Msgr. Peter J. Vaghi
Title of Series: "Holy Mass: An Up Close and Personal Look"

Part 1: "Sunday Mass, Why Bother?"

October 6th, 2005
First Thursday

A pleasant welcome to each and every one of you as we begin together another year of theological reflection, a year in which we continue to celebrate throughout the whole church the great gift of the Eucharist. Accordinaly, I have decided to entitle these nine meditations: "Holy Mass: "An Up Close & Personal Look." For this first reflection, this opening meditation, my title is: "Sunday Mass, why bother?"

In a very busy life, it is so easy to roll over in bed on Sunday morning, with all good intentions for a later Mass, and the day gets away. Or maybe I justify that much needed time with my children as I am so busy during the week, so busy that there is not "quality" time for the. Moreover, there are conflicting sports games at Mass time on Sunday morning. I certainly can't fight that. It is not worth the fight, so we do the sports. Or, the old belief, that God knows that I love Him and He loves me and He will certainly understand my absence with all the many good things I am doing, of course, doing for Him. Excuses, conflicts, seemingly credible justifications--and the list goes on.

In the face of this, each of us knows the comandment from the Old Testament to keep holy the Sabbath Day and each of us has been taught from childhood that Sunday Mass (or the Saturday Vigil Mass) attendance--every Sunday without exception-- is an obligation for those of us who are Catholics. We know this instinctively so there is guilt if we fail to attend Mass.

In our day, however, more is needed to make Sunday Mass attendance a regular and integral part of our lives than the obligation itself. It is too easy to say--why bother--or I will do my best next week.

It is important to begin to understand, perhaps for the first time, what it is about Sunday Mass that warrants our attendance, every Sunday. I will try and give reasons that underscore the importance of Sunday worship--both from history and examples of contemporary witness of how some have suffered persecution because of the importance they attached to the Eucharist.

First of all, there is an instinct in each of us to worship and thank God, in effect, a duty to pray. This instinct and duty is written within each of us whether we are consciously aware of it or not. The Mass is the highest form of prayer that we have, our great prayer of praise. We go to Mass to worship God and raise our minds and hearts to Him.

But why is Sunday so important?

For starters, and importantly, every Sunday is a little Easter. In the words of St. Augustine, Sunday is "a sacrament of Easter." And Easter is the heart of our faith--for each and every one of us privileged to be baptized into the new life of the Lord Jesus.

"In fact, in the weekly reckoning of time Sunday recalls the day of Christ's Resurrection. It is Easter which returns week by week, celebrating Christ's victory over sin and death, the fulfilment in Him of the first creation and the dawn of 'the new creation.'" Dies Domini (DD) 1 The day when creation began became the day when creation was renewed. Creation and redemption, after all, belong together. That is why Sunday is so important.

Resurrection of Jesus is the fundamental event upon which Christian faith rests. If Sunday recalls the resurrection, and it does, then that is why Sunday is at the heart and soul of every Christian's spirituality. When we eat His body and drink His blood, it is the risen Lord that we eat and drink.

I was struck by this during my summer vacation when I visited on a Sunday the Russian Orthodox Church in Tallin, Estonia (formerly a part of the Soviet Union). In front of the altar was a large vase of Easter lilies. Could there be a more visible sign of the Risen Lord? I also learned that the Russian word for Sunday is Resurrection.

Scripture reveals the importance of that "first day of the week" in the beautiful Easter readings which we hear each year during Easter week. From Mark, Luke and John, we hear the various accounts of the empty tomb--each with a little different twist. But what they had in common was that each took place "on the first day of the week." (Mk 16:2, 9; Lk 24:1; Jn 20:1) That is the first day after the Sabbath (or Sunday).

Remember also that most beautiful account about the journey to Emmaus. It also took place on "that very day" (on Sunday) when the Risen Lord joined them and they ultimately came to know Him in the breaking of the bread and while their hearts were burning when He broke open the scripture to them. (Lk 24: 13-35) Then again, the Risen Lord appeared to the eleven in the upper room "on the evening of that first day of the week." (Jn 20:19; Lk 24:36)

Each of these magnificent readings echoes the joy--for sure uncertain at first but then overwhelming-- which the Apostles had to have experienced in the presence of the Risen Lord once they recognized Him and especially on the evening of the first day of the week when He visited them in the upper room and gave them His gift of peace and the Holy Spirit.

It is that same joy that we pray penetrates each of us in special fashion on the "first day of the week," every Sunday, when we come together for Mass, for prayer, when we rest from our labors and when we spend time with family and friends and engage in works of charity. These are all ways in which we come to experience risen life, His life. These are ways in which our spiritual lives are enhanced. Sunday distinguishes, or should, each of us as followers of Jesus. In what we do on Sunday, we give witness about who we are.

The Resurrection is, after all, the beginning of a new creation. That is what we ponder each and every Sunday. It is a day of faith. It is a day "when by the power of the Holy Spirit (first given us on Sunday) who is the Church's living 'memory,' the first appearance of the Risen Lord becomes an event renewed in the 'today' of each of Christ's disciples." DD 29 Sunday thus becomes "an indispensable element of our Christian identity." DD30

With that as background, how can we not see Sunday Mass as the heart of Sunday. It is, in fact, indispensable to our Christian identity.

If the Israelites where commanded to "remember"on the Sabbath what God had done for them in the exodus, their passover from slavery to freedom, all the more each of us should "remember" on Sunday what Christ has done and continues to do for us--His own passover by His death and glorious resurrection. This notion of "remembering" God is at its heart the opening of ourselves to Christ's triumphant victory for each of us, drawing us into an experience of that triumph and victory in our concrete lives.

He commanded His disciples and their successors and each of us at the last supper, the night before He died out of love for us, to "do this in my memory." "To do" means, after His example, to break our lives and live lives of love made possible uniquely by His own death and resurrection, that most significant event of His life which we remember, I.e. made present, each and every time we gather for Eucharist and eat His body and drink His blood.

The Eucharist signifies an actual principle of life from which love results. It communicates the strength to imitate His life in our own lives. Through the Eucharist, the love of Christ comes to take over our very hearts in order that we might be committed more resolutely on the way of charity.

Can you thus see then how the Eucharist is a "memorial banquet" where we continue in our day to celebrate the greatest act of love consummated for us by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? Is there any more appropriate day then to celebrate this mystery than on the day of His resurrection, the "first day of the week,"on Sunday? "At Sunday Mass, Christians relive with particular intensity the experience of the Apostles on the evening of Easter when the Risen Lord appeared to them as they gathered together (cf. Jn 20:19)" DD 33

Although it is true that Sunday Eucharist is not different from the Eucharist celebrated on other days of the week, "the Sunday Eucharist (precisely because it is celebrated on the day when Christ conquered death and gave us a share forever in His immortal life) expresses with greater emphasis its inherent ecclesial dimension. It becomes the paradigm for other Eucharistic celebrations." DD 34

Why is this especially true for Sunday?

Because of its special solemnity and the obligatory presence of the whole Catholic community, "each community, gathering all its members for the 'breaking of the bread,' becomes the place where the mystery of the Church is concretely made present." DD 34 There is an old saying: the Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church. That happens at holy Mass and Sunday in particular. The Eucharist is the heart of Sunday and the indispensable element of our identity and unity as Catholics. The Eucharist is the Risen Lord.

For all of these reasons, it hopefully should become clearer to us why Sunday Mass is obligatory not so much under the penalty of sin but out of a desire to share the "memory" of the greatest victory of love the world has ever known with each other at least one time per week. "Since the Eucharist is the very heart of Sunday, it is clear why, from the earliest centuries, the pastors of the church have not ceased to remind the faithful of the need to take part in the liturgical assembly" on Sunday. DD 46 The most recent code of canon law states that "on Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are bound to attend Mass." (Canon 1247) "This legislation has normally been understood as entailing a grave obligation: this is the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and it is easy to understand why if we keep in mind how vital Sunday is for the Christian life." DD 47 It is a festive day celebrating the Lord's Resurrection.

At World Youth Day in Cologne Germany this past summer, Pope Benedict said: "Sometimes, our initial impression is that having to include time for Mass on Sunday is rather inconvenient. But if you make the effort, you will realize that this is what gives a proper focus to your free time. ...The Eucharist releases the joy that we need so much, and we must learn to grasp it every more deeply, we must learn to love it." Benedict also said that: "this free time is empty if God is not present." To miss Sunday Mass gradually leads to missing Christ in life.

Many Catholics over the centuries have risked their lives in order to celebrate Sunday Mass or receive communion in times of persecution and imprisonment. Their courage and faith remains an inspiration and an example for each of us. It underscores how important the Eucharist really is. It helps us see, precisely in our rather middle/upper middle class climate, the great consolation that this food for our Christian journey truly is in the worse possible circumstances. It challenges us to a deeper devotion and love of the Eucharist and to see Sunday Mass, so easily available for us, in historical context.

Here are some incredible examples of rather contemporary journeys of faith and the role of the Eucharist in each:

A few summers ago, when I was in Scotland for the International Serra Convention, I happened upon a headline in the Sunday Times of London-- "China Crushes the Church." It was an article about a murder of a 33 year old priest, Father Yan Weiping, who on May 13, 1999, was saying Mass at a private home in Beijing when the security forces burst in. The paper reports: "The priest was dragged away before the eyes of his congregation. That evening his battered body was found on a street in the capital. There was no post-mortem examination, but he appeared to have been beaten to death and thrown out of a window. His congregation believes he was murdered by the security police."Later in the article, which speaks of a recent crackdown against the world's largest underground church (those 10m Chinese loyal to the), Father Yan is described as a priest secretly ordained in 1988 and one who had served six month in detention in 1990 for his ardent work in the underground church of China in our day.

(Give personal example of Shanghai in 1984)

George Weigel wrote an article entitled: "A Modern Martyr in the Roman Curia." It bespeaks of Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, formerly president of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace. He had been named coadjutor Archbishop of Saigon shortly before the city fell to the communists. Soon thereafter he was arrested and spent the next 13 years in prison and re-education camp, of which nine were in solitary confinement. It was a regime designed to crush a man, spititually and physically. Instead he made the solitary confinement into a seemingly endless retreat celebrating Mass with three drops of wine--a bottle was given him as stomach medicine-- and a smuggled host. He states they were the "most beautiful Masses of my life." Prior to his solitary confinement, in the re-education camp, the archbishop had said Mass in bed. Weigel quotes him as saying: "We were divided into groups of 50 people. We slept on common beds, having the right to 50 centimeters. We arranged it so that there were five Catholics with me. At nine-thirty the lights are turned off and everyone has to sleep. I curl up on the bed to celebrate Mass, by memory, and I distribute communion moving my hand under the mosquito netting. We made little containers from the paper of cigarette boxes to reserve the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus in the Eucharist is always with me in my shirt pocket."

You know so well, I am sure, the story of Archbishop Oscar Romero who was killed instantly while presiding at Mass in El Salvador on March 24, 1980 at 6:25pm. He had become a strong advocate for the rights of the poor, a beacon for the marginalized in that war-torn country . The following are his final words which he was preaching during that fateful Mass: "This holy Mass, this eucharist, is clearly an act of faith. Our Christian faith shows us that in this moment contention is changed into the body of the Lord who offers himself for the redemption of the world. In the chalice the wine is transformed into the blood that is the price of slavation. May this body broken and this blood shed for human beings encourage us to give our body and blood up to suffering and pain, as Christ did not for self, but to bring justice and peace to our people. Let us be intimately united then in faith and hope." At this point, Archbishop Romero was shot and died.

Finally, from China, Vietnam, El Salvador, we turn to the Soviet Union and and another contemporary story of Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek. In his book, He Leadeth Me, Father Ciszek tells of the risks he took in celebrating Mass in the lumber camps of the Ural Mountains, Lubianka and the prison camps of Siberia where he was held captive from 1941 until he was released 22 years later in 1963 in exchange for Russian agents. What an incredible chapter entitled "The Meaning of the Mass." He spoke of prisoners fasting the entire day to participate in a secret and risky Mass in the evening after a full day of hard labor, how he put crusts of bread in his pocket at breakfast which remained uneaten until he could get to the barracks at night to celebrate Mass. He stated uncategorically: "The Mass to us was always worth the danger and the sacrifice....Yet what a source of sustenance it was to us then, how much it meant to us to have the Body and Blood of Christ as the food of our spiritual lives in this sacrament of love and joy....Everyone observed a strict Eucharistic fast from the night before, passing up a chance for breakfast and working all morning on an empty stomach...No other inspiration could have deepened my faith more, could have given me spiritual courage in greater abundance, than the privilege of saying Mass for these poorest and most deprived members of Christ the Good Shepherd's flock....So I never let a day pass without saying Mass; it was my primary concern each new day. I would go to any length, suffer any inconvenience, run any risk to make the bread of life available to these men...Even at the risk of being caught and punished, faithful prisoners willingly cooperated in helping us keep a supply of Mass bread and wine at various locations of the camp...Yet these men would actually fast all day long and do exhausting physical labor without a bite to eat since dinner the evening before, just to be able to receive the Holy Eucharist--that was how much the sacrament meant to them in this otherwise God-forsaken place...They were willing to make voluntary sacrifices even in a life of almost total deprivation, in order to receive this bread of life." Ciszek concludes this chapter by stating: "No danger, no risk, no retaliation could prevent my saying Mass each day for them. "As often as you do this, do it in memory of me." Life in the labor camps was Calvary for these men in many ways every day; there was nothing I would not do to offer the sacrifice of Calvary again for them each day in the Mass."

(Give personal story of his visit to Gonzaga 1966)

These examples are given to inspire us, to help us see how important the Eucharist was and is for so many who have suffered to celebrate the Eucharist and receive it.

For sure, Sunday, the Lord's Day, the Day of the Resurrection is at the heart and soul of lay spirituality and the spirituality of each of us throughout the centuries, in every corner of the world. There can be no better way to discover the Risen Lord, to come to know that He lives and can be effective in our lives for the good, than at Sunday Mass. Is that not what our faith is all about, a faith worth living and dying for? Is not Sunday in effect a synthesis of the entire Christian life? Hopefully this meditation will challenge each of us this morning, as it does me, to examine your own life and the role Sunday Mass presently plays in your spirituality. When we ponder those who have suffered for the Eucharist, there can be no more compelling argument for its importance. These accounts should remind us that the Eucharist is worth dying for. In fact, it came into being by the death of One who loved and continues to love us very much. That is precisely why He left us this most wonderful and precious gift.

Yes, it is Sunday. We should bother. You might even decide today to make some adjustments in how you will spend Sunday in the future. Easter Sunday is after all not the only day in the year for a family Sunday brunch or get together. Every Sunday is a celebration of Easter--the day of the Eucharist, the most fundamental mystery of our faith and Christian life. Amen