Father Walter was making his rounds in the semidarkness of the large stone church after Midnight Mass with his chocolate colored dog. He smiled as he recalled so many familiar faces. He likes a full church. The dog followed him down the center aisle toward the massive wooden doors and the outdoor crèche full of sheep, goats and a donkey. Father Walter had just one last bank of lights to turn off, when his yelping dog skittered past him on the slippery tile floor.
Where was that silly dog headed in such a hurry? After just a few steps out the wooden door, the mystified priest found out. Right in the middle of the live manger scene was a panting mother goat delivering a little kid by moonlight. Unbelievable! Father Walter felt like he had just stepped right into the manger in Bethlehem. “What a holy night,” he thought to himself.
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from the Preface
Christmas Masses bring large numbers of visitors to church. Perhaps they come to see the manger or to sing Christmas carols, to please a grandmother, or just to mark the passing of another year. But beyond all of these reasons, God is gently pursuing each one, beckoning each one to come home for Christmas, inviting each one to experience new birth in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Christmas Carol Festival project is designed to search out these visitors and invite them to a sneak preview of Bethlehem during December. This project highlights the Christmas story as it is told through carols. It is designed for use outside of normal church settings in order to help unchurched, inactive or marginal Catholics connect with our Christian heritage, with the Church, and with God during the weeks before Christmas. Preparation involves three stages that begin in the summer and end in January.
The centerpiece of the project, the Christmas Carol Festival event, invites new levels of faith through Christmas carols, witnesses, prayer, Gospel readings and the simplicity of the empty manger. For most, this evangelistic project will not mean adding lots of commitments to organizational or parish calendars. It will mean reconsidering the time before Christmas through the lenses of evangelization and compassion for disconnected Catholics.
One pastor remarked, “Before this training, I thought that everybody was out of synch when they sang carols before Christmas. Now I realize that I am out of synch with thousands of people that God might want to touch.”