Cancelling Christmas

I’ve been traveling and relaxing and watching the snow fall and build up, and up, and up. I traveled home to Nebraska for the Christmas holiday leaving a day early to avoid blizzarding weather. We stopped in Nebraska City for lunch at Runza one of my all time favorite foods. A Runza is a basically a kinda of bread and meat hot pocket with cabbage and spices. It tastes way better than it sounds and I highly suggest you try one if you get the chance.

While at Runza on Christmas Eve for lunch they had a local country station playing in the background during one of the news breaks they started listing all the local church services that were being cancelled due to the weather. Living my whole life in areas that can have inclement weather school and church cancellations are somewhat common place. Much more so today than when I was a kid. When we finally made it to my parents house more church cancellations were rolling across the bottom of the TV screen during my annual viewing of the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life”, my favorite movie.

A curious thing about all the church service cancellations. They were all protestant churches, none where Catholic. Isn’t that an interesting phenomenom? Is it because Catholic Priests live on the parish grounds? That can’t be it as many protestant pastors also live on location at their church. So why is it that Catholic’s don’t cancel their “services” in inclement weather and protestants do?

Well here is my answer, the Catholic Mass isn’t about the congregation whereas a protestant church service is, or at least it’s about the pastor preaching to that congregation. They may be worshiping God, but that can be done from home and without the congregation gathered. Whereas a Catholic Mass isn’t about us, the congreation, it’s about Him, God, and He’ll be there whether we are or not.