On Friendship and Misa de Gallo

I spent another graveyard shift last night at the blood bank. I was with Kathleen RN, Mary, Mark RN and Kim. The group, together with some volunteers who did not attend their duty last night, became close friends because of these nightly shifts. Initially, they have been unintentionally scheduled together until finally they’ve been really extra-comfortable with each other that they finally chose to be scheduled as one whole group. I am really cool with them and they treated me really nice, however, I still felt out-of-place most of the time. In fact, they have already established their own norms and habits. I think it has always been more difficult to make friends, or I guess to intrude, to an already tight friendship than to build friendship with a group of people who are themselves strangers to each others.

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I invited them to join me in attending the first 4 o’clock AM mass of the Misa de Gallo. But all of them have already attended the first8 oclock PM version of the Misa de gallo the previous night, so I have to attend the mass alone. I rarely attend the mass in our parish and this was only the second time that I’ll be attending a mass in this particular cathedral (the one nearest to the blood bank). Before the mass commenced, I saw Kinney, one of the member of the group, and I seated beside her. There is an aisle in front of our seat which separates us from the rest of the “front row” and people who were unfortunate to find a seat managed to stand in front of us. Normally this might have caused me to doze off since I couldn’t concentrate to a speaker if I couldn’t see him. Thank goodness the mass celebrant was Bishop Socrates Villegas. His loud voice boomed clearly through the speaker. His homily was brief and very understandable.