Three Reasons to Go Back to Mass (Even Though You Don’t “Have to”)

Under ordinary circumstances, Catholics are obligated to attend Mass on Sundays. But as we are well aware by now, the past ten months have not been ordinary, and since last March our bishop has leveraged his legitimate authority to suspend this obligation, giving Catholics the freedom not to attend “if [they] decide that congregating for Sunday Mass would constitute a risk to themselves or others.” 

On the flip side, when we are free to say “no,” our “yes” means that much more. 

So, my dear friends, allow me to encourage those of us who do not think that Mass attendance poses a serious health risk to ourselves or someone close to us: let’s commit to going back to Mass, even though we don’t have to, strictly speaking. And just in case you need some more convincing, here are three reasons (but certainly not the only reasons) why it is important for us to recommit to Sunday Mass. 

#1: Watching-Mass-Online and Going-to-Mass are not the same thing. 

If the deprivation involved with watching Mass online made you hunger more deeply for the Bread of Life and more eager to receive it, that is a great grace. For many of us, there has been a temptation to get comfortably accustomed to watching Mass on our couches, in our PJ’s, coffee in hand - a temptation we should work hard to overcome. 

In this strange age of Zoom-Everything, there is the risk of forgetting that the Catholic faith is fundamentally a sacramental view of reality. God, who is Spirit Itself, took on human flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and by His physical presence on this earth He revealed the Heart of God. The Incarnation, Christ’s taking flesh among us, is the lens through which Catholics see everything else. 

Having an Incarnational faith means even the way we pray and worship together is incarnate; physical presence matters (this is also why you can’t go to Confession over Zoom!), bread and wine matter, voices lifted beneath the same roof matter. For Catholics, these elements are indispensable from our experience of the Liturgy. We are blessed to live in a world where, deprived of the Mass, we could at least participate remotely in the hearing of God’s Word and the Eucharistic Prayer, making a spiritual communion in lieu of Communion itself, but the truth is we have still been just that: deprived of the Mass (see: source and summit of our faith). 

Sacramental (that is, actual) Communion can not be replaced by spiritual communion, no matter how sincere or fervent those spiritual communions are. The very grace that we receive from spiritual communions flows out of the sacrament itself, and spiritual communions are premised on the heartfelt desire to receive Christ’s True Presence in the Eucharist. Note that in the Act of Spiritual Communion, we pray, “since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart.” The prayer itself acknowledges that there is really a difference between the privileged reception of Jesus’ Body and Blood in sacramental Communion and the real but diminished reception of his spiritual presence with us.  

#2: Weekly Mass keeps our eyes on the prize. 

One of the outcomes of the lockdown has been to make us all aware of our social responsibilities and how our choices have the power to impact others. It has demonstrated the need for our society to work together - all of us - for the common good and to protect the most vulnerable among us. These are very good things.

But all of our efforts to promote human flourishing here and now need to be seen in light of our eternal destiny. The Gospel cannot be reduced to a plan for social action. And so while it may feel as if the event we are waiting for is the end of this pandemic - the moment when enough people are vaccinated, or when the lockdowns are lifted, or when the mask mandate is relaxed - our Sunday worship reminds us week after week that none of these represents our real hope. As Christians, we are not awaiting an earthly city but a heavenly one. The pivotal moment in history - the moment that saves us - is not the day when earthly powers tell us we could go outside again, but a quiet Sunday morning outside the walls of Jerusalem when a tomb hewn in the rock was found empty. 

Pope John Paul II put it this way in his apostolic letter, Dies Domini:

The Resurrection of Jesus is the fundamental event upon which Christian faith rests (cf. 1 Cor 15:14). ... Therefore, in commemorating the day of Christ's Resurrection not just once a year but every Sunday, the Church seeks to indicate to every generation the true fulcrum of history, to which the mystery of the world's origin and its final destiny leads (Dies Domini, 2).

We go to Mass week after week, Sunday after Sunday, in part simply because we forget our true destiny too easily. We forget that our hope is in the One who has defeated death itself, the One who now offers us a share in His victory so that we might live without fear. We forget that our main concern as Christians cannot be our health, our safety, or our comfort in this life. 

At Mass, we are reminded that our true home lies beyond the veil of time and space; we receive the Food that keeps us safe for eternal life; we gather in prayer, charity, and solidarity with our fellow pilgrims. These are powerful antidotes to worldly ways of thinking and acting. When it feels as if the world’s problems are overwhelming or we begin to place our hope in passing things, let us not take for granted the power of the Eucharist to reorient our thinking. 

#3: Now is a time for courage.

We have spent the better part of a year adapting our lives in radical ways to limit the spread of this virus. Despite the fact that many of us can still work, pray, and socialize over Zoom, nevertheless the move to a virtual version of life has greatly reduced our ability to engage in relationships and participate in society. 

Along the way, there has been a subtle but real temptation to start seeing our fellow man as a bag of germs rather than a brother or a sister, to fear rather than thirst for vital contact with others, to live as if we can flourish without the nearness of others (which we cannot). These attitudes run directly contrary to our faith; they cannot be tolerated in Christian communities. 

Over the past few months we have seen that the Archdiocese’s safety guidelines for Mass have been very effective in preventing the virus from spreading. Your parish is one of the safest public spaces for you to enter. Our bishops, priests, sacristans, and fellow parishioners have exercised wisdom and prudence in making it possible for us to return safely to Mass because they know that Sunday Eucharist is the food that our souls cannot live without. 

Catholics have always been called to live courageously in the midst of the world. Today is no exception. Especially now, the way the Church responds to this pandemic should be visibly different from the rest of society because we know that at every Mass, we receive the Body of Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. We know what a gift our Sunday worship really is. Now is the time to decide what we are willing to risk for that gift.

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I will conclude by saying that these are just three of the manifold reasons why it is time to start going back to Mass if you haven’t already. We may not “have to” go, strictly speaking, but the rules (or lack thereof) will never alter our desperate need for the Eucharist, for sacramental life in general, and for the experience of gathering with other Catholics. Restrictions and lockdowns may continue to fluctuate over the next couple of months, but it appears that public liturgies are here to stay; may the Mass become a permanent fixture in our lives, a Law that lives within our hearts and animates our lives.

Sarah Carter lives in St. Paul with her husband, Will, and her son, Elijah. She and her family attend the Church of St. Mark and are members of the St. Mark Young Adult community. Sarah graduated from the University of St. Thomas in 2014, spent two years serving as a campus missionary for Saint Paul’s Outreach in Columbus, Ohio, and returned to St. Paul in 2016 to begin study for her master’s in theology at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, which she completed in 2019. Now she teaches moral theology and Scripture at Hill-Murray School.