Christmas In a Foreign Land

This is the happiest Christmas that we ever had in this country.

We went to Midnight Mass and while we nodded in sleepiness the High Mass brought back memories of home. The Mass was in a language foreign, but the spirit there was something from back home. Community, faith, oneness, belongingness.

In this world of fear, doubt and economic uncertaintly, we find the certainly of our faith us a catalyst that keeps us going on. We reclaimed what we had back home and what was missing in the past Christmases here. Faith and hope.

The laudate of the past Masses in honor of our Virgin made us feel comfortable in this community. There is tradition, there is permanence, there is common belief. And that Christmas mass made us feel closer and closer to Home.

For what is Home, but where your Heart is ? We found tonight that there is one thng that made us unite as citizens of the our home country: our Faith. Although the faith and spirit of Christmas is not excatly the same here, in fact its 10,000 miles differrent, it still is Christmas. If we did not have that, if we did not a have the Church, we as a nation have disintegrated into chaos a long time ago.

Sometimes, we take things for granted for home are the very things that leave us from being unhinged. These are the things that we will cherish and look for in a foreign, foreign land like this. We are away, yes, and we miss our homeland. But our Faith has made us feel welcome and made us feel...at home.