Evangelization and Imagination Part II

            This morning I was going over the calendar for the month of December when I saw under the heading December 25 “Christmas (Holy Day of Obligation).”  That caused a bit of a jolt.  Of course, as a priest, I know that Christmas is a Holy Day of Obligation, but what surprised me is how strange it seems to be reminded of this. 

            As a pastor, I have always made sure to announce the Sunday before that, “Such and such holy day was indeed a ‘Holy Day of Obligation,” requiring attendance at Holy Mass.  I dutifully do this for Holy Mary, Mother of God, Assumption, All Saints and Immaculate Conception.  But I have never considered it necessary to remind people that Christmas is a Holy Day of Obligation.  In fact, I think if I reminded people of that on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, they would laugh.  “What a ridiculous thing to say, of course we will go to Mass on Christmas.”

            “Of course we will go to Mass on Christmas,” is not just a remark of a Catholic who faithfully attends Mass every Sunday.  It is something said by many people, including those who are far from the Church and are not active, faithful Catholics.  Millions of people who would not consider themselves “active” or “faithful” Catholics will come to Mass for Christmas.  Almost every Catholic Church in the world is filled to the rafters for at least one or two Masses. 

            Why is that? 

I would propose that it because Christmas Mass is a celebration that has grabbed their imaginations and is indelibly marked in their memories. Now, the Church clearly teaches that Mass is not the place for evangelization. Mass, in order for it to bear fruit, must be preceded by evangelization and conversion (CCC 1072). We create grave injustice to both the Mass and evangelization when we try to combine them. But we evangelize people so that one day they may be ready for the Sacred Liturgy.  And this, I propose, requires more of our evangelization efforts be directed to engaging the imagination of the person. 

In my first post on this topic, I suggested that success in evangelization will not be found in simply offering more catechesis that educates the intellect, service projects that engage the will or activities that influence the emotions.  Christmas Mass attendance is the perfect example. People do not come to Christmas Mass because they want to be intellectually engaged.  They certainly do not come because they feel they are under a penalty of grave sin for missing Mass on a Holy Day of Obligation.  While their emotions are engaged, there is more to it than that.  They come because Christmas is just not Christmas without coming to Church.  It is an activity that is deeply impressed upon both their imaginations and their memories.  Christmas is a celebration that has captured their imagination and they cannot imagine December 24/25 without "Christ’s Mass."  The next question is, “How can we capture the imagination of these people who come at Christmas and invite them into something more than Christmas Mass?”