Welcome to a new feature in the bulletin—a “sometimes” weekly insert on the Liturgy.  Its purpose is to help us “get more out of” the Mass.  But before we move to the heart of the matter with some suggestions, we need to revisit an important question, “Why gather every Sunday for Mass?” This same question lies behind others that we hear, maybe even from some family members: 

• “Why waste an hour every week when you could use that time to catch up…on necessary chores, on sleep, etc.?”
•  “I can pray to God anywhere, why do I need to go to church to do it?”

     How do you answer the question?   One person I know, and I’m sure you know others like her, told me that until the lockdown imposed by the pandemic, she had never missed Sunday Mass since the time of her First Communion!  It wasn’t a boast; Mass every Sunday was a value for her.  As a child the value was not for the noblest of reasons--she feared that in disobeying the commandment, she would go to hell.   As she matured, so did her reasons.  She began to understand that the commandments were not obligations imposed on us so much as road maps that would foster the best in us as individual persons and as communities. 

     She recalled that when she really listened to the words of the song on this link, she had an epiphany. As Catholics we are member of a community of faith and as a community we are saved.  We gather every week to support each other, to worship God and be fed in the word and sacrament.  As her understanding of the Mass deepened, my friend realized that she was too focused on what we do in the Mass and not paying enough attention to what God is doing.

Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?.......The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats…to 
church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life 
preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.  For the
sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may 
draw us out to where we can never return.