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Concluding
thoughts on 'Rediscovering Sunday'
PRAISED BE JESUS
CHRIST!
(Now and Forever)
For the past two weeks, this column was focused on “Rediscovering
Sunday.” Fidelity to Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation has
softened in recent years. To many, it would seem, Mass is attended if it
is convenient. Far too many people apparently look upon it as an option.
When it is missed, little thought is given to the seriousness of absence
or the impact that absence has on eligibility for the reception of holy
Communion.
Fidelity to Mass, convenient or inconvenient, week after week, is not an
option for those who wish to be a Catholic in good standing. It is a
serious responsibility. If missed without a proportionately serious
reason, one is not to receive holy Communion until reconciliation with
the Body of Christ has been sought through sacramental absolution.
This column last week focused on the human need for fidelity to the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass. In summation the point made was that we need to
set Sunday aside as a special day, with the celebration of the Eucharist
as the central part of the day, because that is how we remember who we
are. We need to gather, to listen to God’s Word, to give praise and
thanks to God for our many blessings, and to share in Christ’s sacrifice
in the Eucharistic celebration because that’s how we find the strength
to be who we are supposed to be as Catholic Christians.
Forming and shaping us into who we are supposed to be as Catholics is at
the heart of what the ritual of Sunday Eucharist does for us. At every
Mass we memorialize and sacramentalize the death and resurrection of the
Lord. Theologians re-fer to this as the Paschal Mystery. As one of the
acclamations in the Eucharistic Prayer states: “When we eat this bread
and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come
in glory.” That is our profession of faith.
Ultimately the action performed at Mass is first and foremost the action
of Jesus Christ. We gather to participate in the action of Christ. The
purpose is not to make us feel good, although that may be the fruit of
being faithful to the will of God. It is not entertainment. It is serous
and profound. And, the Lord Jesus has asked us to do it: “Do this in
memory of me” (Lk 22:19).
The Church comes together at Sunday Mass so that each and every member
can unite his or her life, and his or her sacrifice, with Christ. We die
with him in order to rise with him. We need to do what we do on Sunday
because what we celebrate and memorialize and sacramentalize at Sunday
Mass gives strength and direction for the way we should be living life
every day and at all times.
There is a certain power which we must allow Sunday to have in our life.
Whether realized or not, the influences and forces of the world around
us form and shape us. Worldly values such as materialism, consumerism,
utilitarianism, a culture of death that devalues life, competition,
selfishness, and the praise of strength and violence as solutions to
problems are but a few of the forces which impact upon the human spirit.
These forces make it all the more important for us to take time out of
the normal schedule of our week to set aside a day when we allow
another, a more important and powerful, force to form our lives.
Sunday should be a day of spiritual formation. With the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass as its centerpiece, Sunday as a day of spiritual
formation should give us the space we need to be attentive to the deeper
values of offering our life to God and to others; to attend to the
building up of unity rather than the division that permeates much of
life; to taking time to build up the bonds of family and friendship
rather than mindlessly hurrying from one activity to another; to get in
touch with the deeper longings of our heart; to being silent long enough
so we can hear God whispering in the depths of our soul, rather than
being bombarded with the pressures and responsibilities of everyday
routine in the world around us.
It is my hope that as a result of this Year of the Eucharist the
Catholics of Northcentral Indiana will come to look upon Sunday as a day
of spiritual formation.
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass faithfully attended week after week,
convenient or inconvenient, teaches us how to live in a hostile culture
as Christ wishes. The transformation Mass is intended to
effect in us is not something that occurs for us as individuals in
isolation, but it occurs as his Body, the Church.
The celebration of the Eucharist shapes us more and more so that the “I”
becomes a “we.” It is communitarian prayer. The “I” of selfishness, sin
and egotistically looking out for “number one” cries for transformation
into the “we” where we selflessly live in union with God and with each
other. This transformation frees us to live lives of compassion,
forgiveness, service and sacrifice. This is how the transformative power
of Sunday Eucharist makes us who we are, the Body of Christ in the
world. It is the way we live out our baptismal mission, mitigate the
selfishness of sin, and grow in holiness.
During the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest invokes the transformative
power of the Holy Spirit twice: first, to change the gifts of bread and
wine into the Body and Blood of Christ; and second, to change all those
who receive those gifts into “one body, one spirit in Christ.”
This transforming power of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (Eucharist) is
the reason the Lord Jesus gives himself to us in the Eucharist. The
Church legislates that Catholics to be in good standing must gather
together week after week to praise and thank God by giving their full,
active and conscious participation in the Mass, but our motivation to be
faithful to that legislation should be rooted in conviction that the
Eucharist is spiritually transformative and in reality makes us who we
are, bonded to Christ by baptism and faithful members of the Catholic
faith community. |
