In the last installment, we considered the evangelistic power of the liturgy and its importance to our sanctification. We also highlighted the current crisis of liturgical boredom experienced by many Catholics today, in particular the young. While many faithful from past generations may also have been uninterested in the Mass at times, by and large Catholics before 1960 remained practicing Catholics, so strong were the cultural supports in those years. Today, of course, those supports are significantly diminished.

So, what can we do about this important issue in our parishes today?

There is a certain line of thinking in some contemporary proposals for parish renewal that I wish to constructively engage. It goes like this: if our parishes are to become mission-oriented, then the Mass, which is central to parish life, must be celebrated in an evangelizing way. What is commonly meant here is that the Mass ought to be directed primarily to the unevangelized person, the “seeker.” Usually, this approach suggests focusing the homily, music, and hospitality towards the seeker, but also can extend beyond these to other ritual elements.

Some of the assumptions typically made here regarding evangelization and the liturgy are correct, beginning with the fact that evangelization is the Church’s first priority. It’s also a given for us that the liturgy is fundamental to parish life and, if the parish is to be a center for evangelization, then the liturgy should play a principal role in parish life. But then, another claim is sometimes made: that the liturgy ought to be celebrated in such a way that it reaches those who are “lost,” “de-churched,” or “unchurched” and not primarily those who have already been catechized and sacramentally initiated.

Unfortunately, many parishes have no regular events or encounters outside of the liturgy to which a person might be invited who is showing interest in Catholicism, but not yet ready for the catechumenal process. Therefore, the proposal sometimes made today is that the Mass should be such a place of first encounter, a first point of contact with Catholicism for the unevangelized.

The “Sunday Experience”

This idea to use the Mass as a tool for the unevangelized is featured prominently in the book Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, Making Church Matter, by Father Michael White and Tom Corcoran. In this book, the authors suggest that the Sunday Mass or, as they call it, “the Sunday experience,” ought to be oriented in its celebration to the average unchurched person who lives within one’s parish boundaries, who may or may not be Catholic or Christian. In White and Corcoran’s case, they’ve given this person a name, “Timonium Tim,” since he lives within the boundaries of their community, the Parish of the Nativity in Timonium, MD.¹

It is important to first acknowledge the evangelistic zeal of the authors. They have inspired many parish leaders to prioritize evangelizing the unchurched within their parish boundaries. Our Catholic parishes in the future must become skilled in the evangelization ad gentes, and many of their ideas are helpful to this end. I do have some serious concerns about their approaches to the liturgy and specifically how they describe the liturgy’s relation to parish evangelization.

Their parish mission statement is inspiring: “The purpose of Nativity is to reach lost people to help them become disciples, and then to help disciples become growing disciples.”² When it comes to the celebration of the liturgy itself, they then make strategic decisions to specifically target the unevangelized and uncatechized person, with the hopes that “Tim” would feel at home, would receive the Gospel, and might be interested in coming back for a deeper experience. The authors explain: “We actually refer to Tim in our planning meetings and prepare homilies with him in mind. We make programming decisions and even select music based on what he likes, what he’ll understand, what works for him. To make Tim a disciple we not only have to know him, we have to speak to him, engage him, and then get him involved.”³ There seems to be a presumption here, however, that what is good for Tim (again, the unchurched, unevangelized, uncatechized person who, in many cases, has not been sacramentally initiated) is also good for the rest of the liturgical assembly. I believe we have to be very careful here, because the spiritual needs of these two groups are actually quite distinct.

Are liturgies focused towards “Tim” and other unevangelized a tenable way forward? It’s a critically important question, especially as we move increasingly into a missionary orientation to a broader society that is more and more rejecting a Christian view of reality.

Steps to the Liturgy

I would offer two responses to this question. First, after the General Directory for Catechesis describes the sacraments as “means” of evangelization (explained in the previous article), the Directory describes the process of evangelization.⁴ The fifth (and final) part of this process is titled “the ongoing formation of the Christian communities through and by means of the sacraments and their ministers.”⁵ Note that this ongoing, lifelong formation through sacramental living takes place after a person has received a substantive catechetical preparation through the catechumenal process and been sacramentally initiated, which is also after the reception of the kerygma and call to conversion, which is again after that important experience of being in dialog and presence in charity with a Christian witness. Liturgical evangelization is specifically identified as the final and lifelong movement in evangelization, prepared for in significant ways through these earlier experiences of evangelization. Yes, this is an idealized process which most parishes are not effectively carrying out for either cradle Catholic children or adult converts, but the logic of what ought to precede an evangelistic living of the sacramental life is important to notice. It’s also important to see that living a liturgical life is meant to continue to evangelize the sacramentally initiated for a lifetime.

By placing sacramental evangelization in this final position, it’s clear that the liturgy, in its complex structure and in its way of dispensing grace, is specifically intended for those who have already been catechetically prepared and sacramentally initiated. It seems to me there is immense pastoral wisdom underpinning this principle. Ordinarily, we need grace and we need catechesis in order to understand the meaning of the sacramental language of the Eucharistic liturgy so that we can join ourselves through the richness of this language to Christ as he lifts his Paschal Sacrifice to the Father in the Holy Spirit. The sacramental life, then, as lifelong evangelization, does not come first but rather brings us as Christians deeper into the mysteries over the course of life.⁶ The sacramental signs, beautiful and full of mystery, flood the senses with a language that cannot be easily defined and explained. And the better our liturgical catechesis, the more this world of transformative encounter with God opens up to us. This is perhaps why the Second Vatican Council tells us that “before men can come to the liturgy, they must be called to faith and conversion” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 9).

Evangelization: Missionary or Perfective?

As a second response to turning the liturgy into first evangelization, let’s consider the insights of Benedictine Father Cyprian Vagaggini, author of Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy ⁷ and peritus to the Second Vatican Council on liturgical matters. Vagaggini made a distinction five decades ago when writing about pastoral-liturgical matters that is helpful to our considerations of how the liturgy evangelizes.⁸ He writes: “Pastoral [activity] necessarily has at one and the same time two different aspects, one…which is its missionary aspect, and one of preservation or of perfecting.”⁹ He then goes on to explain how (to use our term) evangelization is accomplished in the liturgy in a perfective rather than missionary sense.¹⁰

When it comes to the liturgy’s place in evangelization, Vagaggini means here that the liturgy is primarily directed to those already initiated into the Catholic faith, those who are meant to be growing in perfection and holiness, and not those outside of the Church in need of hearing and responding to the Gospel for the first time. He explains: “It cannot be denied that the liturgy…is concerned directly and in the first place with its initiates, those Catholics who are already participating in the life of the Church.”¹¹

These are compelling words. For those already living the sacramental life, evangelization is meant to take place primarily (though not exclusively) through their regular immersion into the Mystery of Christ, sacramentally made present.

Vagaggini goes on to explain: “The liturgy cannot be regarded essentially and directly as [a missionary instrument]; rather, it is the end and the gate of arrival toward which the [evangelized] individuals are to be directed.”¹² Following the trajectory of his thought, the Mass shouldn’t be strategically planned as a first point of contact with those who might be curious about Catholicism, since the liturgy itself is intended for those who have been well prepared through liturgical catechesis and sacramental initiation.

Of course, God can bring people to himself any way he likes—and perhaps many of us who have walked at some point into a Sunday Mass with very little (or low quality) liturgical formation may have become faithful, believing Catholics. Unquestionably, a beautiful Mass can stir up curiosity and desire in the seeker. Some years ago, I had the privilege of teaching a gentleman who had been a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before converting to Catholicism. In his younger years before his conversion, serving as a missionary, he found himself sitting one day at an outdoor café across the street from a cathedral. He noticed people streaming through the cathedral doors to go to noon Mass. Since he had never seen a Catholic Mass before, he left his table, entered the cathedral, and sat in the very back row, full of curiosity. By the time the Mass had ended, he had concluded he must become Catholic. The catalyst for such a conviction was the beauty and power of God, experienced deeply through what unfolded inside the cathedral doors.

So, God can do anything at anytime to bring people to faith. And a beautifully celebrated liturgy has an attractive power. Nevertheless, as a parish strategy, envisioning the Mass as initial evangelization is theologically and pastorally problematic. Vagaggini explains why this is so: “[A] misunderstanding in this area might easily lead to a perversion of the liturgy itself, leading to its being made a direct and necessarily very changeable instrument of propagandizing…. But all this is contrary to the genuine nature of the liturgy, which is primarily prayer and sacred actuation, by the community of the initiates, of the mystery of Christ under the veil of sensible and efficacious signs.”¹³ In other words, if we approach the celebration of the Mass as a planned means of initial evangelization, then the lavish ambiguity of its sacramental language becomes something that, for pastoral reasons, might be simplified or manipulated. Liturgists might then see justification in changing or directing various aspects of the liturgy itself to the seeker so that it better speaks to those who come in off the street without much liturgical understanding.

Many liturgical abuses over the past five decades have sought justification in admirable pastoral motivations. I believe this distinction from Vagaggini between missionary evangelization and perfective evangelization is critically important if we are to correctly understand the Church’s vision of the sacraments as a means of evangelization.

Liturgy at Full Charge

This question of who the liturgy is intended to evangelize is important because it impacts how we envision the purpose of the homily, the music, the use of signs, symbols, and gestures, and what our churches ought to look like. There is much that liturgists and presiders might like to do to make the Mass more immediately accessible to the uncatechized seeker, if this is our parish strategy. The question, though, is this: do such strategic choices alter the liturgy in its original and perennial objective, which is the lifelong evangelization of the Catholic faithful who need deep lifelong immersion in the Sacred Mysteries, so that they might live in a missionary way? The liturgy is meant to accompany us throughout adulthood, not only converting us but also divinizing us, so that by the grace of Christ we might become, little by little, partakers in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Without a liturgy that is capable in its sacramental language of progressively opening the divine mysteries to our own people, a superficial encounter becomes the norm, short-circuiting the lifelong movement of grace.

So, what is the answer to Catholics today being bored at Mass? I believe the solutions are to be primarily found in beautiful, awe-inspiring liturgies with Catholics participating in the mysteries who are being perfectively evangelized. And, approaches to liturgical catechesis must be developed that not only form but also stir up a desire for God in the Eucharistic liturgy. In the coming years, it is going to become more and more important that we Catholics become committed to engaging non-Christians with the Gospel outside of the liturgy. Many creative initiatives for such forms of evangelization are thankfully gaining traction today. Yet, it is from the liturgy itself, celebrated in its beauty and transcendent power, that members of Christ’s Mystical Body will be converted and transformed, so that they might become the light and leaven that our world so desperately needs.

1. Michael White and Tom Corcoran, Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, Making Church Matter (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2013), see especially 72-74.
2. White and Corcoran, Rebuilt, 47.
3. White and Corcoran, Rebuilt, 73-74.
4. The directory relies here upon Ad Gentes, no. 15-18 for this description.
5. Congregation for the Clergy, General Directory for Catechesis (1997), no. 47.
6. Of course, for many Catholics, we are baptized as infants and so, in this instance, Baptism comes first. But the directory is indicating here the sacraments that come after sacramental initiation, to include our regular, lifelong participation in the Eucharistic liturgy.
7. Cyprian Vagaggini, OSB, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1976).
8. It’s important to note here that while Paul VI broadened the magisterial understanding of evangelization in 1975 to be the Church’s primary mission (as explained in my previous article), Vagaggini hadn’t employed Paul VI’s understanding of evangelization into his own writing. I take the step here of substituting Vagaggini’s generalized concept of pastoral activity for the more contemporary way of understanding evangelization first unfolded by Paul VI.
9. Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, 824. The primary terms Vagaggini uses for these categories – “conquest” and “preservation”—are not as useful in our contemporary environs. The first, with its militaristic undertones, could be easily misunderstood as being offensive to human dignity and religious freedom (“conquest”) whereas the second (“preservation”) implies too static and undynamic a view of the Christian life. For these reasons, I prefer Vagaggini’s secondary terms “missionary” and “perfective” as more clearly descriptive of the realities to which he refers in our contemporary context.
10. Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, 825.
11. Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, 825.
12. Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, 825.
13. Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, 825-826.