What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
Why Attend Mass Every Sunday?
There was a time within the Catholic Church that the majority of Catholics attended Sunday Mass regularly. Currently in any parish with which I am familiar parishioners who attend Mass every Sunday (or the vigil Mass) are a minority. The obligation of Sunday Mass attendance has not changed and it is a serious one. What has changed is that most Catholics do not take it seriously. If Catholics will not attend out of a sense of obligation perhaps some of them could be persuaded to do so for other reasons. Here are some reasons to consider.
St. Augustine calls Sunday a "sacrament of Easter." It is a sign that permits believers to enter into communion with the risen Christ and inserts into the pilgrim Church the new order of things that Jesus' resurrection inaugurated. Sunday recalls the paschal event of Jesus, that is to say, his passion, death, resurrection, and glorification. On Sunday every Christian is called to be aware of his participation in the life of the Risen One, feel the urgency to construct within himself the new man, experience the joy of belonging to a new world, and commit himself to building it according to justice and truth.
Sunday anticipates the glorious return of the risen Christ when he will come to celebrate with the elect the eternal Easter. "In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy City of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, Minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle. With all the warriors of the heavenly army we sing a hymn of glory to the Lord; venerating the memory of the saints, we hope for some part and fellowship with them; we eagerly await the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, until he our life shall appear and we too will appear with him in glory." (Decree on the Sacred Liturgy, #8) According to the degree that the Christian community observes Sunday, the sacrament of Easter, it already has eternal life, it lives a holy life, and it awaits its full manifestation. (I John 3:2)
It is in the eucharistic celebration that Sunday encounters its full understanding and achieves its effectiveness as a sacrament of Easter because every eucharist is a pasch (Easter). For this reason Sunday, as a sign of Easter, is also called the day of the eucharist.
At the sealing of the old covenant whereby the Israelites became God's Chosen People three things occurred: (1) a gathering of the people; (2) an explanation of what God expected of the people; and (3) a sacrificial rite to seal the covenant. The same three things must occur in the renewal of the new covenant that is the eucharist. "For on this day [Sunday] Christ's faithful are bound to come together into one place. They should listen to the word of God and take part in the eucharist.... (Emphasis added) (Decree on the Sacred Liturgy, #106) The explanation of the covenant and the sacrifice sealing it are dependent upon the people "coming together into one place." Absentees do not listen to the word of God nor do they renew their covenant in the eucharistic sacrifice.
The word "church" translates ecclesia or assembly. "We should not stay away from our assembly, as is the custom of some, but encourage one another." (Hebrews 10:25; CCC #2178) One purpose of the eucharist is to join the members of the Church into the one body of Christ. (I Corinthians 10:17) It is essential that all members of the Body of Christ participate in the eucharist each Sunday for the unifying bond of the eucharist to produce its effect. The eucharist does not join together those who separate themselves and do not wish to be joined. The Fathers had an axiom: the Church makes the eucharist and the eucharist makes the Church. This is the reason for Christians "to meet as a church." (I Corinthians 11:18) It is always necessary to make the Church together with one's brothers and sisters. The Christian gathering, therefore, is not something that is marginal or optional but something that affects the intrinsic nature of the Church. A Christian who stays away diminishes the Body of Christ, the Church, the celebration, the fraternal unity, and also the witnessing power of the resurrection of the Lord. From the very outset the Body of Christ and the fellowship communion were interchangeable expressions as they are in the eleventh chapter of I Corinthians.
The Mass actualizes the universal Church in a determined time and place making palpable and concrete something that could remain only a vague and abstract idea. "When you teach, order and persuade the people to be faithful...in assembling, so that no one should lessen by even one member the Body of Christ. Do not show contempt, then, for yourselves and do not deprive the Savior of his members, do not break and scatter his body." (Didascalia Apostolorum V, 20:11) Sharing in the eucharist gives witness of belonging and being faithful to Christ and his Church. The faithful strengthen one another under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. (CCC #2182)
Whenever we celebrate the eucharist we change into that which we are called to be, the Body of Christ, the passover people of the New Testament. Sunday must be celebrated with the eucharist because the eucharist was instituted by Jesus to make the paschal event present and operative in our time. The parish, a definite and stable community of the faithful within a given church, is the place where the faithful gather for the celebration of the eucharist. (CCC #2179)
