Why Do They Still Come?

Every year, the same thing happens. The pews fill. The parking lot overflows. People arrive early, dressed in pastel or formality or fatigue. Babies, toddlers, teenagers, grandparents. The whole generational chain shows up.

Easter Sunday.

They come.

And then, the next week, they don’t.

For liturgical musicians and clergy, the emotional whiplash of Easter is familiar: the thrill of a full church followed by the gutting emptiness of the Second Sunday of Easter. The octave concludes not with triumph but with absence.

So the question lingers, both practically and spiritually:
Why do they still come?
What draws people back, year after year, for one Sunday only?
Why does Easter retain a gravitational pull that ordinary Sundays have long since lost?

And perhaps more urgently:
What does their coming actually mean, and what should the Church do with it?

A Cultural Habit, a Lingering Echo

For many, Easter attendance is not a statement of faith but a gesture of custom. A muscle memory. A nostalgic return to a place once important, now remote. You put on decent clothes. You show up. You stand when others stand and nod at phrases you half-remember. And for one morning, you tell yourself: This still matters.

In countless families, Easter is the last surviving link to Catholic or Christian identity. Christmas may be celebrated at home. But Easter Mass, that’s where memory lives. It’s a reunion, a ritual, a shadow of something once sacred. Like visiting the grave of a relative you no longer grieve, you go not because you believe, but because you remember believing.

This is often dismissed as nominalism. But memory itself is powerful. Nostalgia is a kind of longing, and longing can be holy.

Emotional Pressure, Family Obligations, and Sentimental Pull

Others attend out of a sense of duty. Grandma wants them there. Their spouse asks. Their children were baptized here. Church becomes a way of showing up for others, not God.

And yet, for many, something stirs.
The music swells. The lilies bloom. The priest declares resurrection, and though the words are half-understood, they carry a kind of emotional gravity. Easter feels meaningful, not because of clear theology or deep conviction, but because it feels like the right thing to do.

It’s not doctrine that moves them. It’s sentiment. A vague, fragile feeling that life is bigger than death. That light might still win. That hope is not fully dead.

And even this, this blurry ache, is not to be dismissed.

Fear, Insurance, and the Desire to Be Counted

Some come once a year out of fear.
Not terror, not fire-and-brimstone dread, but a quiet, practical hedge.

A once-a-year Mass is a kind of spiritual insurance policy. A way of checking in with the Divine. Of signaling, I’m still here.
It’s not belief in full. But it is proximity to belief, an act that says, I want to be counted among the saved, just in case.

Even this faint echo of eschatological concern is better than nothing.
It’s a start.
It’s a flicker.

What If They Still Believe, A Little?

Here is the question that lingers beneath all others:

What if they come because something in them still believes?

Even if they can’t say it.
Even if they don’t live it.
Even if they’ve rejected the institution and forgotten the creed.

They still show up.

That matters.

There is, in that small act of presence, a confession. A whisper of faith.
A buried certainty, long ignored, still pulsing with life.

It is not theology. It is not liturgical literacy.
But it is something.
It is hunger. A hunger for meaning. For beauty. For truth.

And that hunger is not hypocrisy.
It’s holiness in disguise.

When They Come, What Do They Find?

If the Church were what it is meant to be, radiant, breathtaking, alive, perhaps more would return the week after.

Imagine if Easter Mass were truly what we claim:

But in many parishes, what visitors find is this:

The result is not outrage. It’s disappointment.
Not scandal. Just a shrug.

They expected glory.
They got a community bulletin.

The danger isn’t that they leave in anger.
It’s that they leave unmoved.

It’s Not About Marketing, It’s About Glory

Here is the hard truth: the Church has forgotten how to keep people because it has forgotten how to keep glory.

This is not a marketing failure.
It’s a metaphysical one.

We blame secularism, distraction, moral decline.
But rarely do we ask:
What are we actually offering?
Is the encounter with the Risen Christ visible, tangible, undeniable?

If it’s not, no wonder they don’t return.

The question is not: Why do they come only once?
The question is: What reason have we given them to come again?

They Come Anyway, And That’s the Miracle

Still, somehow, they come.

They come despite mediocrity.
They come despite confusion.
They come carrying unspoken grief, unnamed hope, unresolved questions.

They do not always stay.
But they show up.
And in that moment, the Church must be ready.

Not ready with gimmicks or programs or passive hospitality.
But ready with holiness.

The music must bear weight.
The homily must carry truth.
The liturgy must feel like a portal, not a performance.

Because this may be their one hour of openness.
Their one brush with transcendence all year.

Give Them Heaven, Even If They Never Return

It is not enough to wish they’d return.
It is not enough to resent that they don’t.

If even one soul comes, nostalgic, fearful, obligated, unsure, the Church has one job:

To make Christ visible.

That means no liturgical shortcuts.
No patronizing sermons.
No flat hymns or flippant greetings.

Because if they never come back, we must still be able to say:

At least, for a moment, we gave them heaven.

And maybe, just maybe, they will remember.
Not the announcements, not the length, not the awkward crowd.
But the glimpse.

The silence.
The beauty.
The ache.

And next year, they might come again.

Keywords: Easter Mass attendance, Catholic Church, why people attend Easter, lapsed Catholics, once-a-year Mass, church attendance trends, spiritual nostalgia, liturgical renewal, Easter Sunday Church

This post is part of Sacred Withdrawal: reflections on Catholic liturgy, sacred music, and the cost of fidelity in an age of forgetting.
Email: sacredwithdrawal@gmail.com