So why are church pews still so packed on Easter? Cardinal Dolan explains why
By Monica ShowalterAmid all the gloomy trends of Americans no longer embracing religion, it's curious that the churches, both Catholic and Protestant, remain packed on Easter. It's also the same for those of the Jewish faith on the high holy days, too.
Mine was packed to the max last night for the Easter Vigil, and that mass was four hours long counting rehearsal time, and nobody got bored and left. Standing room only. Was yours? I bet it was, because every church I go to is that way, whether it's the exquisite Catholic parish community in Beverly Hills, or my fascinating multi-ethnic Catholic church in San Diego. They still pack them in on Easter, no matter what else goes on during the year or what the public tells the pollsters.
Timothy, Cardinal Dolan, of New York, had some terrific insights about what he thought was going on in a beautiful essay in today's Wall Street Journal, which appears to be freed from its paywall:
True, on Easter Sunday the pews will be jammed. Christians of wavering commitment frequently “come home” for Easter and Christmas, much as many Jews return to synagogue for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. While some of my fellow pastors might wonder out loud where these people are the other 50 Sundays of the year or refer with mild irritation to the “birth-and-resurrection club,” I am always heartened to see them.
I do worry, though, as I note people drifting from the family of the church. Faith is deeply personal, but it isn’t private. By its nature, faith is communal. A congregation is a spiritual family. Many use that word “family” loosely to mean any group of like-minded friends, from which any member can part ways for any reason. A biological family doesn’t work like that—it’s unchosen, it’s permanent, and loyalty to it doesn’t wane with preference or mood. Members of a spiritual family likewise bear an obligation to remain a part of it.
That isn’t my opinion alone. In the Scriptures it’s clear God prefers to form a people, a community, and not simply a collection of atomized individuals. Faith must always be internalized, but it is always expressed, strengthened and lived out with others. In the ancient Near East the Lord called “a people,” the descendants of Abraham. In the first century, Jesus—in Christian teaching, that same Lord—formed the church, a people, no longer bound by race but united by his blood.
So, in this age of cell phones, Zoom meetings, online classes, and other atomizers, there's something incredibly powerful about being a community gathering together. And like the good cardinal, I don't care if people have been away for a while, I'm glad they came too.
In the Catholic faith, there is nothing ... on Earth ... quite like the Easter Vigil, it resounds with you for hours after you have gone, it's the only thing still rolling through my mind.
A couple of things stand out that make it so powerful to me -- that the service begins in pitch darkness and then one procession candle is used to light up a thousand tiny candles held by parishioners throughout the church making the interior almost as bright as day. It's like 'the wave' at stadiums, but more intense since, well, actual fire is used, and the message is about the community united in light by the candle of the Resurrection.
Another is the Church's grasp of time as well as space. The Litany of Saints is read -- some 25 saint names, starting with the earliest and most important ones, like St. Michael and St. Joseph and St. Peter and St. Paul (which makes me snicker slightly since the pair of them didn't get along), but then goes into the martyrs of the Roman empire -- Agnes, Perpetua and Felicity, people of intense faith willing to die gruesome deaths because of it. Moving along, it brings up the great faith spreaders and reformers of the rack and ruin of the Church, like St. Francis and St. Dominic. They are relevant now because of the shambles we see at the top levels of the Church these days. It moves on to the great missionary, St. Francis Xavier, which is significant because a huge and dynamic part of our parish church is Vietnamese. People often mistakenly think that the Catholic community formed in Vietnam because of the French colonizers. But Vietnamese people I know say that's garbage, they were always Catholic, the French turned up later. They are St. Francis Xavier's people and chose their faith freely, not by some colonial boot, but because they embraced the message. The Litany also brings up the great educational and charity workers like St. John Vianney whom we see now. It ends with our most modern of saints, little St. Therese of Lisieux, whose memoirs were intended to provide us all with an elevator, not a long staircase, to heaven, just like we like it.
I love the Litany of Saints, and in its beauty, can feel the community of time as well as the span of space, just as Dolan explains.
The third beautiful thing is the baptism and confirmation of the catechumens, which is big and joyful as a ceremony with splashing water and always something comical as converts get water poured on their heads and flinch. We had a lot of young people getting baptized and confirmed. How beautiful it was that the Church is attracting the young, or their parents are moving back towards it. It seems so miraculous when it happens.
At my Beverly Hills church, there was one other thing that knocked us flat in recognizing the glory of community and God -- the singing of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus by professional singers who otherwise work in the film and recording industry. One almost faints at the beauty of such an expression.
Dolan doesn't offer a lot in the way of what it will take to bring people back to churches all the time, but he does recognize why they come. It's worth reading to consider why we do go to church all the time and have a relationship with God and how it is inseparable with our relationship with our community. It's well worth reading here.
Original Here
 |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐