Sacred Mysteries: A song calling for silence amid the unseen angels

‘Let all mortal flesh keep silence’ has older and stranger origins than at first appear

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There is a successful hymn sung before Christmas called Let all mortal flesh keep silence. By “successful” I mean that the words and tune are both engaging and fit each other.  
The usual setting is by Ralph Vaughan Williams, who included it in The English Hymnal of 1906, a revolutionary collection. He favoured folk music and for this hymn arranged the tune of a French song from the 17th century, Jésus-Christ s’habille en pauvre. Its origin explains the name of the tune “Picardy”. I looked it up and found that the words have nothing to do with the hymn now sung to the tune. But they are interesting.
Jesus, disguised as a beggar, asks at the door of a big house for sustenance, but the master of the house tells him he is more worthless than the dogs around his table, which at least bring him hares. 
Rebuffed, Jesus in disguise then sees the lady of the house at her window and she offers him some food and a place to sleep. From her chamber light shines out, the light of her charity. Jesus tells her that she will die in three days’ time and go to heaven, but her husband will burn in hell. 
Let all mortal flesh keep silence is on a higher plane, seeming to touch upon the second coming of Christ at the end of the world (to which the Church looks forward in the early part of Advent, which begins in a week’s time). It also has a reference that qualifies it as a solemn carol: “Christ our God to earth descendeth, / our full homage to demand. / King of kings, yet born of Mary, / as of old on earth He stood.”
The full words are a paraphrase of a very ancient hymn from the early centuries in the Liturgy of St James, later borrowed by the Byzantine liturgy and used on Holy Saturday. The paraphrase was written by Gerard Moultrie (1829-85), a country clergyman.
The original hymn does not mention Jesus being born of Mary, for it is not directed to Christmas, although it assumes worship as God of Jesus who was born in Bethlehem. 
I think it worth giving the English sense of the original words: “Let all mortal flesh be silent, and stand with fear and trembling, and meditate nothing earthly within itself. For the King of kings and Lord of lords, Christ our God, comes forward to be sacrificed, and to be given for food to the faithful; and the bands of Angels go before Him with every Power and Dominion, the many-eyed Cherubim, and the six-winged Seraphim, covering their faces, and crying aloud the hymn: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.”
The hymn is sung during the procession that brings the bread and wine from the place of preparation in the Great Entrance through the screen or iconostasis, to the altar where the Eucharistic act will be performed. This is the same sacrifice as that enacted by Jesus on the Cross. 
The Angels, Powers, Dominions, Cherubim and Seraphim are ranks of angelic beings, who accompany the offerings which are soon to indicate the mysterious presence of Jesus Christ, whom the angels worship in heaven. The Eucharistic liturgy of the worshippers in church is carried on in the presence of the unseen angelic liturgy.
The words of the ancient hymn derive from the Bible, notably from Zechariah 2:13: “Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord: for he is raised up out of his holy habitation.”
Let all mortal flesh keep silence anticipates the coming of the Lord to his holy house. Bethlehem, where he was born, means “House of Bread”, and in the procession of offerings, bread is carried to the Holy of Holies, the altar where his Eucharistic presence is realised.
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