Top Ten Reasons Not to Come to Mass Only at Easter

At Christmas and Easter we’re very happy to welcome many visitors to the parish—both family members from out of town and others who live in the area but don’t come regularly to church.

Some years we even have a visitor or two who’s never been to Mass before. The other day I heard about someone like that: at Easter she went to church for the first time, encouraged by her Catholic boyfriend.

Everything seemed a bit strange, but the friend was very helpful and explained whatever he could. When the priest came up and kissed the altar, the visitor asked “what’s that mean?” and her friend explained that the altar was a symbol of Christ and of his sacrifice.

When the priest made the sign of the cross, she asked again “what’s that mean?” The boyfriend said that the priest was blessing himself in the names of the persons of the Holy Trinity.

Everything went smoothly until the homily, when the priest took off his watch and put it on the pulpit.

“What’s that mean?” the newcomer asked.

“Nothing whatsoever,” came the reply.

Well, now that you know how things work, I thought it might be useful this Easter to say a few words to those who aren’t usually with us on Sundays—not so much to those visiting us from other parishes or churches, but to the Catholics who come to Mass only occasionally, particularly Christmas and Easter.

Thinking about those folks, I came up with a Top Ten list—not a funny one, like David Letterman does on TV, but one I hope will give us all some food for thought.

So here we go: Top Ten Reasons to Come to Mass Every Sunday

Number Ten: Joining us each week helps you follow the story. Catholics who come at Christmas and don’t return until Easter go from Jesus in the manger to Jesus risen from the dead, with nothing in between. It’s like joining a book club and missing three-quarters of the meetings. In our first reading this morning, St. Peter gives a very short version of the Gospel, but even his condensed story covers more ground than the birth and Resurrection. Over the course of the year, our Sunday liturgies present the whole plan of salvation in an organized way.

Number Nine: It’s easier to come to Mass all of the time than some of the time. That may sound surprising, but it’s true. I’m speaking to those Catholics who really do want to come to Mass, but who find all kinds of things interfere. If you have to make a fresh decision to come to Mass each week, it’s a weekly conflict; but if you decide once for all to come every Sunday, you’ve avoided a lot of angst.

Number Eight: Only by attending regularly do you connect with the community. We’re not, to be sure, the only community in town, but we’re serious about it, we support those who need help, we pray for those who need prayer, and if you give us a chance we’re pretty good at welcoming people and making them feel included.

Community matters more than you might think. A recent book called “Being Mortal” says something very important about community. The author, a doctor, writes that “The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society.” Loyalty, the book suggests, is built on something bigger than ourselves and provides ultimate meaning to our lives.

Number Seven: Sunday Mass may be your best chance to pray. For some of us, even a short daily prayer time is hard to manage. But an hour in church can be a time of spiritual rest and recreation. I can’t say that’s my own experience for me—I’m up here on the altar, and I have to keep my mind on a number of things, but many parishioners, especially the busy younger ones, have told me about the relief they get from spending this one hour with God.

In our second reading today, St. Paul says “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” Nowhere better to do that than at Mass, where heaven and earth come pretty close together.

Number Six: This may be your best opportunity to let go and let God. We all carry around many worries and concerns, and sometimes we need a place to park them. A psychologist once told me that worry is the most useless form of human behavior. It achieves nothing, but it costs plenty. Prayer, properly understood, is an exercise in surrender and trust. You can bring your worries to Mass, and leave them on the altar. And on top of that, we help you pray for your needs—remembering the intentions of one another is an important part of what we do when we celebrate the Eucharist as a parish. We pray especially for the sick and the recently deceased, keeping a list of their names up to date as you come in to the church each week.

Speaking of prayer, Sunday Mass is an excellent place to count your blessings. One of the psalms asks “How can I repay the Lord for his goodness to me?” and gives the answer “The cup of salvation I will rise; I will call on the Lord’s name.” For the Christian, the cup of salvation is the chalice we raise at Mass, and the Eucharist is the best of all thanksgiving prayers.

Number Five: Worry’s not the only thing you can leave behind as you walk out of Mass: you can leave some of your sins behind, too. While a sacramental confession is the way Catholics become free of grave sin, at every Mass we pray for forgiveness of our lesser sins and failings. And we do it together—again, praying with and for one another.

Sunday Mass can also be a weekly moment of accountability as we prepare ourselves for the worthy reception of Holy Communion.

Number Four: If you’re concerned that the church is full of hypocrites, coming to Mass reassures you that there’s always room for one more! Years ago I read a Protestant church leader say that belonging to anything meant accepting its inevitable shortcomings. To learn to accept the weaknesses of others we need to hang in when disagreements arise and work them out.

Number Three: Hearing the message of Christ proclaimed each week helps us meet the challenges of our lives. When I was born, almost all Canadians agreed on the basic rules of the good life. Now they don’t. If you want timeless wisdom about the choices you make, and you’ve forgotten what Sister Elfreda taught you in grade school, it’s time for a refresher course. Fifty-two Sunday Masses covers a lot of solid Christian teaching in a year.

Number Two: Coming to Mass each Sunday can make you feel loved—and I don’t mean by the usher, friendly as he or she might be. The Eucharist is Christ’s way of staying close to those he loves until he returns to earth at the end of time. The Eucharist is a sign of his love, and while our own feelings will fluctuate, at least some of the time our experience in church should make us deeply aware of God’s intimate love and care for us—expressed by the gift of his Body and Blood.

Number One: The top reason for coming to Mass each and every Sunday is that Christ is risen from the dead! The mystery we celebrate today—the feast that has drawn some of you here, perhaps for the first time since Christmas—is what we celebrate every Sunday.

Every Friday is a little Lent, and every Sunday a kind of Easter. The flowers and the music may not be quite so glorious, but each week we rejoice that Christ has risen, reliving the wonder of the Resurrection and experiencing its power to change our lives.

There’s my top ten—I could go to twenty, but my seeing my watch in front of me does mean something!

Come back and join us next week.

Darkness to Light, Slavery to Freedom (Easter Vigil)

From darkness to light, night to day.

The early Church lived this paschal reality by praying throughout the night, and celebrating the Eucharist at dawn.

We’re not such hardy souls! But the modern liturgy makes sure we don’t miss the point. Our Easter vigil began in a darkened church that quickly became ablaze with light.

The Exsultet, proclaimed in the light of the Easter candle, prays that its undimmed flame will banish the darkness of the night.

Even if the words of this glorious hymn fail to reach us, the very first reading, from the story of creation, begins with God creating light where there had been only darkness.

The third reading, from the Book of Exodus, also shows us the darkness of night overcome by light: a shining cloud and a pillar of fire lit the way for Israel through the desert.

Even tonight’s Gospel says that the sun had risen by the time the women arrived at the empty tomb.

But what, precisely, does this mean to us? Do we of the 21st century relate to the fact that Christ has overpowered darkness? Certainly not the way people did when the darkness of night was absolute, even frightening, and the rising of the sun a most welcome thing.

If I were to preach tonight about our darkened hearts or souls or lives, people would feel insulted and judged. And if I turn to Susan and Lisa, our two catechumens, and tell them that baptism will overcome their darkness, they might feel a little awkward too.

So I asked myself if there might be a way of looking at this sacred night that modern man could relate to more easily.

I found the answer in a wonderful book by the French priest Jacques Philippe, who says that freedom is the only moral value about which people still agree about today. He thinks that modern culture and Christianity can find common ground in the concept of freedom.

Even if there are some mistaken ideas about freedom in the world today, he concludes that it’s still a meeting point between Christians and non-religious folks.

His thoughts made me take a second look at tonight’s liturgy. When I did, I decided that this vigil is almost as much about the passage from slavery to freedom as it is from dark to light.

Think back on our third reading. What was the Exodus about? The chosen people were in flight from the slavery of the Egyptians.

The Exsultet declares “This is the night when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children, from slavery in Egypt and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea.

Tonight we celebrate not only the triumph of light over darkness, but also the eternal victory of freedom over slavery. This is something everyone can relate to: we all want to be free; no-one wants to be a slave.

As Father Jacques Philippe says, “human beings were not created for slavery, but to be the lords of creation.”

Why is this? Tonight’s first reading tells us: because human beings are created in God’s own image, in the divine likeness. “We were not created to lead drab, narrow or constricted lives… we find confinement unbearable, simply because we were created in the image of God and we have within us an unquenchable need for the absolute and the infinite.”

Father Philippe sums it up in these words: “We have this great thirst for freedom because our most fundamental aspiration is for happiness, and we sense that there is no happiness without love, and no love without freedom.”

Or in other words: “Freedom gives value to love, and love is the precondition of happiness.”

Even amidst confused modern thinking people understand they need to be free if they are to be happy.

But how many of us experience freedom? We feel like slaves half the time: to work, to the demands of family life, and—worst of all, to our weaknesses, sins and addictions. Some of us are slaves to fear, including the greatest of all, the fear of death.

In the face of this struggle—which people of every age have experienced but which is particularly difficult in our day—the apostle Paul tell us how the Resurrection of Christ can free us from slavery.

In tonight’s Epistle, St. Paul gives us a simple formula for freedom. He also explains why the Resurrection is such a personal thing for the follower of Christ.

Paul tells us three crucial things:

One, since by baptism we shared in the death of Christ, we will certainly share in his resurrection. It only makes sense.

Two, since Christ’s death overcame sin, our share in his crucifixion is our death to sin. Sin is no longer our master, and we are no longer its slaves.

Three, since Christ will never die again we must claim our share of the divine life: both here—by turning away from sin, which has lost its stranglehold on us—and in eternity, to which we are called by our share in the Resurrection.

In other words, there is a power for freedom promised to us; a source of strength beyond human resources is ours for the asking.

Of course our release from the many bonds of slavery isn’t automatic. The victory of Christ which we celebrate tonight is absolute, but our effective share in this victory is conditional. It takes discipleship to be free. We must accept the victory, live it, and profess it.

But it is nonetheless ours in baptism, and nothing could be sadder than to turn back to slavery after the Lord has delivered us from the darkness and called us into his kingdom of light.

Let us this Easter share the hope of Susan and Lisa who are about to be baptized; let us share the enthusiasm of Nathan, who is about to make his profession of faith in the Catholic Church.

Most of all, let us accept the freedom that the Risen Lord offers to us, the freedom to love and to live abundantly for which we thirst. We have shared in his death, let us share in the power of his Resurrection.

Palm Sunday: Reflections on the Passion

It's hard to preach on Palm Sunday after the solemn reading of the Passion. What, really, is there left to say?

But when I heard a young priest offer a very powerful reflection earlier in the week, I asked if I could 'borrow' it for this Passion Sunday.  Candidly conceding that he'd borrowed the words himself--from Archbishop Sheen or Cardinal Dolan, he wasn't quite sure!--he readily agreed.

God came down to earth, so that we could go to heaven.

God became human so that we could become divine.

God became a slave, so that we could be set free.

God became an object of hate, so that we might learn love.

Christ was rejected, so that we could be accepted.

Christ forgave, so that we could be forgiven.

Christ was convicted, so that we could have conviction.

He was arrested, so we could be bailed out.

He was hurt, so that we could be healed.

He was lifted up on the cross, so we could be raised up with him.

He took on hell, so that we might take up heaven.

He was given a crown of thorns, so that we could receive the crown of life.

He is guilty so that we might be deemed innocent.

He took the cross, to cross out Satan’s plan.

He died…  so that we could live forever.

God the Same Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Lent 5B)

An enthusiastic student bounced into music class one day and asked the teacher “What’s the good news for today?”

The teacher picked up a tuning fork and struck it. A clear note emerged and the teacher said, “There’s the good news for today. That, my friend, is an A. It was an A yesterday, and it will be an A tomorrow, and next week, and for a thousand years.

“The soprano in the senior choir sings off-key; the tenor flats his high notes, and the piano here in the music room is sometimes out of tune, but that is an A.”

God is like the music teacher’s “A”. He is steadfast, consistent, and always loving. We may go flat by falling into sin. We may stop reading his music. We may decide other notes are more to our liking. But God remains who and what he is.

As we heard in our reading from the Prophet Jeremiah: I will be their God, and they shall be my people. God remains faithful to us. In spite of our weaknesses and failures, he keeps offering us fresh opportunities to be reconciled with him.

Lent reminds us of God’s consistency, and of the fact that he always keeps his promises. The most important and fundamental promise, of course, was that he would send a Messiah to heal our sins and open the gates of heaven to us. Today’s readings show us how magnificently God did this, sending his only begotten Son to be lifted up on the cross, to draw all people to himself—“the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”

Even before the birth of Jesus, God rescued his people time after time through a series of covenants. He gave them signs and sent prophets to preach that he would not give up on Israel. And eventually he promised a new covenant—an eternal covenant.

The new covenant isn’t engraved on stone tablets like the covenant with Moses on Mount Sinai; it’s written, as Jeremiah tell us, on our hearts. The human heart is changed, because the law of God is inscribed upon it. The new covenant “will bring about a change of hearts and the gift of the divine spirit” (Cf. Ezekiel 36, 26 ff; Xavier Léon-Dufour, Dictionary of Biblical Theology, 2nd ed., 96).

We are the people of the new covenant. We have the law written on our hearts, wounded though they are.

Jesus fulfills the promises made through the prophets. He draws us to himself from his throne upon the cross. We have the Church, the saints, the sacraments, Scripture and, most important, the Holy Spirit to guide us.

Still, many of us seem to be tone-deaf. We cannot hear God’s message, consistent and faithful as the music teacher’s “A”. God’s message is that he wants us to grow closer to him; to be with him forever.

In these last two weeks before Easter, let’s slow down and listen to the music. We can find time to harmonize our busy schedules with our need for prayer; we can look into our hearts to see where we’ve gone flat or sharp in our relations with God or others.

Let’s make a special effort to train our ears on the still small voice that calls us by name, perhaps by spending some time reading the Word of God. We desperately need to hear the crisp clear notes of the unchangeable teachings of Christ, given the uncertain trumpet that sounds in modern society.

There is still enough time for each of us to claim Christ’s loving promise of mercy, freedom and abundant life, so we can sing a new song at Easter and forever. 

I don't make much use of homily services, and when I do I generally revise the outline considerably. But this week I have relied very closely on a delightful homily by an anonymous author in "Homilies: Sunday and Weekday Masses, January - March 2015," published by Faith Catholic Publishing and Communications, an arm of the Diocese of Lansing, MI. This fine outfit also produces commentaries and intercessions for use at Mass.