The Roman celebration of the Nativity found in our missals is based on the Nativity celebration in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. That is the first thing to keep in mind if we are to make the most of the rich repast of liturgy offered us in our Christmas Worship. We should also remember that we have only half a Christmas if we do not also keep in mind the Epiphany with its great mystery. Like Good Friday and the Easter Vigil, Christmas and Epiphany belong together and explain each other.
Both Christmas and Epiphany have three Masses. The three Masses of Epiphany are now spread over three different days (January 6th, 13th and the Sunday following), but on the Feast of the Nativity the three Masses are all on the same day. Most of us, however, are not aware of a most important feature—that these three Masses are to be celebrated in three different places. The Mass at midnight is to be offered at the crib in St. Mary Major, the Mass at dawn at the church of St. Anastasia at the Palatine hill, and the last and most solemn Mass at the main altar of St. Mary Major (originally, however, at St. Peter's).
Why the choice of these three churches? According to the best hypothesis, Rome tried to imitate the usage of Jerusalem at a period shortly after the emancipation of the Church by the edicts of Constantine. Many pilgrims came back from the Holy Land with reports on the celebration of the sacred events in the life of Our Lord in the very places where they had taken place.
In Jerusalem that meant a midnight Mass at the place of the crib in Bethlehem, where the imperial family had erected a great basilica. In Rome its substitute was the large shrine of the Blessed Mother which contained the relics of the crib according to tradition. From Bethlehem the pilgrims walked to the Sanctuary of the Resurrection, called in Greek the Anastasis. There the Mass was to be sung at dawn, the time of the "resurrection" of the sun, the most powerful symbol of the victorious Christ. The Roman Anastasis was a replica built on an equivocation: the Church of St. Anastasia, the virgin martyr, a sanctuary near the imperial palace and very convenient for the courtiers and the Greek colony living at the imperial court. The several texts of this Mass that refer to light and speak of radiance were chosen purposely for this Mass at sunrise.
The third Mass in Jerusalem was held at the Cathedral. It was the principal and most solemn celebration and therefore the most profoundly theological. In Rome the most popular church, embodying the fondest memories of local pride, was the one erected so recently as a martyrium—a witness memorial—over the grave of Peter. The Mass texts gave splendor to the full meaning of the Incarnation by reaching beyond its historical details. In later ages another consideration moved this third Mass to where it is today: the main sanctuary of St. Mary Major, the shrine of the Theotokos, the Mother of God, whose human assent was the divinely fashioned instrument of the Incarnation so fully hymned in the first chapter of Hebrews and in the first chapter of John's Gospel, both of which are read on this day.
Added to this is Psalm 97, so pregnant with majesty and eternity, echoing through the Introit, the Gradual responsory and the Communion procession, and the result is one of the most powerful compositions of the normally powerful and virile liturgy of the city of Rome, which is also our own. It is obvious, then, that we miss the point of this ancient trilogy of Masses, if we perform them like "three of the same," one after the other. They come to life for us, plastically and in their symbolical meaning, only at the times appointed for them, at midnight, at dawn and in the morning.
NO DOUBT the midnight Mass, with its intimate beauty, has become closest to the heart of the people. Its Gospel is most consoling, and contains the message that all Christians accept as the inspiration of the whole festal season. Generations that look for idylls, and not for great visions, have too often overlooked, however, the full liturgical significance of the midnight Mass. The Psalms chosen for it hardly support the sentimentality with which the midnight Mass is often surrounded. Rather, the chords that rise from these Psalms boom and resound with strength and give a background of eternity, of kingdom, of strife and of victory to the sweet texts of the readings.
When the clergy enter the church the music is set to the words of the martial Psalm 2. Not only is it a thought of eternity: "The Lord said to me: thou art my Son, I have begotten Thee today," that raises the story of the Gospel into its proper setting, but this antiphon echoes and re-echoes thoughts of strife and war: "Why do the heathen rage and the nations devise vain plots?" Here we have the complete, not the fragmentary, aspect of the Nativity. It is not meant to serve as an escape into a golden past. When the music of the Latin words is stripped off, the Epistle, in its plain English, says: deny worldly desire and live soberly, justly and godly; look for the coming of the great God and Savior; He gave Himself to cleanse us.
This is followed by an excerpt from Psalm 109 in the Gradual which, after an attentive hearing of the Epistle and before the "presence" of Christ in the words of His Gospel, serves to focus our thoughts; even in translation it is not idyllic, but filled with a reality that surpasses all nature: "With Thee is royal power on the day of Thy power: in the splendor of Holies have I begotten Thee from my loins before the morning star: The Lord said to my Lord: sit at my right hand until I make thy enemies the footstool of Thy feet." Then, as a preparation for the Gospel, its theological "level" is set by the threefold Alleluia that contains again the words: "The Lord said to me: Thou art my Son, I have begotten Thee today."
These Psalms have the impact of their Christian meaning, not that of the Hebrew original. They are here not so much the cries of souls groping for God, but, like marble columns taken from ancient buildings and reshaped to serve their new purpose of building the spiritual mansion of the divine in humanity, they are triumphant statements of the unfathomable mystery that emerged with the Nativity Into the vision of man.
They have become so much a part of the liturgy that, where they occur in it, it would be vain to replace them with versions "truer to the original." They were chosen for the obvious and typical meaning when they were reset in the crown of worship. The Psalms and canticles, the prophecies and Old Testament quotations used in the Mass are not there for their authenticity and accuracy to prove a dogma, but to express the faith assumed by all and presumed to have inspired the choice of the little stones out of which the mosaic of words is composed. And this mosaic of texts clamors for its music, its liturgical execution, its celebrating congregations, its interpretation in chant and gesture and for the word of the preacher who is to interpret it. Only in its totality does it convey the full meaning of this great feast, of which the crib is only a partial, although a central glimpse of the whole.
WITH THIS wealth at our disposal, every year for more than a thousand years, why is it that we are dogged today by a secularized Christmas of office parties and Santa Clauses, with ad-men's and salesmen's Christmases outside our churches? Why the little inanities with carols inside? Where is the impact of those powerful prophecies, the turning of the minds, the metanoeite of St. John, our spiritual guide through Advent? In the name of this feast and in the power of its grace, who cannot but turn his face toward the future instead of lingering in escapist dreams about his childhood memories? Yet why is it all lost, not only on the people, but all too often upon their leaders, lay and clerical, who seem almost blind to the images our liturgy not only conjures up before our minds, but even fulfills with Sacramental reality. These texts should heat the metal of our souls for the grace to forge it into a new image, but it all goes by-charitably dismissed as at best an esthete's revery. But why?
One of the answers is so simple that few think of it: because it is all in Latin. Having a translation in one's hands to watch it is not the same as singing or as listening without the need of an interpreter, as it were; and it is not the same as immediacy in celebration. How can one be all ear and eye, when he has to flip pages and keep track of texts? Besides the "people of the book," in this case, will always be the few, maybe the elect.
Whether the vernacular translations have the sonorous tunefulness of the Latin or will always lack this quality is irrelevant so long as the Latin is, in effect, a mute beauty that is mutely admired-mere sound to entrance the listener without speaking to him. The angels above Bethlehem's field did not sing, in celestial idiom, an unknown text; the shepherds heard in their language the "Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to men of good will."
Esthetically, the blend of Gregorian chant with the words "In splendoribus Sanctorum ante luciferum genui te," sung while the faithful receive Holy Communion the Incarnate Son Whom this Psalm so plastically glorifies, is superb—for him to whom it is more than mere sound. But an adequate English version: "in the splendor of the Holies before the morning star I have begotten Thee," together with its Psalm, pierces mere hearing and stamps the soul with a live image of the coming Savior. We need all the beauty that is at man's command to feast this mystery, but we are in equal need of the truth, and truth is not conveyed by rationally mute sound.
The most powerful medicine against shallow sen-timentalism, which breeds secularism, is the Word coming on wings of grace. "In these times God has spoken to us with a Son to speak for Him; . . Through Him . . He created the world of time; a Son who is the radiance of His Father's splendor and the full expression of his being. . . Lord, Thou hast laid the foundations of the earth at its beginning and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They will perish, but Thou wilt remain; they will all be like a cloak that grows threadbare and thou wilt lay them aside like a garment and exchange them for new; but Thou art He who never changes; Thy years will not come to an end." (from the Epistle of the Third Mass). This thunder is echoed by John in the Gospel. In English, they will be drunk deep, like a draft of clear water. They will prepare the soul better than man-made aspirations to receive the Bread of Life.