Christmas Part 1

Yes, I had missed the 4th Sunday of Advent and Christmas greetings to all. Well, this has been a rather busy but grace-filled week. It has been a great gift for me this Christmas because from 23 till 28 December, 2 of my brothers with their families visited me here in Rome, and this was the first time since I entered that I have my family visiting me.

First, my elder brother came with my sister-in-law and neice together with 2 families of friends after their skiing adventure near Milan. There were 11 of them (equivalent to the number of sisters in my community). I thought it would be a great experience to celebrate the mid-night Mass with the Pope at St. Peter's Basillica. However, there seemed to be difficulties in getting tickets this year and our sisters in the community had none. Submitting to this reality, we were hoping to at least attend the morning Mass only to find out that it will be celebrated by Msgr. Comastri instead of the Pope.

However, the Lord proved to me of my being a woman of little faith. Just 2 days before Christmas, someone gave 3 tickets to one sister, who decided to give up for me. Then, another managed to receive a couple, offered one to me. With the help of another sister from our generalate, I managed to have 2 more. Even though we cannot have everyone attending, at least 2 more were able to join us. Then, out of the blue, one sister managed to get 2 special passes. So, all in all, we were able to get 8 of us to attend the mid-night Mass. I am sure this is what the Lord wills. It was a beautiful experience even though parts of the Mass was in Latin and there was only Italian translation and the 2nd reading was in English. I was only happy that my elder brother, was opened to attend the Mass with us.


On Christmas day, I brought my family to visit our Generalate, and then proceed to visit some places of interest--Piazza di Spagna, Pantheon, Fontana di Trevi, Piazza Navona and Colosseo. It was a pity that since it was Christmas Day, all the places were closed and in fact, public transport was limited. However, I was only glad that they made the trip here for the holiday.