Midnight Mass for the Feast of the Nativity

Bulletin

Audio

Exhortation

On this most strange of nights we gather to sing the praise and receive the flesh and blood of Him who has seemed far off. 

It is true that the Lord seems far away to all of us, for we, who suffer, often wonder where God is in our lives. For we wish He would aid us in our many perils, miseries, and our times of hopelessness, yet we see Him not. 

But we live by faith, and not by sight. For the Lord labors constantly in our world, in our lives, in our souls, to bring to us consolation, even the same consolation He promised to St. Simeon. 

Behold, this day, He is born among us, that His labor for our lost race might begin. A small child shall be wrapped in swaddling clothes, encompassed by a mother, guarded by a human father, and greeted by strange kings. All this that this child might grow and rise, rise not to be a ruler, but a servant; even a servant that does not merely rise, but is risen, risen upon a cross, that we who are evil might be made whole, and live with this infant God, the Son of the Father, now and forevermore. 

Let us therefore pray for the Church and all the world, for whom our God in grace has come, that we may be healed.