PENANG: “A saviour has been born to us,” said Fr Dominic Santhiyagu, “he’s a gift from God to all of you.” Fr Dominic was addressing to more than 1,000 people who gathered at the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows on Christmas eve for the midnight Mass, which was in English and Mandarin.

The faithful had come as early as 10.00pm to listen to the carollers. There were two groups of carollers — the Filipino Community who sang in English and the Mandarin Choir, singing in Mandarin. The Mass began at 10.30pm with Fr Dominic, the parish priest, carrying in Baby Jesus to the strains of Gloo…. ooo… ria in exclesis deo.

In Fr Dominic’s homily, he touched on Jesus as a gift to us on Christmas day. He asked what we usually do when we receive a gift? “When we receive a gift, we normally follow these three steps — accept it, unwrap it and share it. Jesus has been given as a gift to us so we should accept him like Mary and Joseph did.

A gift has no meaning if we fail to unwrap it. ‘Unwrapping Jesus’ means we need to get to know the person of Jesus. We do that through prayers, scripture readings and meditation.” He urged the faithful to go deeper into a relationship with Jesus, to take time off from their busyness to honour Jesus as their Lord and God.

“The gift of Jesus is to be shared,” he continued. “A gift has no value if you don’t appreciate it. Appreciating Jesus means we share Jesus with others. He had commanded us to ‘Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations’ (Mt 28:19), therefore we should not keep Jesus to ourselves only. We are challenged to proclaim the message of Christmas as found in John 3:16.” — By Lucia Lai