My mother liked to recall walking to Midnight Mass under the moon on the cold, clear December night when, for the first time in history, people were “up” there.  That Christmas Eve, three humans circled the moon 10 times, broadcasting back home a reading from the book of Genesis.  As my mother noted, the moon would never be the same again, nor would the earth, now that humans—accustomed to looking out from our planet at other heavenly bodies—arrestingly beheld a view of the earth from somewhere else.  As the astronaut who snapped the “Earthrise” photograph on that mission noted, they’d trained and prepared to explore the moon, but instead discovered Earth.

As my mother knew, it was fitting that all this should occur en route to Midnight Mass.  The Christmas liturgy, like every liturgy, teaches us to see things as they are, “in real time.” We no longer need to fear bumping into things in the dark.     

As a child, I thought Christmas was the big feast day, and Easter secondary. Later, I learned Easter is the high feast.  But they’re not in competition. They belong together.  The liturgy of Christmas brings us to the Last Supper when the Eucharist was given, to Easter Resurrection, and to Pentecost when the church was born.  Always—on feast days, Sundays, and every day—the liturgy gives us what we need to see what’s happening, where, with whom or what, in real time.

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Don’t we see this in a special way at the Christmas liturgy?  The first midnight Christmas liturgy occurred on the first Christmas.  On the midnight shift the night of Christ’s birth, the poor workers were, to their astonishment, invited into the liturgy of the angels.  It’s an ancient church teaching that when we walk into a liturgy, we’re walking into the perpetual liturgy the angels (who are not bound by time) are always singing.  And the poor shepherds heard that liturgy “in real time,” as “suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2).

This is the song of the angels, the eternal liturgy, unveiled to the listening shepherds.  With the angels, we discover that at Christmas the Trinity is present. The angels sing to the Prince of Peace, second person of the Trinity, in the Spirit poured out upon humanity by the Father, source and goal of all true liturgy.  

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Luke’s Gospel prepared us for the presence of the Trinity at Christmas.  The angel Gabriel invited Mary into the angelic liturgy when the baby’s coming was announced.  “How can this be?” she asked.  By her acceptance of God’s invitation into the life of the Trinity, he answered: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”

As at the annunciation, so too at Christmas, the angels announce the divine Trinity is present. God invites us to come close.

We know the shepherds listened because they walked to the cave and found the baby in the manger.  Prepared by the angelic liturgy, they saw the earthly reality, but also saw God’s presence in real time irradiating it all. 

They saw the newborn son of a young woman, a child who found no place of welcome among people, wrapped in linen cloths in birth as in death. As with the astronauts orbiting the moon, the liturgical view gives us a new vantage point from which to see. 

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Mary, who heard the angel’s song and allowed it into her heart, held her son as the Son of God.  The shepherds, who heard the angels’ song in the dark night and went to see his face, were also able to see from the heart. They saw what the angels had taught them about the child.  

Seeing the angels’ liturgy enacted before their eyes, they couldn’t keep it to themselves but went out to tell others.  The liturgy we’re invited to in the darkness of Christmas night teaches us to see things as they are, things we could not see before. All our gifts, the meals we share, the words we speak, and the poverty we carry to hold out to this poor child, witness the heavenly liturgy, which shows how God is with us, in real time.