We always go to the children’s mass on Christmas Eve at 4:00. It has a lot more to do with the great time of the day it is than the kid part of it. I was supposed to work until 5:00, but managed to find somebody who was looking for a legit excuse to get out of a commitment and offered to work the end of my shift for me. That in itself was a miracle.
We got there about twenty minutes early, and all those kids……… I started tearing up the second we sat down because across the country in a little town in Connecticut, their celebrations had twenty less kids and that………. Well, that still doesn’t seem real to me.
For the children’s mass, there is a multi-generational choir, and if you can hold a note or your attention for a hot minute you’re in. Nobody in our family is good at either of those things. A young one of about fourteen sang between the readings all by her nervous little self. She’d sing the psalm and everyone would sing the refrain…………
All the ends of the earth have seen the power of God.
She would sing her part and look over at Pat, our choir director, and Pat would smile and she would smile back. And you could see her get more confident, and as she got more confident the refrain would get louder.
She rocked it. Oh my goodness, did she rock it.
When she finished, she went racing up the side steps of the altar, disappeared behind a door and then reappeared two minutes later to be an altar girl, and I was better after that because in the brokenness I had seen a great light.