My First Christmas Mass

Well, the spirit of Danielle's post has prompted me to retell the experience of my first Christmas Mass (which was incidentally my first Mass aside from a funeral I attended as a much younger child). It will perhaps explain why I have such a fondness for Midnight Mass in particular.

A little background - I grew up in Oklahoma very Southern Baptist. Very. In fact, my grandfather was an ordained minister and my father is also an ordained minister (in addition to being an optometrist) who travels half of the year as a missionary to various foreign lands. I am so appreciative of my childhood faith, where I was taught at an early age about Christ and his love for us. I was also brought up with the importance of following Christ in everything we say and do. This was a tremendous gift that God, through my parents, instilled in me.

When I was a senior in high school, I was becoming discouraged with the church in which I was raised (for several reasons that could be an entire other post). I just felt that something was missing, but I couldn't place it. I started attending other churches with my friends on Wednesdays and sometimes on Sunday. I was then asked by a friend if I wanted to go to Midnight Mass Christmas Eve. Since I would attend with my family at 7pm, I asked my parents if I could go. I was a little amazed when they said yes, after a little hesitation - after all this was the Catholic church we were talking about.

As I walked inside the church, I was amazed at the lights, the smell of the incense, and the sounds of the choir. What a worshipful atmosphere! The Mass was so reverent and I just felt that this was what I had been looking for - something seemed so different. I still feel just giddy to think of that Mass, the awe of my experience there.

Later on, I chalked up this almost magical experience to being the beauty of a respectful, well-done Christmas Eve service. I figured that it must of been why everything seemed so right. I set out to prove my theory correct by attending a regular Sunday Mass a few weeks later with my friend (Yes, my parents were leery about this!). And while the music wasn't Christmas music and the incense and lights were not there, I still felt something else there that I didn't experience in the other churches that I had attended. I was curious about just what it was that I was sensing, but couldn't place a finger on.

To make a long story a little bit shorter, I started asking my friend questions about what I experienced - she didn't know the answers, but said "I think that you can come to CCE with me Wednesday night and ask my teacher". So I did. It was there, from that teacher, that I learned of the Catholic Church's teaching of Christ being actually present in the Eucharist and the meaning of such words as transubstantiation (I had never heard it before!). It was Jesus's actual presence that I was feeling at Mass! This made such sense to me. I had a preacher in my Baptist church talk about the importance of asking God for forgiveness before taking the Lord's Supper (communion in the Baptist church). He would quote Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:23-34 when he discusses the importance of not having unconfessed sin before receiving communion. It never made sense to me that this would be the case if the Lord's Supper were in fact just a symbol as the Baptist church teaches. It had to be something more, as Paul discusses people getting physically ill from consuming under false pretenses. Now it was obvious to me that Jesus was present in the Eucharist at the Catholic Church in a special way that He was not in the Lord's Supper at my church.

This was the first step (and a major one at that!) of my journey to the Catholic Church during my freshman year of college. Maybe that is why the Christmas Eve Mass is so special for me in particular. And that is why I want to share a bit of that with my own boys from the earliest years on.