December 29, 2015
Paulist Fathers have engaged in campus ministry for over a century because universities are filled with ideas and energy. Due to the academic break in December, however, most campuses are quiet at Christmas time. Two of our Paulist campus ministries have capitalized on this stillness to reach out to people experiencing pain or loss at the holidays.
Many Catholic parishes in the United States are jam-packed on Christmas Eve. It’s standing-room-only, with joyful music and bright lights. But because so many people are away from our campuses, the Paulists at the Ohio State University and the University of Tennessee will each hold a quieter, more reflective Christmas Eve Mass that we call “Blue Christmas.” The prayers and the readings are the same as for other Christmas Eve Masses, but the lighting is lower, the music is softer, and the emphasis is on hope.
If you know someone experiencing pain or loss, please encourage them to join us for the celebration of Christ’s birth:
In Columbus, OH: 7 p.m. at the St. Thomas More Newman Center, 64 W. Lane Avenue.
In Knoxville, TN: 8 p.m. at St. John XXIII Parish and Catholic Center, 1710 Melrose Place.
Blue Christmas is one of my favorite Masses of the year. Sitting in stillness with others, I ponder the astonishing circumstances in which the Son of God was born into our world. An unexpected pregnancy, a couple forced to deliver their child among farm animals: it doesn’t seem like a very good plan. Yet, this was how God chose for it to be.
Because, when it comes right down to it, the Blue Christmas Mass celebrates that “nothing will be impossible for God” (Luke 1:37). As Pope Francis wrote two years ago in The Joy of The Gospel: “Joy… always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved.”