Some people would think the priest has no idea that there are parents who send their children to religious education but do not attend mass themselves. Of course, we know this. Unfortunately, doing this makes your religious education efforts a virtual waste of time. The reason is why are you sending your children to religious education while you are teaching them what we are doing there is not important. That is the lesson you teach more effectively than anything we seek to teach them. It also undermines our efforts and your goals.

There is another reason why Mass attendance is import and it has to do with one of the most basic struggles of Catholicism. What does it mean to be a Catholic? Many Catholics believe that God seeks people to do good things and when we show Him our good things we have done, He lets us into Heaven as if they were like a ticket to the Kingdom of God. Many, for that reason, do not go to Church because they feel they are good enough to get to Heaven, so why go to Church? However, we do not get to Heaven by doing good things, we get to Heaven by our relationship with Jesus and His Kingdom. I do not know anyplace in the bible where Jesus says, “because you do bad things, I will cast you into Hell.” He does teach how our relationship with Him must affect how we live our lives. However, the ominous sign that Jesus makes is in not responding to those who reject Him. He does it in two cases, to the “bad” thief on the cross and to King Herod. They chide Him and He ignores them completely. He never caught them doing bad things, but their rejection of Him makes him unresponsive to their demands, even verbally.

This is why missing mass is such a serious sin. It is a form of closing off our relationship with God. We basically tell God that He is not important to us and that we can be good people on our own. However, Jesus Himself tells us that we cannot be truly good and do what needs to be done when we are not in relationship with Him.

Missing mass is a serious sin because it is rooted in rejecting God’s presence in our lives. It is like calling someone a friend when you refuse to even speak to them. God, however, is more than a friend, He is our Father, our creator, our God. We spend time in His presence at Mass and hear His word and receive His very self-giving to us that we may build our relationship with Him and let Him affect our lives. That is where the doing good comes from, by allowing Him to affect our lives. 

So, if you have a child in our religious education program, please make sure you are also coming to mass, otherwise you are teaching your children that what they do in our Church really is not important and when you do that you are essentially undermining your own efforts to lead them to Christ and ours as well.

See you Sunday.

Fr. Robert J Carr