Whole Lotta Love
Why go to church? It’s a good question to ask, especially in light of all the alternatives on offer. When I was a kid in Louisiana, there wasn’t a lot to do on Sundays. We were a church-going family, but I had friends whose families weren’t, and they didn’t have a lot of options for Sunday. Nothing was open on Sunday mornings except gas stations and grocery stores. Later, restaurants would open, but most stores were closed all day on Sunday. Today, stores like Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby stand out because they are closed on Sunday, but in my childhood, they would’ve been nothing special because everything was closed.
That’s not the case today. You can do anything on Sunday you can do any other day of the week. Everything (except for Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby) is open. Youth sports leagues have Sunday morning games and practices — something that would never have happened when I was a kid. Gatherings and activities crowd out church attendance, and the local congregation is in competition with the whole world — the real world and the online world. It’s no wonder that church attendance is at an all-time low in the western world.
Evangelical churches are especially susceptible to this downward trend because what they do translates so seamlessly to online presentation. You can watch a service online, listen to the music, and hear the sermon; you may “get” more of it than you would sitting in the service itself. You don’t have the guy next to you whose hearing aids are whistling, or the kid who’s squirming, or the lady who’s emphatically grunting “uh huh” and “Amen” every few minutes. There are even places where the pastor is live in one building and being streamed to satellite congregations who are watching on a big screen. I suppose the irony of getting dressed and driving to a location to watch a remote presentation isn’t dawning on a lot of people.
I once had a parishioner who told me, not long before he left us, that he came to church to get “jazzed up”. I had no idea what he meant by that, and he couldn’t really tell me, either. You have to admire the chutzpah of a man who can complain to you that you aren’t providing him with something he can’t even describe. We didn’t have any false advertising; we had no bait-and-switch. We were what we purported to be: a very traditional parish in the very traditional Anglican Catholic Church. We didn’t offer “jazzed up” in any meaning that could possibly attach to that term. The guy would’ve been better off staying home and listening to John Coltrane. I would certainly have had a lot less stress if he had.
For Catholics, our churchgoing is altogether different. It’s not just a different take on the same thing that’s going on in the big box churches: it’s a different thing altogether. Our churches aren’t worship centers; our churches have a worship center, and it’s the Tabernacle and the Altar, or more precisely, the Person who waits for us there. It’s amazing to realize that Our Lord awaits us and comes to us in all of his resurrected and glorified humanity and in all of his eternal divinity. He is really present there and we come there for two reasons.
First, I’ll let you in on a secret: we don’t come to church for the fellowship with our fellow parishioners; we don’t come for teaching or preaching; we don’t come for Bible study. You’ll notice that we have and do all of those things at church, and they are all great benefits that come with going to church. But those are not our main reasons for being there.
The first and most important reason we come is to offer our selves, our souls, and our bodies to God as living sacrifices. We are there to give something, not to get something. I had a co-worker tell me once that he experiences more real worship in the forest than at church. I told him that this was true for me, too, a lot of the time, if the emphasis is on “experience”. But for the Catholic and Orthodox faith, worship is primarily the offering of self in union with the Eucharistic sacrifice. It’s something we are called to do; our emotions may or may not align with this great service to God.
That leads us to the second reason to come to Mass, which is, when properly disposed and prepared, to partake of the Eucharistic sacrifice, thereby joining yourself to Christ and nourishing his life within you. You might be surprised that this is the second reason and not the first, but you are not required to receive Holy Communion every time you come to Mass. But growth in the life of Christ requires us, except for unavoidable cause, to come and offer ourselves to God in humility and repentance in union with the Eucharistic sacrifice. First we give, then we receive.
Like so many things that go toward a healthy spiritual life, this can be a lot of trouble. It will definitely be an inconvenience. There are many things more fun than coming to Mass, and there are many things more appealing. I often wonder if I love spiritual reading because it’s easier and more cozy than spiritual living. But that is only because we don’t clearly see what’s really going on, or really understand what our part is in the drama of salvation. We get our priorities mixed up. I know I do.
Set yourself a little internal Q&A when you’re tempted to do something else on Sunday morning. Ask yourself, “Whom am I serving by this?” Maybe you’re taking care of someone or helping someone, which is a charitable act; maybe your car died and you don’t have any other transportation available; maybe you’re under the weather; maybe you’re traveling. Those aren’t what I’m talking about. A lot of times, we’ll have to answer the question with “I’m serving myself” or “I’m serving the surrounding culture” or “I’m serving other people’s opinions”. These instances present great opportunities to re-orient yourself and, laying other things aside, to come and offer yourself to God as he comes to you on the Altar. (I can promise that you won’t get jazzed up.)
After all, he comes to meet you there because of love. He come to feed you with himself because of love. He comes to take your offering of your self, your soul, and your body, not in order to rob you but to heal and sustain you and to infuse you with his own life. Love for you is God’s whole motivation, and that’s a whole lotta love! When you think about it that way, Mass is a meeting with the Lover of your soul. Who wouldn’t rearrange things for that kind of tryst? Who wouldn’t come for this great exchange of love? God’s love can come to us in a lot of ways, but this is its fountainhead, where he says, “Come to me all ye who travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”
—JB+
