Midnight Song by Kate McGinn
The dimly lit courtyard held a snaking line of visitors which buzzed with muted conversations, the shuffling of feet, and an occasional entreaty by a youngster to the elders who accompanied them. The group waited in anticipation to hear Pope John Paul II say Midnight Mass at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. Among the crowd were people of all ages, colors and ethnicities. Ahead of us, the melodic cadence of Italian came from an animated troupe while behind us stood a gathering of nuns with dark veils covering their hair and wooden crosses hanging from the rosary beads secured at their waists. In our group were military families taking a trip to Rome on Christmas weekend. It was a once-in-a-lifetime event for my small family. I had purchased a crucifix to hang in our home and brought my rosary so both items could be blessed by the Pope during Midnight Mass. Growing up in a Catholic family, my favorite mass of the year was this one celebrated on Christmas Eve.
fields until they glowed. The country church we attended it’s a well-known fact you had to get there early because the church reached its capacity for Midnight Mass. If you arrived late, you’d have to stand in the back and for a young child it was reminiscent to standing among a suffocating forest of human legs.
The choir would start off the standard hymns I’d learned when my dad would play the Christmas album, “Sing Along with Mitch.” The voices of the faithful would swell with hope and love infused into their harmonies. Our song was a prayerful offering to the Creator.
In that dark Vatican courtyard as we tried to stay warm, stomping our feet and rubbing our hands together, our small military group began to sing Silent Night to keep our minds off the December chill in the air and to pass the time. The Canadian nuns joined us and soon a trickle of other groups followed, providing a mixture of accented When I was a young girl, we would get baritones, sopranos, tenors and altos. Our bundled up in our winter coats, boots and song grew in strength into something so mittens and crawl into our beat-up Chevy pure it connected us all in that moment. for the drive along snowy highways with One carol followed another until the the moonlight lighting the snow-covered stone walls surrounding us echoed with - 30 -
