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The Nativity story made for a creative catechesis and evangelization effort at the crèche at St. Patrick’s Cathedral at Christmastime.
For that reason, a contingent of Franciscans Friars and Sisters of the Renewal, as well as representatives of the New York chapter of the Catholic Evidence Guild, positioned themselves at the cathedral crèche Dec. 26 to 31, the eve of the octave day of the Nativity of the Lord, the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God.
“What we’re trying to do is primary evangelization—reaching people who are not being reached because they’re not going to church,” said Patrick Sweeney, president of the Catholic Evidence Guild of New York. The guild’s mission is to proclaim the Gospel and the Church’s teachings to the public and to guide Catholics in evangelizing their families, neighborhoods and places of work.
Meeting people where they are—in this case, on a Christmastime tour of the cathedral—is opportune, Sweeney said. “A Nativity scene makes real what can be over-thought or over-abstracted about the mystery of the Incarnation.”
He cited the crèche and the crucifix as helpful visual symbols for those who have difficulty comprehending the mystery of the Incarnation and the Paschal mystery, the mystery of salvation. “Jesus being born, and Jesus dying on the cross, are complete pictures,” he said.
Coordinating the endeavor was Father Richard Roemer, C.F.R., community vicar for the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal and local servant of St. Felix Friary in Yonkers.
A delight of Nativity duty, Father Roemer said, is the opportunity “to share the joy of our Savior’s birth” and the fact that he became flesh.
Father Roemer witnessed a betrothal at his crèche visit the year before last. “One young man asked for a blessing for him and his girlfriend.” When Father Roemer asked if there was anything in particular for which he should pray on the couple’s behalf, “He said, ‘Well, yeah, this,’ and he pulled out a ring and proposed to her right there,” Father Roemer recalled. “She gave a very quick, tearful, joyful, ‘yes.’ It was beautiful.”
The Nativity evangelizers also bring a statue of the Baby Jesus so the cathedral visitors can connect with him up close and in a tactile way, reverently in veneration, without disturbing the actual figurine in the crèche.
“Another interesting experience is bringing the Baby Jesus down on the subway” to the cathedral, Father Roemer said. One of his fellow friars told him that “people on the train were asking him a lot of questions, why he was carrying the Baby Jesus around.”
People of all ages want to touch the likeness of the babe in swaddling clothes. “It brings that sense of Christ being very near,” he said.
The Nativity evangelizers also encourage children to say “Happy Birthday” to Jesus.
Among the more amusing questions, according to Father Roemer, come from the very young children who innocently ask if the friars themselves are God or Jesus. “We tell them we work for God and we follow Jesus,” he said.
But even that charming exchange presents an opportunity to explain vocations to the priesthood and religious life, he added.
Among the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal stationed at the crèche was Sister Maria Teresa, C.F.R., of the Convent of San Damiano in the Bronx.
“All these people who are passing by” the crèche, she said, “are thirsting for God.”
Their curiosity is countercultural to secular society, which often claims God is not needed, she added. “Our experience in St. Patrick’s is so different from that,” Sister Maria Teresa said. “These people, they’re searching, they’re saying, with their whole being, ‘I’m looking for God in this beautiful place.’”
The crèche’s true reveal is the gift of a relationship with Jesus. “That’s what we’re being invited to and reminded of in Christmas, that Jesus has come in search for us, that God is not distant from us,” she said. “He’s with us, and He’s still present with us, in the Holy Eucharist.”
