As a lifelong Catholic, I always cherished the ability to experience “communion” with God through the celebration of the Mass and holy Communion.
I remember my First Communion almost 50 years ago and the great mystery I felt I privileged to experience. I really did aglow with the closeness to the divine during that moment.
Yet, it is rare to find someone who can communicate the real and deep personal excitement and the joy associated with the Eucharist.
Last week, during the Catholic Press Association’s annual Catholic Media Convention In Pittsburgh, I had the chance to talk to Mike Aquilina, author of the 2011 Servant Books’ Understanding the Mass: 100 Questions, 100 Answers.
“The Mass is the greatest thing on earth,” Aquilina said, noting that the “communion we are going to enjoy forever begins right now and we grow in it right now every time we go to holy Mass, every time we receive Communion.”
For those who look at the Mass as a duty to be performed, as a task to avoid, as a time to show up late and/or leave early, the author of Angels of God: The Bible, the Church and the Heavenly Hosts, Fire of God’s Love: 120 Reflections on the Eucharist, and Roots of the Faith: From the Church Fathers to You is clear about Communion being to path to personal happiness.
“The more we get out of the Mass, the more we know about the Mass, the more we put into the Mass, the happier we are going to be, the more fulfilled we are going to be,” he said. “Not only later on in heaven, but right here in this life now.”
Aquilina said he wrote Understanding the Mass “because it is something we should want to understand, something we need to understand.”
But in a world where we all face many distractions, where we have too many unanswered questions, where our faith is challenged by those around us, the executive vice president of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology stressed that Catholics need to focus on their relationship with God.
Yet where did that sense of excitement, of mystery, of passion felt at First Communion go? Why do many of us think of Mass as an obligation?
Aquilina’s Understanding the Mass provides us with a place to look for questions we have and find clear answers quickly. But more than that, it offers us an inkling of the possibilities of a real personal relationship with the Lord. “The answers are only a beginning,” he said, “because you want to keep growing from there. We want to get to know more from there.”
“We want to love Jesus, we want to love him better. We want love him more. We want to feel his love for us. But we can’t love what we don’t know,” Aquilina said. “I guess books like this is about getting that doctrine out there so that they’ll know Jesus better, they’ll know what he did for them. And they’ll want to return that love, especially when they go Mass and he’s coming to them in holy communion, the closest possible union there is.”
For Aquilina, the Mass becomes a way to grow in gratitude for all that we have and through that to increase our own happiness quotient.
“Gratitude is the note of the Mass. Eucharist means gratitude and we want to grow in that. If we grow in gratitude, if we grow in eucharistic life, a life of self giving, we’ll grow in happiness,” the husband and father said.
“If I wrote the book for one reason, it is to help people to be grateful.”
Mike Aquilina offers us the gift his passion for the Lord, his sense of deep thanksgiving for all that he has received, his receipt of a joy that is eternal beginning with this moment. It is a energy that is catchy.
Mark Lombard, the director of the Product Development Division, has worked throughout his career in Catholic publishing. He is married, the father of two and a new grandfather. Mark is an avid jazz lover, traveling with his wife to catch jazz performances throughout the East Coast. blog comments powered by 
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