What? No Midnight Mass?

One of the seasonal irritations of any parish office happens around this time. “Father, what time is midnight Mass?”

In South Africa, What time is midnight Mass? has become a legitimate question.

Um, I don’t know. Last year we tried 1:30pm, but the reindeers skidded on the icy lawn. Not sure if we would handle that again.

The sad thing is that some believe the stories we build up. Oh, ok then. We’ll see you at the children’s Mass at 7pm then. Would that be full, Father?

As a freshly-minted, newly-oiled young priest in Soweto 15 years ago, it came as a shock that midnight Mass didn’t happen at all. It’s so much part of the way I had done Christmas, that for the first year it was a glaring omission.

In subsequent years, I celebrated midnight Mass in my home parish of Rivonia. It just wasn’t Christmas without the experience of midnight Mass, when everyone was in good cheer (many in a bit too good cheer to be driving!). And the garlic! WHOAH! Thank God for incense! Just hope you didn’t get anyone asking for Confession.

Sadly, in many places the custom of midnight Mass is dying out. As the Church ages and we grow in fear of the security situation – ever notice how South Africans speak security like the English speak weather – we have allowed ourselves to be cowered into safe and convenient times.

So the question then becomes quite justified: What time is midnight Mass?

We Can Claim this Space

This is the crux of the problem. The feast of the Incarnation is about a dawning brightness. Whether or not the Church appropriated pagan feasts for this day and how in the Northern Hemisphere it is really the turning point of the dead of winter, we can still claim this space as our own. In the gloom that is our fears and insecurities – many deeply justified -we have a moment of tender hope.

One of the joys of my ministry is the power of intergenerational relationships. Families reinvigorate themselves with children and older people take on a new lease of life when there are young persons around. Maybe this is exactly what the Church needs.

No one asks the natural delivery mom to wait for a convenient and safe hour for the child to arrive. Quite the opposite. While we vaguely know the region of birth, we still have the thrill of anticipation and realisation. This is the anticipation and realisation that is Christmas to me.

In the dark times of an economic recession that no one has the courage to officially name, a drought with its consequent water- and food-security issues, student unrest, a bloated and unresponsive government and all those who take issue with it, we all need to be called to the beatitudes.

How blessed (or in the translation by Fr Nicholas King SJ, congratulated) are the gentle. For they shall inherit the earth.

It is once again to the gentle that the world belongs. The gentle by choice and the gentle by circumstance. It is the pure of heart – those who see with the heart – who will see God.

How more gentle, how more pure than a Child born to a messy manger-world in Bethlehem.