors, in the manner of the middle twentieth century, sheltering incredible interior spaces that are miracles of space and light....
"Parker Chapel is both soaring grandeur and modest graciousness, with iconographically churchy shapes and forms and colors translated into twentieth-century high modernism, and suffused with an authentic and original glow. We were thrilled to be able to have our wedding ceremony there. The icing on the cake: when we were seated for the family-blessing time, we found ourselves sitting in Thonet chairs. A charmed life, I tell you..."
the entire Trinity campus is a work of art, thanks to him.
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