Christmas Eve in the 1960s quaintly provincial Cebu City was for celebrating many a Misa de Gallo or Simbang Gabi brought to its rapturous splendor by the acoustic mysteries of the dead language Latin.

Yet, enigmatic Latin wasn’t peculiar to the budding consciousness of an 11-year-old boy who likely heard his first Latin Mass as a baby cradled in his mother’s arms and who was endlessly fascinated by his mother’s embroidered heirloom white veil that she covered her head with whenever she heard Mass.  

Latin was just the way things were. But little did the boy know that things would not stay as they were in the turbulent sixties of interrogating tradition.

Still, for the Latin Misa de Gallo, the boy always celebrated it at the Asilo de la Milagrosa, a twin-towered concrete neo-Romanesque church built a decade earlier and which was distinctly painted in mystical Marian light blue and purity white as it commanded attention on Gorordo Avenue, Lahug, in the vicinity of his maternal grandparents’ American colonial three-story clapboard house.

On any given Misa de Gallo, the interiors of the well-lighted Asilo (refuge) glowed like jewels on Christmas Eve, holding at bay darkness’ ceaseless quaffing of light, helped further by the side gothic lancet windows reflecting the colors of stained-glass panels of yellow, rose, blue, and white.

But even more splendid, the beguiling lights prodded the viewer to take in the full ornate gilded glow of the altarpiece — uniquely hung on the east apse wall, unlike Cebu’s other baroque churches and their stand-alone altars — shining on the statues of two saints and the Virgin Mother and the tabernacle. 

But as the Christmas Eve hour approached, the celebrant priest suddenly appeared at the main doors, at the church’s narthex. Ceremonies of the lengthy Tridentine Misa de Gallo were underway.

As the jostling faithful stood in their seat-worn Narra pews, a traditional Latin chant wafted in the cool night air as the celebrant priest solemnly shuffled down the nave, his eyes seriously set on the altar, neither looking left nor right. 

For the occasion, the celebrant priest almost always wore the glittering chasuble of gold cloth. He could have worn a rose-colored chasuble, the rose being emblematic of joy mingled with sorrow. But he perhaps had already worn the rose chasuble on the third Sunday of Advent.

On reaching the foot of the altar, after the communion rail, the celebrant priest took a bow and genuflected.

The priest made his way to his chair since the entrance chant was often extended in a Latin high Mass. Once the chant was over, the priest stood and, facing the hushed standing crowd, made the Sign of the Cross and intoned, “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti” (In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit).

After the congregation jointly responded, “Amen,” the priest again faced east, with his back to the congregation for the duration of the song-filled high Mass service.

He would only turn at the end, informing the congregation, “Ite, missa est” (Go forth, the Mass is ended). To which the faithful responded “Deo gratias” (Thanks be to God).

So ended the Latin Misa de Gallo, joining other fading childhood memories, worth recalling not because of a nostalgic craving for a lost world but only to emphasize that it was just what it once was.

Emphasizing the “once was” is crucial as the Latin Mass is presently controversial. 

By the beginning of the 1970s, the New Mass or the Novus Ordo entered general practice, nearly a decade after the Second Vatican Council modernized the Roman liturgy, including having the mass celebrated in vernacular languages and songs.

This year, Pope Francis cracked down again on the unauthorized celebration of Latin Masses by stubborn Church conservatives who are using the Latin Mass to oppose the Vatican II reforms and to criticize Pope Francis’ stance on climate change, immigration, social justice, and, lately, the Israeli killing of civilians in Gaza.