On Monday, someone remarked to me that at least next Sunday we would not have to deal with the Chreasterians, by which, of course, he meant the people who visit us only at Christmas and at Easter and not on the other holy days and the Sundays of the year. It is true that the swelling crowds on Easter and at Christmas and the accompanying modest increase in collections have some significance. But the fact that so many connect themselves to Christ only in the cultivation of those two mysteries, the Incarnation and the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus makes me wonder.

There are, I suppose, at least statistically, a number of baptized Catholics who are afflicted with agoraphobia — a fear of large places and of crowds. These people, of course, must have to steel themselves for weeks before venturing to Midnight Mass at Christmas or the Solemn Mass at Easter. But then there are the rest of the Christmas and Easter-only crowd. It is easy, of course, to criticize them and make jokes at their expense.

But one should reflect a little on the fact that although they seem to have given up any thought of a regular relationship with Christ, something draws them to church twice each year. It is not, I think, our cleverly contrived and exquisitely prepared homilies. The general run of the United States’ Catholics, when surveyed, tell us that this is a weak point in our weekly liturgies. Nor can it be the well choreographed (in the best sense) of our performance of the liturgy. We have gone through so many revisions, alterations and tweakings of the Mass that few have the memory left to be certain of what is right and what is not.

Nor would it be the friendliness of our parish communities, many of which are as cold and bland as an IRS office or a bus stop. What then prompts this twice yearly urge of these people to “go against the grain” of their lives and to go to church even if they come late and leave early? Perhaps it is the childhood memory of beloved parents long dead who practiced the faith with devotion and tried, with obvious lack of success, to impart that to their children.

Then there are some people who want to be able to say that they went to church on Christmas and Easter if anyone asks. They are prompted by mere human respect and nothing deeper or more significant. It does not seem to be the content of those mysteries, because while everyone loves the Christmas story, faith in the resurrection of Christ involves our having to embrace the disgusting account of his being abandoned by his friends, led to death by his enemies and strung up like a common highway thief and left for dead by all except the women who saw him buried in an unmarked grave.

My own conclusion is that what brings people twice annually to church, almost in spite of themselves, is what we call an actual grace from God. These people would have forgotten God except that God does not let them.  History is replete with the multitudes who have abandoned God, His love, His grace and His goodness. But history has never recorded the name of anyone of whom God said “That is enough, I won’t call him again.”

So perhaps it is time that we should not chuckle about these people and say that now that Easter is over, we will see them at Christmas time. Is there something, anything that you or I could do to make it easier for them to come back more often? Could we give to our parish an hour each week of real time to help make our liturgies more beautiful, musically and in other ways more appealing, more inviting? When our priests preach well, do we encourage them? When they preach badly, do we admonish them, however kindly? Could we make our churches more inviting houses of prayer by changing the light bulbs, dusting in the corners and cleaning up the junk so that the sanctuary lamp becomes an invitation rather than a warning?

Is there more we can do? Surely we can with tact and general kindness invite them back. Who knows what would happen.