Christmas on a cruise ship

AOS lay chaplain Sebastian Fiebig spent Christmas Day onboard a cruise ship. However, he was not on holiday in the Caribbean but caring for seafarers in his own port of Hamburg.

The large cruise ship had been in the port of Hamburg for several weeks where it was being repaired and overhauled and the length extended by 20m. There were 300 crew members hard at work onboard. When Sebastian visited the ship before Christmas, he reported that the shipyard was as busy as an ant hill. On Christmas Day, there was no one except the guard at the gate.

Mass was celebrated in the ship’s entertainment suite attended by 100 seafarers, almost all of them Filipino. The celebrant was Fr Jan who celebrated Mass in English for the first time. In his sermon, he spoke of the German Christmas carol “Es kommt ein Schiff geladen” which means “a ship arrives with a heavy load”. The ship symbolises Our Lady who bears her valuable load, her son Jesus Christ whom she brings to the people.

Fr Jan celebrates Mass onboard

After Mass, Sebastian and his team distributed Christmas presents. They were concerned because they had only 60 wrapped presents for 100 people. The crew resolved this problem very quickly by sharing the presents among themselves. Sebastian also distributed newsletters so that the seafarers could have some news from their home countries during the Christmas season.

Sebastian, 4th from left, with the crew who shared presents from AOS among themselves

click here to read more about AOS in Hamburg