PAPA'S FIRST MIDNIGHT MASS AS POPE
A sampler from Sylvie's first montage using Yahoo photos. She says we will probably be blown away when the Photogallery photos come in because their photographers have just been getting more inspired with each occasion.
This was the best Midnight Mass - certainly the best Christmas homily, and best-delivered too - and the most spiritually uplifting Mass, in my experience. Yet another reason to thank the Lord for our Pope. The music, the liturgy, the flowers, Papa's every gesture (so reverential, so right, so exquisite), the way he enunciated every prayer whether in Latin or Italian, whether chanted or spoken, and the perfect way he delivered the homily, had me in tears all the time. I've never heard him speak more beautifully - intonation, pitch, pacing, cadence, rhythm, emphasis all enhanced his message a hundredfold. And I am waiting for a photograph that captured his expression just after the last of the children had presented their offerings to him - it was a moment of ineffable beauty. (I haven't even mentioned the hair!)