Dear Oxygen readers,
The Core Team wishes one and all a blessed, peaceful and joyous Christmas filled with God’s graces and love. May He continue to light out paths and guide us on our journeys as we come to know Him more.
Christmas Day – Mass at Dawn
Isa 62:11-12
Tit 3:4-7
Lk 2:15-20
When they saw the child they repeated what had been told about him….
One of the best things about being Catholic, is that you can walk into any church anywhere in the world and still be able to follow the order of Mass and participate in worship. In the days before the printing press, literacy was low, so people came to church to hear the Word being spoken because they couldn’t read it for themselves. Priests, the privileged minority who received an education, were tasked not just with proclaiming the Bible’s teachings to the illiterate masses, but also, interpreting them for the purposes of daily living.
The Word spoken in this way lands differently than when we read it for ourselves today, on the screens of our mobile devices. Going to church and attending Mass in a foreign language is about as close a feeling as we will ever get, to worship in the days before our advances in technology and access to knowledge. One feels the Word as it is intoned, one does not just hear it. You are one with the congregation, and you take your cues from what is happening around you — the incense, the high cathedral walls, the choir, the congregation’s responses.
What must it have been like for those shepherds, as the angels proclaimed the Good News to them? Out in the fields, on those hills, cloaked against the cold, to hear angelic voices speaking the Word? To be so moved that they left their flocks and went in haste to find the Christ child lying in his manger. And then, to actually see him, and understand the significance of the moment. What must it have been like?
With all our progress and unfettered access to knowledge and artificial intelligence, we have, as a people, lost our capacity for wonder, and our worship and spiritual lives have suffered for it. Christmas Mass is just another Mass – albeit, one longer than the usual. We are easily distracted and our minds wander off to how we will exit the crowded parking lot, or what the score of the football game is, or what’s for Christmas lunch and whether we have the socially acceptable number of gifts for everyone. We are restless and fitful; peace eludes us. We see everything but perceive and understand very little of it.
This Christmas season, let’s try to reclaim a small measure of the wonder that we as a people, used to feel at going to Mass. Let’s focus on the shepherds on that hill, in those fields, who heard the Good News for the first time – what it must have felt, to hear, to understand, to be moved. Let us let the incense wash over us, the choir move us. Who knows what epiphanies of self-discovery lie that way? We can all wonder.
(Today’s OXYGEN by Sharon Soo)
Prayer: We pray for God’s grace this festive season, that we focus on the things that are above, and allow ourselves a break from the tyranny of our devices.
Thanksgiving: We give thanks for the traditions and the orders of Mass. We give thanks that they have survived across the generations and pray for their continued relevance and longevity.
OXYGEN 
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