Every year, I join millions of Filipino Catholics in trying to complete the nine days of Simbang Gabi, our traditional evening or dawn Masses in preparation for Christmas.
We go to Simbang Gabi for different reasons. Many Filipinos want to complete the nine days because they have a specific “wish” or prayer intention. Others, like myself, often have no specific request. For me, it is a devotion, a way to prepare my heart for the coming of the Lord.
Over the past 16 years, I only failed to complete the Simbang Gabi for only three or four times. The year 2024 was one of those instances — and I felt bad about it.
I attended Rappler’s Christmas party in the evening of Thursday, December 19, eating and drinking and dancing in this office feast with a Wicked theme. Hours before the party, I woke up at 3 am to attend the 3:30 am Simbang Gabi and went to a government office before proceeding to the newsroom.
I was so tired, so when I came home from the party at 1:30 am on Friday, December 20, all I wanted to do was rest. For sure, I could no longer attend the Simbang Gabi at 3:30 am. So I planned to attend the 5 am Mass instead.
The last thing I remembered was lying on my bed and commanding my Google Home device: “Hey Google, please the set the alarm for….”
I trailed off. Knocked out!
When I woke up, it was 5:50 am, and I knew the Mass was about to end. I shook my head and stared at the ceiling. Mission failed.
I did my best to have a perfect attendance. What happened? How could I have avoided this? Why did I miss the mark?
I am, in many ways, a perfectionist, a creature of habit, a man of routines and workflows and ceremonies. So it was a big deal for me.
Just a day earlier, I was even telling my girlfriend, “This is the reason I believe in guardian angels.” Because I was supposed to wake up at 3 am to attend the Simbang Gabi last Thursday, and even without an alarm clock, I woke up at that exact time!
What was this new experience telling me?
Then, in a moment of prayer, an image of God flashed in my head: a God who was lulling a tired 38-year-old man to sleep.
Could it be that God was also with me when I came home from the Rappler party? That it was God who brought me to bed and who, as he did with Adam in the Book of Genesis (2:21), “cast a deep sleep on the man”?
Could it be that God wanted me to learn the value of rest?
I understood things better when I reviewed the Pope’s remarks to the Filipino community in Spain, who paid him a visit at the Vatican, on December 16.
“The Filipinos are men of faith, women of faith,” the Pope said. “Continue to bear witness in this society that has become too rich, too competent, too self-sufficient. Thank you for what you do.”
Hmm, what’s wrong with being “too rich, too competent, too self-sufficient”?
It is not necessarily bad to be rich, competent, and self-sufficient. Of course we want these things! The problem lies in the excess.
We are a society obsessed with achievement and success, command and control.
If we take a closer look, it’s the same tendency, in fact, that brings about many of the world’s conflicts and dictatorships — an unquenchable thirst for power that ends up destroying anyone who gets in the way.
Even we who try to complete the Simbang Gabi can plead guilty.
During the Simbang Gabi, for example, we are tempted to focus on achieving all the nine days and succeeding for another year. By fulfilling this tradition, we can then ask God (or “command” God, like a genie) to grant our wishes. We can therefore wield greater control over life that is otherwise unpredictable.
But a God we can control is no God at all!
Losing control can teach us the most valuable lessons.
In my case, when I failed to wake up in time for Simbang Gabi, I think God was teaching me to rest my weary body and leave everything to him.
It is true: “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). But the focus should never be the human effort, such as waking up at dawn, but the mercy of God who became a human being and knows that sometimes, “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).
We hold on to the promise of Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” God, as the Book of Ecclesiastes (3:11) declares, has made everything beautiful in its time.
We need to learn hope — and the closely related virtue of patience. This includes patience with ourselves, especially when we fail in the quest for success.
“Patience, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, sustains our hope and strengthens it as a virtue and a way of life,” wrote Francis in Spes Non Confundit (“Hope Does Not Disappoint”), the papal bull declaring the 2025 Jubilee Year.
“May we learn to pray frequently for the grace of patience, which is both the daughter of hope and at the same time its firm foundation,” the Pope said.
It was Jesus, born in a manger and killed on a cross, who first taught us this virtue.
We have a God who, despite our wretchedness, was so patient that he “made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). If God was patient with us, how can we not be patient with ourselves and with our brothers and sisters?
Emmanuel, “God-with-us” — not any tradition — is the reason for our Christmas hope.
I end with this beautiful prayer from the great Jesuit philosopher and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
‘Patient Trust’
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability —
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually — let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
May we all have a Christmas full of hope! – Rappler.com
The Wide Shot is a Sunday column on religion and public life. If you have suggested topics or feedback, let us know in the faith chat room of the Rappler Communities app.