Midnight Mass

And so this is Christmas...

Another year of midnight Christmas mass alone at the Cathedral. Somehow, every year, circumstances and timings conspire against me, and no matter how I try, I can't ever seem to find people to go along with me to the Cathedral for this particular mass. There is always the chance of meeting someone familiar there, but it isn't the same, is it, as having a friend to accompany you and share in the spirit of the night.

But that's not to say that the mass is a sad affair. Far from it: the sheer volume of people there makes affectations of solitude impossible, and everyone seems to be infused with goodwill and sympathy. Small gestures of courtesy and kindness bind us together profoundly: the way spontaneously parted for a babe in arms or a communion minister; the rare song-sheet shared between adjacent strangers; the Sign of Peace infused with extra warmth and friendliness.

And when the bell tolls at midnight, not just at the Cathedral, but at all churches of all denominations across the darkened city and across the island, indeed, across the time-zone - how can you feel alone? You are swept up in a ground-swell of fellow-feeling, of goodwill to all men, of heady anticipation of the hope and salvation to come. The church welcomes all souls, offers them the greatest gift of all on the cold winter midnight: the feeling of companionship, a companionship that goes beyond the personal, transmuted by ritual and mass participation into something philosophical and thus inviolable.

You don't know who you can meet in mass, then: fellow lone rangers, families with children nodding asleep, visitors from abroad out to see a spectacle, even Christians who find themselves in a church of the wrong denomination. And in the swell and chorus of the singing host, buoyed by the feeling of renewal, of new hope, of promises reaffirmed, you feel part of a larger, inscrutable thing, and you feel lucky to be here, at this place and at this time.