Has the Church ever studied why so many people attend Mass on Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Easter morning and Christmas morning?

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Brendea said:
an hour away from the nearest catholic church) there are Sundays where it’s just not possible
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Haha I live fifteen minutes away from the nearest Catholic church… but I have to rely on public transportation, which is annoying, and I end up having to leave home at 7:45am and not come home till eleven because the bus times are so ridiculous 😅 And I spend two and a half hours out when I need to go to confession! Man I can’t wait till I can get a car!
(Not criticising you or anything just so you know)
 
Exactly. St. John Chyrsostom expressed it best in his paschal homily.

If any man be devout and loveth God,
Let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast!
If any man be a wise servant,
Let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord.

If any have laboured long in fasting,
Let him now receive his recompense.
If any have wrought from the first hour,
Let him today receive his just reward.
If any have come at the third hour,
Let him with thankfulness keep the feast.
If any have arrived at the sixth hour,
Let him have no misgivings;
Because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore.
If any have delayed until the ninth hour,
Let him draw near, fearing nothing.
And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour,
Let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness.

For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour,
Will accept the last even as the first.
He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour,
Even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour.
And He showeth mercy upon the last,
And careth for the first;
And to the one He giveth,
And upon the other He bestoweth gifts.
And He both accepteth the deeds,
And welcometh the intention,
And honoureth the acts and praises the offering.

Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord;
Receive your reward,
Both the first, and likewise the second.
You rich and poor together, hold high festival!
You sober and you heedless, honour the day!
Rejoice today, both you who have fasted
And you who have disregarded the fast.
The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously.
The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Enjoy ye all the feast of faith:
Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.

Let no one bewail his poverty,
For the universal Kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one weep for his iniquities,
For pardon has shown forth from the grave.
Let no one fear death,
For the Saviours death has set us free.
He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
Hell, said he, was embittered
When it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead,
Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion
Unto ages of ages.

Amen.
 
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PennyinCanada said:
I have met Catholics who go regularly and yet they have not been to confession for decades. Why is that? They came from a time when there was a priest hearing confessions every Saturday. I heard 1 lady say that ‘we don’t have to go to confession any more’.
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Speaking as someone who previously quit going to confession for about 18 years and since returning happened to discuss this with a busload of fellow parishioners, I think a lot of people find focusing on their sins to be pretty uncomfortable and the confessional experience makes them nervous. So they convince themselves that it’s okay if they just tell God directly they’re sorry and not have to go in and talk to some priest. Many of them also never got straight exactly what’s a grave sin and what’s not and what needs to be confessed, and in some cases they are in denial about the fact that they’re committing grave sins.

Many churches also don’t have confession at very convenient times; 8:30 am on Saturday, or in the middle of Saturday afternoon, which is when almost every church seems to have confessions, is not going to work for a lot of people who are focusing on Saturday as their day off/ errands day. You have to be a really committed Catholic to plan your day so you’re down at the church at 3:30 just to go to confession, and on top of that you might have to stand in line for a half hour with your bad nerves waiting to get in there. And at many churches, if there’s a Saturday wedding, confession is cancelled.

One thing I have noticed is when parishes stress the idea of going to confession and set up some special penance service, especially around holiday times, or offer confession at a retreat, suddenly everybody and his mother decides they need to go to confession. It seems almost monkey-see monkey do, “oh look there’s confessions happening, I guess I better get in the 50-person line”. People will come and beat down the doors and double-park the whole lot like it’s Ash Wednesday just so they can go to confession on the Easter Confession night, whereas if they’d come the Saturday before at the regular time like I did they could have stood in line with 5 people instead of 50 people. Last week I tried to go to Adoration on the same night that the church was having Confessions Night and I literally couldn’t find a parking space in the church lot and had to go to Adoration at a different church. I suspect these people don’t go to confession again until the following year; if they went every week, or even all went every month, the priests wouldn’t be able to handle the mob.

I too used to be a once- or twice-a-year on Confessions Night penitent. I think in my case since I was so nervous about confession in general, the presence of a huge crowd all doing the same thing was a bit comforting.
 
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When I’m at home I go most weeks ( I say most when I should say all beacuse kids get sick ) however if I’m visiting my family who I only visit 3-4 times a year it’s not feasible especially if I’m only there for 2 nights im not driving all the way there half way home all the way to there house again and back home again ( not only do I loose 6 -7 hours of family time I cannot afford it with petrol prices at $2.20-$2.40 per litre )
 
I get it 🙂 like I said I wasn’t criticizing you, stuff does get in the way. It just made me think of my own annoying schedule that’s all.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Many churches also don’t have confession at very convenient times; 8:30 am on Saturday, or in the middle of Saturday afternoon, which is when almost every church seems to have confessions
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Or worse when you work on a Saturday like I do, and there’s no chance of taking a day off to go to confession! I’ve luckily found a church an hour away that does have confession at a different time, but it does require me using most of my day off to go there.
 
Those who belong to the parish but go to Mass celebrated in another language than the vernacular show up on the late evening/night Masses mostly because their Masses are celebrated in a rented church building or will collide with the vernacular Mass timewise.

Most are also travelling by public transportation into the city and Easter is a great long weekend to cancel the traffic for repairs or upgrades. Trains and underground are replaced with bus services that tours the world before reaching final destination and I can fully understand why we see some of the people only on the major late night celebrations.

I don’t understand at all how we can have 50 people come to an evening weekday Mass in July and 30 during the school year as “everyone” is on Summer holiday and we are not in a typical holiday destination and to far out from the major city for most tourists.
 
Exegete said:
I’m curious, has the Catholic Church (or diocese or even a large parish) ever actually studied why so many Catholics attend Mass on these days and not others?
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To expand your question @Exegete .

I’m curious, has the Catholic Church (or diocese or even a large parish) ever actually studied why so many Catholics , myself included , attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days and are not “practising” Catholics for the remaining 167 hours in the week ?
 
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PennyinCanada said:
I could ask another question. I have met Catholics who go regularly and yet they have not been to confession for decades. Why is that? They came from a time when there was a priest hearing confessions every Saturday. I heard 1 lady say that ‘we don’t have to go to confession any more’.
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Likely, because they are splitting hairs about when you have to go to confession. They probably tell themselves they aren’t committing mortal sins and thus don’t “Need” to go to confession.
 
JanetF said:
They probably tell themselves they aren’t committing mortal sins and thus don’t “Need” to go to confession.
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Which may be true in some, or even many, cases.
It’s still a good idea to go and get the grace, but there are many people on earth who do not go around committing grave matter sins on a regular basis, especially after a certain age.
 
Miscellaneous thoughts:

I remember my grandfather back in the 60s saying something like I don’t know why the regulars go to Mass on Christmas and Easter. They should leave more room for those of us who only go those days. So this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.

I’m somewhat cheered but the fact that people want to go on major holidays. At least they still have some connection to the Church. That means there’s hope it could grow and things haven’t been cut off completely.

For the person who said the twice a year folks are committing a mortal sin every week, they’re probably not. You need knowledge that you’re doing something wrong and that is likely missing. And if the confession line is short it may well be that people consider something like murder to require confession. I haven’t committed murder so I’m basically a good person who doesn’t need to go to confession.

Why Psalm Sunday and Ash Wednesday? I guess the cynical view is they get goodies to take home. I think it’s an indication that we are incarnate people and need to appeal to all our senses . All of the sacraments do that, whether we are using bread, wine, oil, or whatever, but we have such a way of minimizing the signs. It’s very sad.
 
One part of it might be that your priest can be expected to mention when a holy day of obligation is coming up … but he’s probably not going to go out of his way to specify when something’s NOT a holy day of obligation.

On Sunday, the Monsignor encouraged us to attend Mass on Thursday, Good Friday, and the Saturday-night vigil. And it’s certainly good to attend those! However, I had the (possibly unworthy) impression that his calculation was: if we thought we had to, all the better.
 
joyfulandactive said:
People can be strange. My aunt and uncle always criticized my Catholic faith (my aunt is a non-practicing Catholic). Every time I saw them they were critical and I hardly ever responded because I just felt they were trolling me. Yet they were upset and even offended when I didn’t send them pictures of my daughter’s First Holy Communion! Which I thought was so bizarre as I would’ve assumed they would find it offensive! It’s hard to understand how people are putting together in their minds these different aspects of faith. I think my example illustrates that sometimes there seems to be aspects of tradition and family that people are divorcing or compartmentalizing from faith.
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It’s easy to understand why they were upset and offended. It’s has nothing to do about their feelings about the Catholic Church. It was all about you not sharing an important milestone of your daughter’s life with them. For them it was most likely about not receiving a beautiful photo of their niece all dressed up in a beautiful white dress. \
 
I believe that it is simply because those are the high holidays of Christianity. People that are only tangentially connected to the Church will only want to attend Mass on those days that have some sort of especial significance in the life of the Church - Christmas, Easter, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, etc. As another poster mentioned, there is a cultural significance attached to certain aspects of Catholicism or certain memories embedded in the minds of some people (like going to Mass on Christmas morning or going to get ashes) that are too enshrined within them to be totally cast off, even when they have cast off the rest of the Church.

It’s the same with cultural Jews - they might go to services on Passover, Hanukkah, Yom Kippur, or Rosh Hashanah, but never set foot in a synagogue on any other given Shabbat.

It’s is indeed an off phenomenon, since you would think that when you cast off the Church, you would cast it off completely. But, as I mentioned, many things are too deeply embedded in our minds/lifestyle to be removed.

May God bless you all as we enter into the Triduum! 🙂
 
Ever since Michael Corleone had the other bosses murdered while he was godfather at his nephew’s baptism, nothing surprises me anymore.
 
But we don’t generally share photos as we are not close, I also am a convert and not familiar with Catholic culture. It would not occur to send a photo of something to someone when they were adamantly ANTI it. I sincerely thought they would be offended. Every time I saw them it was an opportunity for them to rant about how awful and terrible the church was. How on earth am I expected to know that this is excluded? I literally had no idea that my aunt was a lapsed Catholic as growing up she never said a word about God or the church and had nothing Catholic in her home. Growing up I never saw photos EVER of children in their First Holy Communion outfits so it was sincerely something I never realised that she would ever want. She was very shocked I became Catholic and told me it was something she had rejected.

Of course I would happily share but how was I supposed to know she would want a photo when she would criticize my and my husband’s faith even when she was guest in our home?
 
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