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I am
having a problem with laziness in Mass attendance and this is frightening
me. I start and stop in my prayer life and Mass attendance. . .
I have been a practicing Catholic for all my childhood and fell away in my
20-30s and ran back in my early 40s and have fallen away again! I made a
deeply honest Confession in Advent but am so terrified that I will fall away
again. What is this particular trait and what would be the best prayers for
healing of this?
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 onsider, for a moment, a simple
comparison. Sin is the practical effect of pushing
God out of our hearts, right? So we can say that the lack of God in
our hearts leads us into sin, and that when we recognize that “lack”
we then have the ability to remedy our predicament—that is, we can
repent our sins and open our hearts to God.
Similarly, in the realm of psychology, we often can learn the most about
ourselves from what is lacking in the things we say. Once we recognize that
“lack,” we have a good clue as to what we need to do to change
our lives for the better.
Now, when you compare the two
messages you sent me, you can see that, even though in both messages you
try to summarize your current problems, you mentioned something in your first
message that did not appear in the second message. So what is this lack?
Your not attending Mass.
An Obligation,
a Duty, a Habit
To many Catholics, Mass seems
to be an obligation, something of a duty, a habit—maybe even a burden
carried for the sake of guilt—that we might prefer to avoid in order
to enjoy other things more immediately pleasant
and satisfying. Some of this problem derives from the fact that the Church
herself even states that we have an obligation to attend Mass. It’s
written in the Precepts of the Church.
But when the Church speaks like this, the intent is to help us understand
the bare minimum of what constitutes a Christian
life. It’s a bit like specifying the minimum ingredients—flour
and water, for example—needed to make bread. Or it’s like
saying that some sort of fluid intake is a necessary minimum to sustain
life.
But when you are told these
things, they often seem like abstract and dull rules.
If, however, you were lost in
a desert, dying of thirst, you would drag your body through hot, burning
sand to reach a water hole. Water, in that case, would be no abstraction.
It would be real.
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Have you ever
read news reports about big snow storms and how churches cancel services
because travel is too dangerous? Yet people will still flock to football
games and shopping malls in that same, dangerous weather. Now, when people
would cancel Mass but go to a sporting event, it isn’t very difficult
to determine what they believe to be most real and precious, is
it? |
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Something
Real
Well, instead of thinking about
the Mass as an obligation, think of it like water in the desert, something
real. Think of the real presence of Christ in the
Eucharist. In the host you have Faith;
you literally see the Father because “when you see Me you have seen
the Father.” In the chalice you have Love, because what greater
love is there than to shed your blood for
another?
What greater reason is there
to rejoice?
Reason to
Rejoice
In fact, if we look at the Easter
Exultet, we can see that the angelic choirs of heaven have reason to rejoice
at every Mass for the same reason they rejoice at the Easter
Vigil:
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that the darkness
of the world is scattered
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that wickedness is
put to flight
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that sin is
cleansed
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that innocence to
the fallen is restored
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that gladness is
given to the sorrowful
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that hatred is driven
forth
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that concord is
prepared
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that haughtiness
is bent down
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that heavenly things
are united to those of earth and things divine to those which are of man.
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Once you see the reality of
the Eucharist, rather than an abstract obligation, something will change.
Instead of feeling pushed into doing something, you will feel
drawn to your deepest desire. There is
a big difference there. When we’re pushed, we either dig in our heels
and resist or we become passively aggressive
through laziness. That’s human pride. But
when we desire something we would fly, if we could, to get to it. That’s
what Catholic mysticism is all about. It’s the desire for holiness.
It’s the desire to love.
The Desire to
Love
You have within your heart the
desire to love, but it has somehow been buried under
fear because of what was lacking in your own childhood.
When you were a child, abstract and dull rules were imposed on you, and you
were left feeling empty and lazy. You did not experience religion as a matter
of real love. Furthermore, you have been brainwashed by an anti-Catholic culture
intent on destroying the true faith.
But now, by the grace of God, you
have the opportunity to embrace your faith and rediscover
the love that God gave you in the beginning but that languished because it
wasn’t watered properly.
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