Several hundred St. Mark parishioners, sleepy-eyed but spirit-filled, are expected to come through the doors of their Dorchester Avenue church late this Saturday night to celebrate the ongoing renewal of the parish’s Christmas Midnight Mass tradition.

While most Catholic parishes now opt for Christmas Eve services in the afternoon or early evening, the Midnight Mass has a passionate advocate in Father Marcos Enrique, who arrived at St. Mark’s four years ago. A year later, in 2019, the revival brought in a surprising number of worshipers– about 200.

“Maybe it’s my own experience, but when I became a priest and arrived here, there was no Midnight Mass,” said Fr. Marcos, a native of Spain. “I felt it was important and asked if we could do it again.”

In 2020, during the pandemic, the Mass drew even more people, and more volunteers. The same was true last year.

“We can understand Christmas intellectually but making that decision to venture into the night and enter a church that’s kind of dim – that has a power that you see and feel,” he said. “There’s a transition from dark to light. It’s especially interesting in Boston because it could be snowing outside. …As a person you are making a decision to do something out of the ordinary and have experiences you wouldn’t have if you went to a 4 p.m. or evening Mass.”

Judy Greeley, a life-long St. Mark Church parishioner and current parish office manager, said they still had Midnight Mass, a longtime happening in the 115-year-old parish, in the 1980s and 1990s, but then moved it back to the 10 p.m. hour.

“That’s when you used to get calls asking, ‘What time is your Midnight Mass?’” she said. “I think we stopped having them altogether in 2015…Slowly each church one by one would stop having them. Then there weren’t any.”

Greeley said she has enjoyed the revival of the Mass because it reminds her of when she was young and “it was such an intense feeling. Then you go home, and Christmas has begun.”

Shamus Hyland, who has been in the parish for nine years, said Father Marcos approached him in 2019 and asked if he would volunteer to play the organ at midnight on Christmas Eve. It was an odd request of an amateur organ player, but one he was excited to fulfill.

“I had never been to a Midnight Mass that was truly at midnight, so I was pretty excited,” he said. “It’s an ancient tradition. The first time I went I felt very connected to all my ancestors’ generation after generation who had attended Midnight Masses. It was kind of reviving a lost tradition for me in a small way.”

He also said he enjoyed the slowdown of the worship service after the hectic weeks before Christmas.

Fr. Marcos said he tries to encourage families to attend as a way to show children and teen-agers that church isn’t only about getting up on Sunday morning and coming to the building. The Midnight Mass offers a unique change of pace.

“We’re fighting against a culture where the focus is elsewhere,” he said. “If we don’t really focus on what the meaning of Christmas is about, then it turns into an excuse for getting up and taking pictures in our pajamas with family and posting them to social media…The Midnight Mass has to do with the image of the shepherds keeping watch over the night.”

Most families in Dorchester, however, have moved to celebrating not in the wee hours of morning, but in the early evening. Father Jack Ahern of St. Gregory’s parish in Lower Mills said Christmas Mass has become an early evening event for most Catholics in the neighborhood.

This year, Fr. Ahern said, the archdiocese is reverting to a pre-pandemic schedule with Christmas Eve Masses starting later in the day. Still, he expects the largest turnout to be at the 4 p.m. Mass on Saturday, though they offer a Mass at 6 p.m. as well, and at 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Christmas Day.

“More and more, Christmas has become an eve feast,” he said. “People like to celebrate Mass on Christmas Eve and then arrange their dinners afterwards.”

St. Gregory’s Dorchester Avenue church, which dates to 1863, will be adorned with wreaths, ribbons, Poinsettia plants, and trees arranged by husband-and-wife volunteers Mike and Bobbi Skillin, who each year spend their days leading up to Christmas outfitting the church with festive decorations. 

“It’s simple, but it’s elegant and beautiful. Bobbi and Mike make it happen, just the two of them,” said Ahern. “They know what they’re doing, and they do it with great love. People are thrilled.

“We buy everything local from Cedar Grove Gardens for the creche and the flowers. They always treat us great, too,” he said.

There will be an extra emphasis on music, too, at St. Gregory’s, under the direction of James Busby, who selects and arranges the songs for the feast day. Fr. Ahern, the pastor, gets a chance to review the program, of course, but he says Busby is the key to its success. “I only insist upon one thing,” he said: “I want ‘Silent Night’ at the end of Mass.”

Come midnight, when the parishioners from St. Gregory’s will probably be deep in slumber, up the avenue at St. Mark’s, they’ll be singing and celebrating well after 1 a.m.

“It’s not like after the Mass is over everyone just disappears,” said Fr. Marcos. “They’re excited and chit-chatting and I have to often make people leave the church because we have to prepare for the Mass in the morning.”

Reporter Executive Editor Bill Forry contributed to this report.