Why Sunday Mass matters

Many people laugh at the idea of going to Sunday Mass every week. Some ask: what benefit do I get? This is a selfish question. 

If there are a man and a woman who love each other, and one of them asks the other, “Can you please spend some time with me?”, and the other answers, “What benefit do I get?” – what would we think of that person? 

How would we rate their love? 

If a child were to say to their parent, “Can you please spend some time with me?”, and the parent responds, “What benefit do I get?” – what would we think of that parent? 

How would we rate their love? 

If our best friend says to us, “Could we please spend some time together?”, and we answer, “What benefit do I get?” – what kind of friendship is that? 

It’s a toxic relationship. 

And we would advise them to get out of that relationship straight away, because that person is using us. 

The good thing about Jesus is that, even if we are acting toxic, he can cope, because his heart is far bigger than ours, and so he will keep offering himself to us, hoping that we change our mind. 

For a while. But until we do, there is not much of a relationship there. And after a while, if we are still not keen, he says, “OK. You don’t want to love me. I won’t force myself on you. See you later.” 

That’s what happens at the end of our life – whenever that may be. 

People think that at the end of life they will change their mind. They’re dying, it’s serious, so of course they will prepare to meet their Maker. 

I’m chaplain to a hospital, and I can tell you that many people don’t change their mind. They’ve been avoiding God for so long that it can seem too hard to change. 

Some argue that trying to be a good person is enough. Pope Francis taught that without Sunday Mass it is too hard to be a good person: “How can we practice the Gospel without drawing the necessary energy to do so, Sunday after Sunday, from the inexhaustible source of the Eucharist?” 

Pope Leo says the same: “The Sunday Eucharist is indispensable to the Christian life.” “Faith needs to be nourished and sustained. For this reason, on the ‘eighth day’– that is, every Sunday – the church invites us to do as the first disciples did: gather together and celebrate the Eucharist.” 

These are some of the reasons missing Sunday Mass is a grave and, normally, mortal sin. As Pope Francis said: “Some secularised societies have lost the Christian sense of Sunday illumined by the Eucharist. This is sin!” 

That makes sense. Jesus cries out from the cross, “I thirst” (John 19:28). At every Mass we are present at Jesus’ death on Calvary: we are standing, or even kneeling, there as the winds that blow in the darkness from the desert tug at our clothes. 

That’s why there is this whopping big crucifix at the centre of every Catholic sanctuary. Jesus is crying out to us for company and love—and where are we? 

As we hear Jesus say in today’s psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). And where are we? 

What kind of friend abandons a friend when they feel abandoned? This is why skipping Sunday Mass is crazy. 

Because at the very heart of the Sunday Eucharist is the one thing each of us is seeking in life: to be perfectly loved and treasured as we are. To be filled. To be set free, to be made strong, to be protected, and to never be alone ever again. 

Romantic relationships don’t do that. They try, but don’t get there. Just ask anyone in one. But Jesus can. As he says: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). 

As Jesus also says: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). 

Let’s ask Jesus to help us make Sunday Mass the centre of our life for the rest of our lives.