Lazy Sundays

Sunday Mass is an unpopular practice among small children. It’s also unpopular among older children whose school makes them go to Mass during the week. It's also unpopular among adults who would rather be watching the football/basketball/baseball/insert-sport-of-choice-here. Basically, it's unpopular all around. Why should we have to go to Mass on Sunday? We went last week, and it'll be the exact same thing. Hey, it's the same thing every week, we may as well only go on Christmas and Easter, because those are "special" days.

I’ll answer the first complaint as simply as I can. God said so. When God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments, the vast majority of them had already been around. The first written laws forbade murder and theft, among other things. The Roman Empire under Augustus had laws against adultery. If there’s only one God, it makes sense not to worship any others, because that would be just pointless. The only one of the Ten Commandments that came completely out of the blue is the idea that a certain day of the week can be holy. Only on that specific day of the week does God mandate worship. In the surrounding pagan cultures, there were occasional holidays that everybody would gather to worship, but it was far from the organized structure of the weekly rituals of the young Israelite nation.

This in turn was brought into Christianity. The day of worship chosen was Sunday (mostly because Jesus rose on a Sunday, the day after the Sabbath), and Christians continued the Jewish tradition of worshiping every week on a specific day, because God told them to. Because of this direct order, to skip Mass on a Sunday, without a good reason, is a mortal sin.

There is a second reason to attend Mass every Sunday. All God asks is for a single hour of your time. If you live far away from your church, it may be an hour and a half. Sure, you’ll miss most of the big game. But let’s put that single hour into perspective. Jesus Christ, the God of the Universe, went through agony that is entirely unimaginable by human standards.

    First, in the garden, he was so distressed that he was literally sweating blood. Medically speaking, this only happens when someone is in so much distress that the blood vessels in their skin burst open. How much stress would that take? And that was only the beginning. The man was then dragged through a crowd, through three trials in the span of one night, beaten, spit on, and then the sun finally rose. Oh, I forgot to mention, his friends that had sworn themselves to him abandoned him. Imagine your best friend abandons you at the one time you need help. You’re beginning to grasp a tiny fraction of what He went through. Now, after the murderous crowd is sitting outside demanding his death, he was instead beaten. I’m not talking getting beat up by the school bully. First off, the people whipping him were experts in torture. They knew EXACTLY how to make the process as painful as possible. Second, the whips they used weren’t just little strips of leather. They were hooked. Which means with every stroke they ripped a chunk of flesh out of his body. I’ll stop the description here, because from here on out, it’s too gruesome. But He endured all of this, and all He asks is that you sit for one hour. Is that really so much? In a week, if you sleep for twelve hours a night, there are still 84 hours of your time. God asks for ONE. All of that torture, the agony, the pain, and he asks for ONE hour. Is that really too much to ask?

But Mass is still the exact same thing over and over again, right? Some guy wearing funny clothes gets up and says some words over some bread and wine, we eat, and we go home, right? Why should I miss the football game for this?

Yes, the same thing is happening every Mass. And that’s terribly exciting. That funny looking man up at the table? His job is to do the impossible. He brings the God of the Universe, the Almighty, the One who created the Universe, to earth. He brings the source of all life to earth. That little cracker? It is no longer a cracker. It’s now the God of the Universe. The uncontainable God of the Universe is contained in a little wafer the size of a Ritz cracker. This could not possibly be any more exciting. When we receive the Eucharist at Mass, we are receiving Love itself. There is no more intimate union. Jesus Christ, Son of God, the One with infinite power, decided that He wanted to be with His people as closely as possible, so He lets us eat him. Every Sunday. Yes, this happens every week. And that is the most wonderfully exciting thing imaginable.