Why going to Sunday Mass matters

Great feast or a great waste

Father David Jones

Catholic Practices

The Lord opens the doors of the church. The Lord gathers the Body of Christ. The Lord invites his friends to celebrate His Resurrection. The Lord gives us communion. We become new creatures in Christ Jesus, and then the Lord sends us on a mission.

“I don’t know what you came to do…” or didn’t come to do, but when Jesus rose on Sunday, HE MADE every day a day of thanksgiving and every Sunday a “little Easter” and a little taste of heaven. Recently a friend of the church joked that her husband, also a friend of the church, goes to St. Mattress on Sunday. In other words, according to the definition of Sunday made by God, he is either too tired or too lazy to make it to heaven. The stakes are high come Sunday!

The celebration of Sunday is about the Lord. Whether we realize it or not, our very being longs to be a part of what God is doing with and for His people. Especially the part of us that is sick and tired and broken and lost and wanting and needy and whiney and hurt and little and so on and so on.

Doing something other than being present, mind, body and soul, not just in body, to respond to and receive the Lord is either looking for the right thing in the wrong place or being blind.

The conversation with the Lord is going to be interesting if He gets to say I showed up and got up for you and we respond with what we thought seemed like a good reason to waste a Sunday. Truth be told, most likely we didn’t think about it, Sunday, God, self or much of anything.

Sunday is a great feast or a great waste.