Merry Christmas Y'all! Christ Has Come Into This World

"And The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."

For David says: " In the morning he shall grow up like grass : in the morning he shall flourish and pass away, in the evening he shall fall, grow dry and wither." In the evening that is, in the fullness of time, when "God sent his only Son made of a woman, made under the law. "Behold," He says, " I make all things new." Hence it is again written, " The grass is withered and the flower is fallen : but the word of the Lord remaineth for ever." I think there is no doubt that the Word is Christ, and Christ is the good fruit that remaineth for ever. - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in his Missus est Sermon for Christmas

I wish you all a joyous and wonderful Christmas Day and thank you for subscribing here so you could see this note of appreciation! Below is something I wrote in 2015 for a Midnight Mass I was asked to introduce at Saint Jane de Chantal Parish in Madisonville, Louisiana. God bless and The Holy Family keep you all on this highest of High Feast Days!

Historically, The Roman Catholic Church honors Christmas with three separate masses, each with its own distinctive liturgy. The first of these masses takes place in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve and is called Midnight Mass. The first Christmas masses were celebrated at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome on Christmas morning. In the fifth century Roman officials added another mass to be celebrated in the middle of the night. Rules in effect from about 400 to 1200 A.D. prescribed that this mass be held ad galli cantum, that is, when the rooster crows. A fourth-century Latin hymn expresses this belief:

When the midnight, dark and still,

Wrapped in silence vale and hill:

God the Son, through Virgin’s birth,

Following the Father’s will,

Started life as Man on earth 

In the fifth century a third mass, held at daybreak, was added to the first two. Each of the three masses, however, emphasized a different aspect of the Nativity. Eventually the Masses came to be known as the Midnight Mass or the “ANGELS Mass,” the dawn mass became the “SHEPHERDS Mass,” and the morning mass was called the “Mass of the Divine Word.”