Francesco preached, and it was a good one. Now, I didn't understand much of it because it was delivered in Italian, but the English translation of the homily references the experience of the Magi and the light they followed, and then contrasted that with the darkness surrounding King Herod. In essence, a Child was born and is the Light for a world in darkness!
So, here's an interesting note: to get into the Papal Mass, you have to arrive early... really early! We arrived at 8am for the scheduled 10:30am start. To get into the place, we had our own version of a "golden ticket" -- a gray-colored, postcard-sized invitation complete with papal insignia and even a papal seal stamp. If we didn't have this on our person at all times, the "maestro" would get really mad, yell at us in Italian, and escort us out of the premises. Thankfully, that didn't happen to any of us. Oh, and when we got to our seats, we were treated with a nicely-bound worship aid. It had instructions in Italian, the Latin texts of the Mass on the right-hand pages, and English and Italian translations of those texts on the left-hand pages. It must be nice when your parish church has the Vatican Press at its disposal for printing worship aids.
Afterwards, we were treated to a special feast-day message (in Italian, of course; video link available) from Francesco from his papal residence window. We also prayed the Angelus with "Il Papa," he greeted a couple of visiting pilgrim groups, and then finally wished us a good lunch and afternoon.
Note: this post by Dn. Grant Gerlach. This is my first post on this blog, so bear with me as I get acclimated with this endeavor.
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