Simbang Gabi 2012, Day 1: Of Passages

In case you haven’t seen 4:15 a.m. lately, I’ll clue you in. It’s really dark then. And it comes really early, even when you practice by getting up at 5 or 5:30 the two previous days.

It’s that time of year again, when St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Arlington hosts that wonderful Filipino event, Simbang Gabi/Missa de Gallo. Here, it means nine days of 5 a.m. Masses.

While St. Charles remains my home parish, I’m currently attending Mass somewhere else for the most part. It’s a long story and has nothing to do with the priests or the community, all of whom are terrific. That’s a different post. But when I walked in around 4:30 a.m., ready to do various and sundry little chores, I found some things had changed.

An acquaintance I like a lot but haven’t seen in months was walking with a cane. They want her to have surgery, she said with a grimace. Another Simbang Gabi regular told me she’d just had surgery on a disk and was headed for physical therapy three times a week. Another friend I don’t see as often as I once did looked tired, drawn. She said everything was all right, but I wondered.

And some things hadn’t changed at all. The first priest I ever heard at St. Charles, back seven years ago, drove quite a ways from his current parish to celebrate the Mass. He was as gentle and kind as ever, his homily as short and pithy as they ever were. And then there last year’s famed little altar boy; his hands were still as perfect, his smiles as cherubic, as they were in 2011. (He also hadn’t appeared to have grown an inch, much to his chagrin, I suspect.)

I always go into Simbang Gabi thinking I’m going to have this holy experience. It always turns out by day three or so the best I have to offer God is showing up. You’d think I’d learn after four or five years that that is plenty. Maybe this will be the year. I also think it may be the year that I learn all the more to treasure what I have in the moment… because it can all change–or not–when you turn away for an instant.

By Melanie

Melanie Rigney is the author of Radical Saints: 21 Women for the 21st Century and other Catholic books. She is a contributor to Living Faith and other Catholic blogs. She lives in Arlington, Virginia. Melanie also owns Editor for You, a publishing consultancy that since 2003 has helped hundreds of writers, publishers, and agents.

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