I have a young character in a story I’m finishing up (so, need answers fast-ish) that has just lost both of his parents the week before Christmas. His new guardian, who is Catholic, thinks he might feel a little better if he’s able to light a candle for them while they’re in church on Christmas Eve.
Would the characters need to go to a special mass that night (I’ve read something vague about a “Christmas Vigil”?) or could they expect to walk into a church any mass that night and be able to do that? I’d like for them to be able to go to a midnight mass, but I’m not Catholic and haven’t been to a Catholic Christmas Eve mass since my grandmother died when I was little, so I’m not sure that is a mass one can expect to light a candle before/after the mass and don’t want readers to think I’m dumb for making the assumption.
It doesn’t matter which Mass you go to. The vigil lights can be lit at any time. I am no longer a Catholic, but my Mom was very devout. I often stop in at her Church and light a candle in her memory.
I’m not catholic, but as far as I know anyone can go in, find the rack, and light a candle for any purpose any day of the year. A while ago a prot had to do this in an RC church, but now Anglican churches — and not just High Church ones — have candle spaces.
Sometimes like little tea-candles; sometimes little pencil candles.
As has been said, the votive candles have nothing to do with Mass. You can go into a Catholic Church any time it’s open and light one.
If you went to Midnight Mass for Christmas you could light a candle either before or after the Mass. You probably wouldn’t do it while the Mass was in progress.
And you’re expected to give a donation (I think $5 is usually recommended), but there’s no enforcement of that. There’s just a little lockbox with a slot in the top you can put money in.
Pretty much any mass on Christmas or Christmas Eve is going to be a “special mass”. The vigil mass is the one on the evening of Christmas Eve, usually starting a bit after sundown. There’s also often a mass at midnight, a mass at dawn, and one or more masses a bit later on Christmas Morning. At any time on those days (even between the masses), there are likely to be a decent number of people in church, and possibly the choir singing.
Exactly so, in most typical neighborhood churches, people would tend NOT to do this when Mass is going on. Even though the candles tend to be in side chapels, for the most part they are pretty visible and while it wouldn’t be disruptive to the service, exactly, it’s just not something people do. The general assumption is that you’re in your seat, paying attention. Or feigning paying attention. Not my church, but the church in my adjacent neighborhood, has another rack in the narthex – the entry part that is like the lobby. So that would be easy to light a candle there while Mass was going on … although it feels like you are standing in a lobby (because you are), it’s not quite as contemplative as how people light candles in the movies. At this church, you’d be lighting your candle in the middle of ladies setting up for the bake sale after Mass.
The kind of side chapels with candles that are really distinct enough from the main church would likely be found in extremely large (even by church standards) churches, or cathedrals, or basilicas. Like at St. Patrick’s in NYC, you can be at Mass and there are still parts that tourists are walking around in.
I don’t know if you care for the purposes of your story, but my guess is that at least half of neighborhood churches these days don’t use actual candles that are on fire, but the electric kind where you click the button to turn on a flickering light bulb. Are there stats on this? I feel like I’m more surprised these days when I see a church with actual candles (that is not historic or a landmark church in some way).
Another thing – I don’t know of many churches around here that hold midnight mass anymore. It’s usually 11 pm. The one two blocks over did, but even they stopped a couple of years ago.
And this is why the seemingly silly question “What time is Midnight Mass?” is not so silly. Vigil Mass, Midnight Mass, Mass at Dawn and Mass During the Day are all specific Masses with their own sets of readings and prayers. So Midnight Mass refers to that particular formula and no longer to the exact time, which as Guin says can be much earlier. Our church still does it at Midnight.
On the other hand, we don’t have a candle rack at all. Our pastor is soliciting opinions on whether to get one, and he is concerned about clean-up. To me that can only mean one thing: the dreaded electric candles. OP be warned, there’s a good chance your typical church has switched (heh) to electric.
Are most Catholic churches always open, or open during reasonable hours, for people to light candles?
Is this something that you have to “legally” be a Catholic to do, like confession or communion?
I think most are still open during reasonable hours. In the past some would be open all hours, but I don’t know if this is still the practice.
No more so than praying. Basically votive candles are just symbolic prayer. But there would be little point in lighting one unless you believed in the efficacy of prayer.
I would disagree, at least in the US. It was certainly traditional for churches to stay open all day so you could wander in and pray whenever you needed to, but in recent years the trend has been to lock up the churches when there is no activity scheduled. The big downtown church where the bishop says mass may be open all the time, but the neighborhood churches are moving away from that.
Usually there is some incident (theft, vandalism, arson) in either the church or a neighboring church that causes them to lock up. Our neighborhood church used to be open all day, but now they are locked except when something is going on. When they have all-day prayer vigils, they leave open only one rear door that can be observed from the rectory.
As far as I know, half-baked Catholic that I was, there’s no Christmas Vigil on Christmas Eve. You may be thinking of the Easter Vigil, which is the first of the Easter masses and held on Saturday evening.
If you want your character to actually go to Mass in addition to lighting the candle, he could attend any of the three Christmas masses. If memory serves, Midnight Mass can be held well before midnight, but not before dusk.
Whether or not churches are open when mass isn’t being said (or the church used for other activities) varies a lot. The Catholic Church in my little New England town is never locked. When I lived in Boston, it was unusual to find an unlocked church without something going on.
Nope, there’s a Christmas Vigil mass, a Mass at Midnight, a Mass at Dawn, and a Mass During the Day.
To put this into context, the “mass”, strictly speaking, is not an entire Catholic church service (though the word is often used that way in practice). A typical Catholic service is about an hour long in total (longer on special occasions), and consists of two main parts: The Liturgy of the Word, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The Liturgy of the Word contains Bible readings, songs, and certain prayers, and takes up most of the time. The Liturgy of the Eucharist, meanwhile, consists only of the priest consecrating the bread and wine, and the distribution of it to the congregation. The Mass is this latter part, and so you could start the readings etc. at 11:00 or even 10:30 or 10:00, and still not have the Mass proper until midnight.
The Mass begins at the entrance antiphon and ends with “The Mass is ended”.
"For the start:
GIRM 25. After the people have assembled, the entrance song begins as the priest and the ministers come in. The purpose of this song is to open the celebration, intensify the unity of the gathered people, lead their thoughts to the mystery of the season or feast, and accompany the procession of priest and ministers.
If there is no singing for the entrance, the antiphon in the Missal is recited either by the faithful, by some of them, or by a reader; otherwise it is recited by the priest after the greeting.
For the end:
GIRM 57. The concluding rite consists of:
a. the priest’s greeting and blessing, which on certain days and occasions is expanded and expressed in the prayer over the people or another more solemn formulary;
b. the dismissal of the assembly, which sends each member back to doing good works, while praising and blessing the Lord. "
Often Catholic churches have special music programs preceding midnight mass. (When you’ve assembled your best voices and musicians on a feast particularly known for good music, you might as well exploit it.)
And lo, glorious music plays, and all the people who only come to Mass once a year thunk themselves into the pews and converse loudly, because it’s not Mass yet. :mad:
That would be the cathedral (which officially need be neither big nor downtown).
Often a church will be open but not have its gates thrown open, just the smaller door or a side door. I’ve rarely found myself in the situation of trying the door and finding it locked, at least for a church that was normally active (such as a parish church or school chapel). My own experience visiting churches in the US is off, but by only 10 years (40 less than Colibri).
