We’re in the final trimester, as my friend Litong likes to say, of our 5 a.m. Simbang Gabi Masses. The takeaway for me this day was our ability–and need–to adapt.
The day’s four readers were sisters and a brother we’ve all watched grow up at the annual pre-dawn Masses. They all do their jobs like pros, but it’s a bit disconcerting to realize only the youngest still needs a stool to reach the ambo microphone. They lost their father to Lou Gehrig’s disease four years ago, and we all pray for him on the day their mom’s family sponsors the Mass.
Our celebrant for the day was the parochial vicar from a neighboring parish, a man who was ordained just last summer. He’s a native of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and spent three years in the Philippines as a seminarian. He moved from English to Tagalog effortlessly, ticking off a list of favorite Filipino foods and joking about his Simbang Gabi experience in the Philippines, where Masses started some time between 3 and 4:30 a.m.! I was awestruck thinking how different his life must be today from those days, and from his childhood.
His message to us was not to lose track in these waning days of Advent of ways we can prepare for Christ’s coming. It’s more than cleaning and decorating the house and preparing the best food and getting out your best clothes, he said; it’s also about reading Scripture, going to reconciliation, and attending Mass. It’s about listening, and accepting the answers to our prayers, whether they’re the answer we want or not, the priest said. For example, as we heard in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, married life didn’t turn out to be what either Mary or Joseph had expected. But they adapted.
As he spoke, I considered the situation of the family whose children read so beautifully this morning, of how the four of them and their mother have had to adapt in the past four years. Like Mary and Joseph, they didn’t have much of a choice about where God took them, but they did have a choice about the way they responded to the situation. And I admired anew the strength that God and community can provide.
