In a vital and happy follow-up message from Christmas, the Mass of the Sunday in the Octave of Christmas establishes our dignity as "sons" and "heirs" of God, Whom we can call "Father" because of "His Son, made of a woman," Mary (Epistle). Jesus actually "leapt down from heaven. . .with beauty. . .with strength" (Introit) to "direct our actions" in His Name (Prayer). Hence, the Gradual offers our "good word" of gratitude. The Gospel prophecy that Jesus is "a sign which will be contradicted" indicates what we also may expect as "Sons of God" yet it strengthens our hope, that if we but live with Mary at "Nazareth," then the last words of the Gospel concerning Jesus may also be applied to us, "the Child grew and waxed strong, full of wisdom." The Offertory, Secret, and Post-communion speak of final victory because "they are dead who sought the life of the Child" (Communion). Feast of St. John Apostle and Evangelist, the Beloved Disciple, is commemorated in the Mass.
 
This Week:

Monday 28th December
Feast of the Holy Innocents. Red vestments are worn, but in some places, Purple is worn traditionally when the Feast falls during the week to re-call the grief of the Mothers and their lamentation in Rama. The Gospel relates how St. Joseph was warned by an angel to take the Holy Family and flee into Egypt to protect the Christ Child. The sad prophecy of Jeremias is fulfilled: "A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning: Rachel bewailing her children and would not be comforted because they are not."  The prophecy is repeated in the Communion of the Mass for emphasis and edification.
 
Tuesday 29th December
V day in the Octave of the Nativity and in England and Wales the First Class Feast of St. Thomas á Becket, famous Chancellor of England and Archbishop of Canterbury who gave his life in defence of the liberty of the Church.
 
Wednesday 30th October
VI day in the Octave of the Nativity.
 
Thursday 31st December
VII Day Within the Octave of the Nativity. Mass Puer Natus with commemoration of St. Sylvester Pp. C., who served the Church between 314 and 335, and presided over the Council of Nicea which condemned Arius and his heretical sect and confirmed the divinity of Our Lord.
 
Friday 1st January 2021
Octave Day of the Nativity, Feast of Circumcision.
The Votive Mass of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is prohibited. The first Mass of the new year celebrates two feasts, one of Jesus, the other of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Jesus immediately sheds a few drops of His Precious Blood as a pledge of His complete blood-letting later on to redeem us. (Gospel ) . By His Circumcision Jesus is marked as a victim for sacrifice, Who will take our “ government upon His Shoulder” (Introit), and therefore “all the earth hath seen salvation” (Gradual, Communion). Why He gave Himself is explained in the Epistle, namely to “redeem and cleanse us .” Secondly, Mary’s maternity of Jesus and of us is acknowledged by the Prayer which implores her aid on our behalf to share in His Life; and for this purpose, may our sacrificial offerings (Secret) and Postcommunion and sacramental reception “wash away our guilt” by her intercession.

The object of today’s liturgy is threefold: first to adore Jesus as true God in His eternal birth as Son of the Father, for to ignore Him would be folly (Introit, Gradual and Communion). Second, to recognise Jesus as true Man in His earthly or temporal birth as Son of Mary, born in a stable where, without speaking a word, but rather by the force of example alone, He teaches humility of service to God and neighbour, instructs us in obedience to the decrees of His Father and the arrangements made by Mary and Joseph, and furthermore warns us against the softening influence of material comforts by the poverty of His manger (Gospel). Third, to realize more and more the spiritual birth of Jesus in our souls (Epistle), by recalling our birth as “reborn” members of His Mystical Body, growing with Him throughout the coming year, by rejoicing in His Joys from Christmas to Lent, by sorrowing with His Sorrows during Lent and by celebrating His Glories during the Easter and Pentecostal periods. Before the crib today, in union with Mary, contemplate this threefold Birth of Jesus.
 
Season of the Nativity: The glorious and joyful I class feast of the Nativity of Our Lord, with II class octave, is 25 December and begins the Season of Christmas which runs through 5 January. The first Mass of Christmas is ideally celebrated at midnight. The Gregorian Introit is one of the most moving: Dominus dixit ad me. Filius meus es tu. Ego hodie genui te. (The Lord hath said to me: Thou art My Son. This day have I begotten Thee.) The Gospel of this first Mass tells of the Christmas events, describes how our Lord was born in a stable in Bethlehem, how He was visited by the humble shepherds, who were called by angels, and how a multitude of angels proclaimed, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will."
 
The great mystery of Christmas, expressed in the first Mass, consists in realising the great mercy and love of God the Father in allowing His Only Begotten Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, to be born as a creature, of a virgin, in the lowly stable in Bethlehem. Laid into a humble manger, Our Blessed Lord, our own Creator from all eternity, humbled Himself through Divine Love to share our human nature. Some fragments of the original manger have lain for hundreds of years beneath the high altar at St. Mary Major in Rome.
 
The second Mass (of dawn) emphasizes how Our Lord appeared in the world as its True Light. The magnificent Introit relates the prophecy of Isaias concerning Our Redeemer: "A Light shall shine upon us this day for the Lord is born to us, and He shall be called Wonderful, God, the Prince of Peace, the Father of the world to come of whose reign there shall be no end." St. Anastasia, a popular martyr of ancient times, who was slain in the reign of Diocletian by being burned alive, is commemorated through a collect in the Mass. She is the same Anastasia mentioned in the Canon of the Mass.
 
The third Mass of Christmas instructs us that the new born child is called upon to gain salvation for all mankind. The Gospel is the usual Last Gospel of St. John, the familiar first words being, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." For edification of the faithful it is recommended the proper Last Gospel, previously in use, of Epiphany be said. In all the Masses of Christmas the particular Preface, Communicantes and Hanc Igitur are used.

On the second day of the Octave, Saturday 26th December, the feast of St. Stephen the First Martyr, whose name is inscribed in the Canon, is celebrated. Stoned to death in Jerusalem, the incidents leading up to his martyrdom are related in the Epistle, a reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Great benefit may be gained from reflection on St. Stephen's last words, as he was stoned to death, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." The saint emulated Our Lord, Who on the Cross of Calvary, asked the Eternal Father to "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

The Mass voices our expectation, in union with Mary, waiting for Jesus to come. Depsite the dismal state that we find ourselves in with the pandemic, this Christmas more than ever must surely show us that the hope expressed in the coming of the Christ child has even more value than perhaps we have appreciated in the past.

The Offertory and Communion recall the devotion of Mary to the blessed fruit of her womb, Jesus, during the months before the first Christmas. Her preparation inspires us to pray for priests who have been called by her Christ as the "dispensers of the mysteries of God (Epistle); and to hearken to their "voice...crying in the wilderness" of a world awaiting its God..."prepare ye the way" (Gospel). Christmas will be a complete Christ-Mass if you receive Christ! O Antiphon is O Clavis David.
 
This Week: Monday 21st December 2020: Feast of St Thomas Ap., the Disciple who was sceptical about the Resurrection of the Lord. Our Lord appeared and asked St. Thomas to put his hands into his wounds. St. Thomas fell to his knees with the famous words: “My Lord and my God,” the words used by the priest in the Mass at the Domine non sum dingus. St. Thomas went on missions to Persia and even India. O Antiphon is O Oriens.
 
Tuesday 22nd December 2020: and Wednesday 23rd December 2020: No Feast falls on these days, and Mass of the prior Sunday is celebrated. O Antiphons are O Rex gentium and O Emmanuel respectively.
 
Thursday 24nd December 2020: I cl. Vigil of the Nativity in vestments of violet. St, Gregory tells us: “It was all the more fitting that the Lord should have been born at Bethlehem since Bethlehem means ‘house of bread.’ for it was He who said: I am the living Bread which came down from Heaven.”

And so the Season of the Nativity begins… the new hope, the coming of the Christ child.

We each of us have a "voice crying in the wilderness" within us. And far from causing us to be sad or dismayed, we should rejoice and be glad.

This Sunday we see St. John the Baptist answering those who desire to know who he is. St. John tells the truth, he is not the Christ, nor Elias or a prophet. He says of himself that he is a voice crying in the wilderness. A voice that cries out but very few hear and listen. This same function is performed for each one of us by our conscience. Our conscience is the voice of truth, the voice of God, within our souls that cries out to us to make straight the way of the Lord. We are informed which way we should go, how we should act, and what we should say. If we fail to heed its cry, we then hear its condemnation for our evil rebellion.

Just as St. John did not hesitate or fail to condemn the evil that he saw, even when it was in the ruler (Herod), so does our conscience reliably condemn the evil that it sees within us.

We are made in the image and likeness of God and it is in our conscience that we most resemble God who is truth itself. We cannot hide our evil from our own conscience just as we can hide nothing from God. Even if no one else in the world knows of our evil deeds, God knows and our conscience knows. In this capacity our conscience performs the work of God. It eats away at us warning us that we have done wrong and that we must straighten things out.

Men often become physically ill because of a guilty conscience. They have no need for anyone else to condemn them or torment them; their conscience condemns them more loudly than any human voice can, and it is relentless allowing the soul no rest or peace.

In our preparation to receive Christ this Christmas season, we must repeat history within our own souls. Just as the people went out into the wilderness to hear St. John preach penance and baptism; so must we enter into our souls to hear our conscience point out to us the evil within us and admonish us to penance. Only in this way will we find ourselves prepared when Christ comes to us.

We must not only hear the voice of our conscience but we must act upon it. If we choose to ignore the truth from our conscience we will end up as Herod. The evil that we love more than the truth will bring us to the drastic state of killing our conscience just as Herod killed St. John.

Once the conscience is silenced by our violent and evil wills, we are damned even while we still walk this earth. There can be no state more evil than that of someone with a dead conscience that no longer speaks or that he can no longer hear. Such a soul has no means of discerning right from wrong. The only voice that they now hear is their passions which freely lead them on from one vice to another each worse than the one before. And this continues until they enter into the gates of Hell.

It is said that: "conscience makes cowards of us all". And we can see how true this is. If we are attuned to the voice of our conscience, we see clearly not only our sins and transgressions but also our profound weakness and misery. It is in this state of profound awareness of our complete weakness and our awful sinfulness brought upon us through our conscience that leads us to the profoundest of humility. This awareness of truth of their own souls and profound humility is what brought many of the saints like St. Francis to style themselves the worst of sinners. This is not a "pious exaggeration" because they say this not in comparison of their souls to others around them, but in comparison of their souls to the perfect model -  Christ - who their conscience constantly holds up to them as the ideal.

The tragic mistake of most of mankind is that they do not listen to their conscience in the comparison of their lives to Christ, but rather they listen to their passions which compare their lives to the lives of those around them. And their passions clearly tell them that they are not so bad. There are others that are much worse than they are and so they can comfortably lull themselves to sleep in their sins. They are unable to see another's conscience so their judgment of the person's life is at best a guess. The guilt which they see may not be there in the eyes of God, so perhaps they are not even as good as they would like to believe and their comparison is a lie. And in following their lie they live under the illusion that they are better than the rest of men, when in reality they are worse than the rest of men.

Let us bring forth the voice of our conscience and attune ourselves to hear it no matter how painful it may be to us. And in this state let us become profoundly humble and straighten out the rough and crooked ways of our souls so that we may truly receive the grace of Our Lord and Saviour on Christmas day.

As many will know Canon Lordan, our regular celebrant of Masses at Llay (and other Wrexham Diocesan churches in days gone by) is undergoing treatment for a serious illness.

Canon is now having a period of recovery and convalescence with his family in Ireland. He will remain there until at least the 25th January.

The Latin Mass Society in the Diocese of Wrexham sends our sincere best wishes and prayers to Canon and we ask that readers of this article join with us in those thoughts and prayers.

In the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Advent, we find St. John the Baptist in prison for speaking the truth. He spoke the truth even to those in high places. And for telling Herod that it was unlawful for him to live in an adulterous and incestuous union with his brother's wife he is now in prison and soon to die. But, St. John is not concerned with his physical wellbeing he is more interested in the souls of his disciples, and for this reason he sends them to Christ so that they may learn first-hand who He is and follow Him.

This too is a very important question for us to find the answer to and believe, because if we make a mistake in this our eternal life is at stake. There are many who do not believe that Jesus Christ is God and our Redeemer. And there are many who have treated Christ as some kind of mythological creation and therefore subject to reinterpretation and modification so as to adapt to the "person" or the "times".

This question that St. John's disciples asked is therefore an important one for us too, "Is Jesus the Christ or are we to look for another?" The religion that we follow here on earth and the life that we will lead in eternity all depend on understanding the true answer.

The life, words, and works of Jesus Christ give us ample proof of who He is. There are many prophesies pointing to the qualities that the Redeemer would have, and Jesus Christ has fulfilled all of these perfectly. If we just consider the one alluded to by Our Lord Himself in today's Gospel we will see this fulfilment: "God himself will come and save you. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened; and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart; and the tongue of the dumb shall be free." Is. 35: 4-6.

Jesus tells us just as he told the disciples of St. John that He performs the very same wonders which, according to the prophet, God Himself, when He should come to redeem man, was to perform; therefore, He must be God and the Redeemer of the world. These miracles in themselves were incontrovertible proofs of the divinity of Jesus; through them God the Father gave testimony that Jesus spoke the truth, when He declared Himself to be His Son and the Redeemer of the world. And Jesus, working all miracles in His own name, also proved in a palpable manner that He possessed divine power, and that, consequently, He was God.

Once true faith has opened up our hearts and minds to this truth, then we see before us a wondrous treasure of the most beautiful divine truths. We see and accept all that He said and did as the most absolute and perfect truths. We see the Church that He has founded as the most beautiful and perfect because He is its founder. We see the authority that He has established in her as the wisest and most perfect of its kind. We see the Sacraments that He has given Her as the most perfect beautiful and powerful means of obtaining all that we need in this world both spiritually and materially and most importantly in making us fit for an everlasting happiness with Him in Heaven. The list of treasures is inexhaustible once we see and believe that Jesus is the Christ the Redeemer of the world.

But sadly, this truth has not been seen and believed by many. Or, perhaps the many refuse to see and believe because of some evil prejudice.

The Judeans who followed their spiritual leaders in rejecting Christ had no excuse before God for their unbelief. The same may be said of the unbelievers of our time. Their incredulity proceeds from an evil heart, and is therefore to be condemned. Let us not be influenced by such as these to become wavering and staggering in the Faith.

We must also be equally if not more cautious of those who use the name of Christ but do not believe in Him. These rather believe in a "Christ" that they have created to their own liking. These do not wish to accept ALL that Jesus has said, but only the parts that they like. They conveniently pick out what they like and refuse what they don't like (smorgasbord or à la carte style religion).

We must accept and believe ALL that Christ has given us to believe, especially that which we find difficult because of the pride and vanity of our fallen nature. We must humble ourselves to accept God Who has come to us in the most humble and lowly means known to us. He comes to us as a helpless baby in a stable; as a criminal condemned to death on the cross; as a sacrificial victim under the appearances of bread and wine upon our altars. We must set aside our pride and vanity and believe what He has said and done, and what He has taught and commanded, simply because He is God. Let us strive to love Him and open our hearts and minds to Him so that we can believe and love Him with even greater faith and love.