The Christmas Missionary Midnight Mass

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

An unexpected fringe benefit of my Utah-mini-tour promoting my new Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021) book has been talking with people about their interfaith encounters. One delightful story involves the Latter-day Saint missionary who went to Christmas Midnight Mass.

Scott Glenn—now a middle aged former missionary—grew up in California. He manages Pioneer Book in Provo, one of the lovely small bookstores that hosted a talk-and-sign event for me. (BYU Professor Joel Campbell, a friend, set it all up.) Scott never met the Huntsville, Utah Trappist monks I write about, but before my book event started we chatted about his experiences with Catholics.

As a young boy, Scott often visited the historic Catholic missions that dot the state of California. He loved them. When he got his own Latter-day Saint mission call, he had mixed feelings. He wanted his “mission” home to be like the lovely Spanish missions he knew from his youth.

He was happily surprised when he arrived at his initial posting in Del Rio, Texas, near the Rio Grande on the American/Mexican border. Del Rio, about 150 miles west of San Antonio, was the perfect spot for a young man who loved old Spanish missions.

The town first was christened as San Felipe del Rio (Saint Phillip of the River) by early Spanish Catholic missionaries from Mexico. They had crossed the Rio Grande and arrived at the spot on St. Phillip’s Day in 1635. Sadly, their mission did not last, but their legacy survived until 1883, when local authorities established the first post office and shortened the town name to “Del Rio.”

As you might expect, the Del Rio area has a large Hispanic-Catholic community. Southwestern Texas has a number of old Spanish-style churches. The area population is small enough that Scott and his missionary companion got acquainted with one of the local Catholic priests in the vicinity.

The priest invited them to Christmas Midnight Mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in nearby Carrizo Springs. Our Lady of Guadalupe parish was founded in 1881. The church is built in the mission style. Both young Latter-day Saints attended the special Christmas Mass.

Scott recalls the evening as lovely, quite spiritual, and very, very lively. At the beginning of Mass, the priest asked Scott and his mission companion to stand up. He introduced the “two elders from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” as his friends. The priest instructed the congregation to welcome his guests and treat them well. The crowd obliged.

Before his assignment ended, Scott visited the priest and church several more times after that first Midnight Mass. He told me that the Catholic priest who befriended him on his Latter-day Saint mission set the bar high for his future expectations about interfaith relations: “I’m pretty sure that before attending midnight mass in Carrizo Springs, I had not ever attended a non-LDS religious service. That experience certainly did set a positive precedent and opened my eyes and heart to the other branches of my faith family.”

I love this story for so many reasons.

Some treat our Latter-day Saint brothers and sisters on their missions poorly, but these young folks are almost always sincere and high-minded, trying to do what they believe is the work of the Lord. I smile when I think about a Texas Catholic congregation showing them some enthusiastic Southwestern hospitality.

In many ways, hospitality is at the heart of Christian virtue.

In Chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus praises the virtuous this way: “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I often write about my friends who are Catholic monks and nuns. They follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, which also mandates hospitality, i.e. that all guests be welcomed as if they were Christ himself.

Even the Christmas narrative involves hospitality, or the lack thereof. Luke’s famous Nativity Gospel tells about a young family, strangers in a strange land, who could not find a place of respite in any of the usual quarters at a time when they probably needed it most.

Scott’s magical missionary Christmas Midnight Mass story not only is proof that anyone can play the role of the stranger in a strange land, it also is a poignant reminder that all of us can find ways to make room at the inn.

*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.