Sunday Mass - What's In It For Me?

It’s time to delve into that third commandment: Remember to keep holy the Sabbath, as long as the service is entertaining. What do you mean, “that’s not what Deuteronomy says…”

Listen, you’ve probably heard a friend or a relative or perhaps, at times, even yourself, say “I just didn’t get anything out of that service today.” During a recent retreat, the Director of Faith Formation at our church shared the tried and true response she gives when her own kids occasionally tell her they didn’t get anything out of Mass. She turns the question around and asks, “What did you put into it?”

In so many ways, her response is perfectly suited for our times. If you talk to friends and family members who don’t attend Mass as religiously as they should – or those who have fallen away completely – they will oftentimes name a litany of things they don’t like about a particular Mass or the Sunday experience in their church. They’ll talk about dated music, boring sermons or not connecting with a particular priest. They may mention children who cry too loud, ushers who are not welcoming, or parishioners who check their Christian charity at the door as soon as someone dares to snag their favorite seat.

In our frantic, fast-paced society, time is our most precious commodity. We’ve been taught and conditioned to use our time wisely, to spend it on things that interest and fulfill us. We are upset if we see a movie and are not entertained; if we go to a concert and the performer lacks stage presence; if we attend a game and our favorite team doesn’t give it their all; if we walk into a restaurant and the wait is too long or the service is poor. As a society, we are beginning to expect every experience – from a children’s soccer game to the service we receive at the car dealer - to live up to the same high standards we maintain for entertainment.

All too often, we expect our church going experience to do so as well.

We expect awesome singing, inspired sermons and a congregation that’s on fire to go do God’s work in the world. If any single aspect of our Sunday experience falls short, we are quick to throw the whole thing under the bus as quickly as we do a restaurant with a snippy waitress.

But that’s not what Sunday Mass is supposed to be about.

Faithfully attending Mass every Sunday is one way in which we fulfill our obligation to God. It’s one of the few things he asks us to do. We keep the Sabbath holy by worshipping God, and as Catholics, our primary form of worship is the public, communal service of the Mass. It is uniting our voice with those of others to worship the God who created us, guides and loves us so much that he gave us His only Son to secure our place with Him for eternity. That’s the purpose of Sunday Mass – us thanking God for His many gifts and worshipping Him. (I realize I haven’t even gone into what we “get” out of Eucharist itself, but that’s an entirely different article.)

So if the music is not rocking it out, the sermon is not particularly inspiring, or the usher is having a bad day, it really doesn’t matter. None of those things are why we should be there. If we go into Mass focused on Who and What it’s really about, it’s amazing what we’ll get out of it.