Commentary
A bitter December cross-wind was biting as I crossed Rue Atwater and hurried through the darkness to 6:30 a.m. Mass at St. Irénée de Lyon.
Inside, the 110-year-old church at the edge of Montreal’s St. Henri neighbourhood was welcomingly warm, but still as dark as outdoors except for a distant blaze of candles massed in the sanctuary. Arriving parishioners were visible only as winter coat shapes illuminated only by pin-light tapers handed out to each of us, and lit neighbour to neighbour.
We were there to celebrate a Rorate Mass, an ancient ecclesial tradition honouring the Blessed Virgin Mary, she who Catholics confess (not worship!) as the Mother of God, and whom the secular world typecasts as that poor young Jewish girl obliged to give birth in a stable because her partner Joseph fumbled the reservations at the inn….