Why Do We Think of Mass as an Obligation?

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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St. Augustine Would Be Pleased, I Think

I ask in advance for your forgiveness. I'm being like those doting fathers who insist on boring their friends with the latest snapshots of their children. The above picture shows our Eighth Grade boys at The Atonement Academy. They had just finished serving at Mass (try dividing up the jobs amongst that many!), because today's school Mass was the last time our graduating Seniors and Eighth Graders attend as students. The other students attend until the end of this next week; graduates are made to feel special by allowing them their own "early departure." Of course, most of them will probably show up anyway — our former students tend to think of the Academy as their "other home." The Eighth Grade girls sang in the choir, and they provided a charming setting of the Mass written by the great French composer Jean Langlais when he was only eighteen. We celebrated the Ordinary Form of the Mass in Latin, which is our practice on Fridays. On the other weekdays we celebrate using the Anglican Use, but it's important for our students to be able to participate in Latin, so we do that on a weekly basis.

Of course, we commemorated St. Augustine of Canterbury today. It was a great opportunity for me to speak of the life of this great missionary bishop, who did so much to lay the foundation for the particular spirituality which forms the very Patrimony that the Holy Father has asked us to preserve, nurture and share. St. Augustine is depicted in the triptych which forms the reredos behind the High Altar, so the students see him every day, along with St. Gregory the Great, St. Alban, and the Venerable Bede.

An interesting piece of information — our Eighth Grade boys outnumber the total number of parishioners we had when we began the parish in 1983. A growing Patrimony indeed!

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St Augustine of Canterbury: a 'Celtic' perspective"Train up a child in the way he should go…"Some Pictures From "Becoming One" GatheringSchedule for the San Antonio Gathering"Becoming One" Report from Canada Fr. Christopher G. Phillips is the pastor of Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church in San Antonio, Texas, where he has served for the past twenty-seven years. He is the founding pastor of the first Anglican Use parish, erected in 1983 under the terms of the Pastoral Provision. Fr. Phillips was ordained as an Anglican for the Diocese of Bristol, England, in 1975. After serving as Curate for three years at St. Stephen Southmead, he returned to the United States and served in two Episcopal parishes in the Diocese of Rhode Island. In 1981 he left the Episcopal Church and moved with his family to Texas, where he was subsequently ordained as a Catholic priest in 1983. Fr. Phillips and his wife, JoAnn, have been married for forty years. They have five children, all grown and married, and two grandchildren.

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