Christmas Midnight/Shepherd’s Mass Rarely at Midnight?

[babochka]

Here’s an interesting article on the subject and the history of the trend toward an earlier time.

What Time is Midnight Mass? - PrayTellBlog

Now, “Midnight Mass” is for the most part just one more piece of Catholic lore that has bitten the dust. The holdouts are getting to be few and far between.

www.praytellblog.com

 

[DeniseNY]

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[Phemie]

Phemie:

and they all celebrated Midnight Mass, immediately followed by Mass at Dawn and then got up to celebrate the Christmas Day Mass.

How long was the Midnight Mass, that dawn would come so quickly?

It wasn’t close to dawn but that’s how priests did it in parishes where I grew up. I remember my first Midnight Mass, chomping at the bit after Communion to get home and open presents. So I hear “Ite Missa est” and expect everyone to start putting on gloves and scarves. But what’s this? Why isn’t anyone moving? Wait, what am I hearing? Another Mass starting? It was all explained when we got home. To a kid it was just a relief that the only person who received at that Mass was the priest, so no never-ending Communion procession.

 

[Phemie]

I’ve never experienced a true Vigil of the Nativity, regardless of the time Mass was being celebrated. The priest always celebrates The Mass at Night. One former Pastor angrily replied “Who ever heard of that!?!” when I asked if we were celebrating the Vigil at the 6:30 p.m. Mass. I was scheduling readers and needed to know what readings to tell them to prepare.

 

[Phemie]

Tolle_Lege:

It takes a few entrenched parishioners to bug, beg, and pester the priest to move up the Mass times and make other changes. It sounds cynical, but in all reality that’s usually what happens.

I think it has less to do with “entrenched” parishoners than ageing ones - and ageing, exhausted, and over-stretched priests. We no longer live in a world where Pastor does the Midnight Mass, and has two or three curates - excuse me, parochial vicars - to do all the morning Masses.

I have to say that that is a generalization. There were many parishes back in the day that only had one priest. Of the 10 close to me when I was a kid, only the two in the town had a second priest. The rest were in villages and each had only a Pastor.

 

[OldCAFMember]

My FSSP priests still do this. I’ve served back-to-back Masses after Midnight Mass.

 

[ioannes_pius]

I’m excited for this year, as the Cathedral downtown is having an actual midnight mass this year, and I am going to attend. This is the first actual midnight mass that I can recall in my diocese.

 

[OraLabora]

It’s my understanding the switch to calling it “Mass During the Night” came in 2009 after the Pope began to say the Vatican’s “midnight Mass” at 10 pm on Christmas Eve.

The 1974 Graduale Romanum calls it « Ad Missam in Nocte ». (The Mass during the night). So definitely before 2009.

 

[Divine3]

We have the Shepherds (Christmas mass) at 12 midnight…I only started going to midnight mass in my thirties and I am very grateful for this gift…Now I am way pass 30

 

[OraLabora]

The Latin missal has always said Mass at Night. It never said Mass at Midnight. That is simply a common English-language usage.

Both my Liber Usualis and 1925 edition of the Graduale Romanum call it « Midnight Mass ». The Liber in English, the Graduale (a Québec edition), in French.

I have a truckload of liturgical books, old and modern, in my library!

 

[babochka]

OldCAFMember:

The Latin missal has always said Mass at Night. It never said Mass at Midnight. That is simply a common English-language usage.

Both my Liber Usualis and 1925 edition of the Graduale Romanum call it « Midnight Mass ». The Liber in English, the Graduale (a Québec edition), in French.

I have a truckload of liturgical books, old and modern, in my library!

I wonder if that was meant to have a more general meaning, rather than specifically at the stroke a midnight. Midnight can mean exactly at 12, but more broadly it can mean " in the middle of the night".

 

[babochka]

babochka:

Phemie:

and they all celebrated Midnight Mass, immediately followed by Mass at Dawn and then got up to celebrate the Christmas Day Mass.

How long was the Midnight Mass, that dawn would come so quickly?

It wasn’t close to dawn but that’s how priests did it in parishes where I grew up. I remember my first Midnight Mass, chomping at the bit after Communion to get home and open presents. So I hear “Ite Missa est” and expect everyone to start putting on gloves and scarves. But what’s this? Why isn’t anyone moving? Wait, what am I hearing? Another Mass starting? It was all explained when we got home. To a kid it was just a relief that the only person who received at that Mass was the priest, so no never-ending Communion procession.

So, if a Mass at dawn can start at 1 a.m. or so, why can’t midnight start at 10?

Also, even though clocks have been around since the 14th century, keeping track of time with such precision has not been a feature of all cultures throughout history. I suspect that “Mass during the night” is a more accurate version of what has happened historically, throughout all times and places.

 

[OraLabora]

I don’t think so because in French it says « messe de minuit » and minuit in French is specifically a time 00:00 hrs. While « mi » and « nuit » mean middle and night, it would not be usual in French conversation to have it mean anything other than the hour of midnight. They would have used « messe dans la nuit » or « messe au milieu de la nuit » if they wanted to give it a broader meaning.

However you are right that times weren’t all that precise. In St. Benedict’s time, hours would be longer in the daytime than at night in summer, and vice-versa in winter, and even after clocks were invented, it took the advent of the railways to have a system of standardized times so that a timetable could be followed. Before then, each town could establish its own time zone based on solar time.

 

[dochawk]

Midnight Mass should be celebrated at midnight. Period.

There is a caustic observation in eastern Christianity is that “tradition mean’s how it was done at the time of my Grandfather’s Chrysmation” . . . your statement shows a stunning lack of understanding as to why this Mass was held at midnight . . .

 

[Phemie]

OldCAFMember:

The Latin missal has always said Mass at Night. It never said Mass at Midnight. That is simply a common English-language usage.

Both my Liber Usualis and 1925 edition of the Graduale Romanum call it « Midnight Mass ». The Liber in English, the Graduale (a Québec edition), in French.

I have a truckload of liturgical books, old and modern, in my library!

It makes sense that it would be called Midnight Mass since in those days Mass couldn’t be celebrated between noon and midnight so the first Mass of Christmas would be Midnight Mass. Bugs me to no end to have a choir sing Minuit, chrétiens at 10 p.m.

 

[dochawk]

There are two loose pigeons flying around the rafters in our Cathedral. Uncatchable, and have had a few would be pigeon fanciers hanging from rafters trying to get them.

Surely there is an order somewhere devoted to the maintenance of Church Cats

A couple of years ago, I commented to an employee of my local nursery, part of a small local chain, about the resident cat, which takes diffidence to a new level–doesn’t care if people pet him, neither avoiding nor steering to him, unbothered by loaded wagons rumbling by, etc.

He told me that about half their locations have a cat–and that the other half have mice!

 

[phil19034]

The local parish by me doesn’t have a midnight mass (they do it at 8 or 9PM) because the pastor says he doesn’t want to say up that late.

It’s a shame. Where I grew up, we always had midnight mass (which was packed). They would start carols at 11pm or 11:30pm and then at midnight, start mass.

As a teen and during my college years, my cousin & I would then go to my grandmom’s to wrap gifts for our parents/siblings, listen to Christmas music and eat. Often, we didn’t go home until 2 or 3am.

When my kids are older, I hope to have the traditional Christmas that my mother and grandparents had when they were young:

• Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve
• Midnight mass with everyone (kids included)
• After Midnight Mass, come back to the house for dessert, open gifts, then breakfast around 2-3AM, and party until sunrise.
• If possible, then attend Mass as Dawn
• Finally, sleep the rest of the day

 

[phil19034]

There’s no difference between a 4:30 pm mass and a mass at midnight. Both are vigil masses.

This is actually not true.

There are four different liturgies for Christmas.

• Vigil of the Nativity of our Lord (aka Christmas Eve) << in the 1962 Missal, the priests still word Purple for this Mass)
• Christmas Mass During the Night (in the 1962 Missal it was called “The Nativity of Our Lord:, First Mass at Midnight”) << this is the earliest time when the priest was allowed to wear white. Different reading from the Vigil
• Christmas Mass at Dawn (in the 1962 Missal it was called “The Nativity of Our Lord, The Second Mass at Dawn”) << different readings from midnight mass.
• Christmas Mass During the Day (in the 1962 Missal it was called “The Nativity of Our Lord, The Third Mass During the Daytime” << again, different readings from the Dawn Mass.

All four have different Liturgies. TRADITIONALLY, three of them had to take place on Dec 25th and only the Vigil was on the 24th.

The 1970 Missal essentially kept the four Masses from the 1962 Missal. However, in recent years, the Mass at Night has been interpreted to be after Vespers (which was not the way it was in the 1962 Missal, nor was it the intention of the 1970 Missal).

While the Pope allows the Mass at night to take place at 9PM in the Vatican, it wasn’t really supposed to be that way. The Vigil was any & all masses which started on 12/24, while the Mass at Night was supposed to be for everything starting between midnight and before dawn.

If you look at the rubrics for the Christmas Vigil Mass it says “This Mass is used on the evening of December 24, either before or after First Vespers (Evening Prayer I) of the Nativity.”

If you look closing to the rubrics for Dec 25th, it says (right before the Mass At Night begins) “On the Nativity of the Lord all Priests may celebrate or concelebrate three Masses, provided the Masses are celebrated at their proper times.”

Also, based on the Entrance Antiphons for the Mass At Night - it is strongly implied that this mass was intended to begin at or after midnight: “The Lord said to me: You are my Son. It is I who have begotten you this day. Or:
Let us all rejoice in the Lord, for our Saviour has been born in the world. Today true
peace has come down to us from heaven.”

Point is: if a Parish wants to have mass at 9 or 10 PM on Dec 24th, that’s fine. But technically speaking, they should use the Christmas Vigil liturgy, as the Christmas at Night (or during the Night) was originally intended to be used on Dec 25th.

God Bless

 

[OurLadyofSorrows]

At one stage there was pigeon food, water and a cage in the choir loft, a failed pigeon trap. Sometimes during Mass when the pigeons are flying around , its a great reminder of all Gods creatures. The Priest admirably ignores it. I am half expecting a pigeon or two in the nativity scene tonight

The Bishop is taking midnight Mass , at midnight, to a packed Cathedral, with a rousing hour of carols beforehand , accompanied by Pipe Organ and pigeon cooing

 

[OraLabora]

Surely there is an order somewhere devoted to the maintenance of Church Cats

Our abbey has an « abbot of the cats » which is perhaps why they made him both choirmaster and oblate master… it’s like herding cats

Sometimes during Mass when the pigeons are flying around , its a great reminder of all Gods creatures.

How is their aim?