Singing With the Angels

The final verse of the Christmas hymn It Came upon the Midnight Clear states, “For lo! the days are hast'ning on, By prophets seen of old, When with the ever-circling years Shall come the time foretold, When the new heav'n and earth shall own The Prince of Peace their King, And the whole world send back the song Which now the angels sing.”  This verse looks forward towards the second coming of the Savior when there will be “a new heaven and a new earth” and all the world will recognize and worship Him (Revelation 21:1).  The last phrase of this verse stuck out to me as we sung it in Church on Sunday: “The whole world” will “send back the song which now the angels sing.”  It’s as if we are saying that now the angels sing to us—though we may not always have the ears to hear—but one day the whole world will sing back to the angels because all will recognize the Lord.        

                While the day when “the whole world” will sing back to the angels may be some time distant in the future, believers now do at least in some sense sing back to the angels the words that have been sung to us.  At this Christmas time the clearest example comes from the cry of the angels to the shepherds in the announcement of the birth of Jesus.  They declared—and perhaps literally sang— “Glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14).  Christians now sing those words “back” to the angels in numerous songs during the Christmas season.  For example, when we sing the song Angels We Have Heard on High the chorus states “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” which is a Latin phrase meaning “Glory to God in the highest.”  So we literally sing back the exact same words that were given by the angels to the shepherds so long ago.  We do the same thing when we sing those words in Handel’s Messiah (scene 4 “Glory to God in the highest”) which repeats numerous times parts of that phrase.  Another famous hymn Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful includes the same declaration and suggests that the angels did indeed sing that and are singing it now: “Sing, choirs of angels, Sing in exultation; Sing, all ye citizens of heav'n above! Glory to God, Glory in the Highest.”  Similarly the hymn Far, Far Away On Judea’s Plains has as its chorus, “Glory to God, Glory to God, Glory to God in the highest.”  As we participate in these Christmas hymns throughout the season we are literally “sending back the song” that the angels gave to us 2,000 years ago. 

                  In King Benjamin’s famous address to his people, he stated the wish that his “immortal spirit may join the choirs above in singing the praises of a just God” (Mosiah 2:28).  Mormon similarly stated that for the righteous, it will be “given unto him to dwell in the presence of God in his kingdom, to sing ceaseless praises with the choirs above, unto the Father, and unto the Son, and unto the Holy Ghost” (Mormon 7:7).  One day in the next life we can literally join those choirs, but for now we can I think find great power in, at least in some sense, singing with the angels while on earth as we repeat their words throughout the Christmas season.