Our Sunday Obligation
Sunday, May 25, 2008

Readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

Reading 1: Deut. 8:2–3, 14b–16a

Responsorial Psalm: Ps. 147:12–13, 14–15, 19–20

Reading 2: 1 Cor. 10:16–17

Gospel: Jn. 6:51–58

Link to Readings

By Father Ray Ryland, Ph.D., J.D.

In the little town where I grew up, there were two Catholics, the Graceys, a middle-aged couple who owned a department store in which they worked long hours. A number of times I heard my mother express sympathy for them.

“Those poor people,” she would say; “they work fifteen or sixteen hours on Saturday and then have to get up early on Sunday and drive fifteen miles to a six-thirty Mass.” Then she would add, “What a terrible hold that old Catholic Church must have on them. I feel so sorry for them!”

Many years later, after she and my father entered the Church, she could smile at the thought of her having felt sorry for the Graceys.

The obligation of Mass attendance is perfectly clear. The Code of Canon Law, 247, specifies, “On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass. . . .” The Catechism of the Catholic Church, number 2182, makes the obligation more specific: “Those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave [that is, mortal] sin.”

On this solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, let’s think about that obligation.

Christians and Pagans

First, the historical background of the solemn obligation of Mass attendance.

For about 250 years, from the first to the fourth centuries, taking part in Eucharistic worship was a crime punishable by death.

The pagan mobs hated and feared individual Christians. The Roman government hated and feared the Church, so it focused its attack on Christians who expressed their beliefs in corporate worship. Here’s why.

The pagan authorities realized that if under the threat of torture and/or death a Christian lapsed and renounced his faith, he would not be sincere. They knew he probably would still hold his Christian beliefs. But those authorities knew something else.

They also knew that if they could force a Christian to apostatize, that would exclude him from the Church’s worship. And the Church at worship was always the primary target of persecution.

Thousands of Christians were killed. Tens of thousands suffered greatly in their persons and their fortunes. Hundreds of thousands were ostracized by family and friends. And throughout that whole period, the storm center was the Eucharist itself.

Ironically, the Church and the pagan government were agreed on one point: Though for different reasons, the pagan government agreed with the Church regarding the real test for determining if a person were Christian. That was, simply, whether he shared regularly in the Church’s worship.

For the state, a person who professed Christian beliefs but did not express them in worship posed no danger. For the Church, beliefs not expressed in regular Eucharistic worship were meaningless. That’s still the Church’s conviction. Therein lies the seriousness of the Mass obligation.

The Center of Christian Life

As Vatican II reminded us, Eucharistic worship necessarily must stand at the center of the Christian life.

. . . the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the fount from which all her power flows. For the goal of apostolic endeavor is that all who are made sons of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of his Church, to take part in the Sacrifice and to eat the Lord’s Supper. (Constitution on the Liturgy, no. 10)

. . . it is the liturgy through which, especially in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, “the work of our redemption is accomplished,” and it is through the liturgy, especially, that the faithful are enabled to express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church. (Ibid. no. 2)

When the pagan government tried to destroy Christianity, it went for the jugular, so speak. It focused its attack on Catholic worship. The government killed great numbers of clergy and sentenced many others to penal servitude for life. The conditions of that servitude were such that most of them died within a year or two. The pagan government confiscated property used for Christian worship and sought by all means to make it impossible for Christians to assemble in worship.

We can hardly imagine the atmosphere of danger in which ordinary Christians regularly risked their lives to share in the Eucharist. St. Cyprian treats as common the practice of smuggling a priest and a deacon into the prisons to celebrate the Eucharist for confessors about to be executed.

In another source, we read about a priest, Lucian. In prison he was tied down on his back, and he was slowly being torn in half. Just before his death, and in great agony, he celebrated the Eucharist for the last time. He used his chest for an altar, and gave communion to those lying in the darkness around him (Dix, 152).

At the height of the fiercest persecution under Diocletian, early in the fourth century, a congregation in Africa had gone into hiding and was being sought by the authorities. After being deprived of the Eucharist for weeks, they summoned a priest to celebrate. They said they could no longer live without the Eucharist. They knew that after the celebration they would all be apprehended and put to death. And they were.

Members of Christ’s Body

Those early Christians were ordinary people like us. Why did they regularly risk their lives by going to Mass?

They certainly did not face risk death to gather and simply think about Jesus. They could do that at home. They did not take their lives in their hands, week after week, simply to receive Communion. They could receive Communion in the comparative safety of their homes. In earliest centuries, communicants were allowed to take the Blessed Sacrament to their homes and communicate themselves daily.

But note: If authorities discovered that a Christian suspect was carrying what we would call a pyx, with the Blessed Sacrament in it, the death sentence for that person was sure to follow quickly. The law was perfectly clear: “Christians may not exist.”

What did impel those Christians to risk their lives regularly by sharing in the Eucharist? Listen to the testimony of a noted liturgical scholar, Gregory Dix (Shape of the Liturgy). Those early Christians risked their lives, says Dix, because they were convinced that only in this corporate action could each Christian receive the fulfillment of his being as a member of Christ’s body.

They believed with all their hearts that in the Eucharistic action, “as in no other way,” each person could take his part “in that act of sacrificial obedience to the will of God which was consummated on Calvary and which had redeemed the world, including himself.”

Those early Christians were convinced that “there rested on each of the redeemed an absolute necessity so to take his own part in the self-offering of Christ, a necessity more binding even than the instinct of self-preservation” (emphasis added).

“Simply as members of Christ’s Body, the Church, all Christians must do this, and they can do it in no other way than that which was the last command of Jesus to His own” (Dix, Shape of the Liturgy, 152f.).

Remember now that Dix is Anglican, not Catholic. Hear what he says about the Catholic rule of Mass attendance:

That rule of absolute obligation upon each of the faithful of presence at Sunday Mass under pain of mortal sin, which seems so mechanical and formalist to the protestant, is something which was burned into the corporate mind of historic christendom in the centuries between . . . [the 1st and the 4th centuries].

That rule of Mass obligation, Dix continues, “rests upon something more evangelical and more profound than historical memories. . . . [that rule] expresses as nothing else can the whole New Testament doctrine of redemption, of Jesus, God and Man, as the only saviour of mankind, who intends to draw all men unto Him by his sacrificial and atoning death, and of the church as the communion of redeemed sinners, the Body of Christ, corporately invested with His own mission of salvation to the world” (Ibid. 154).

That’s the historical background. Now the reason for the absolute rule of Mass attendance.

Proclaim the Lord’s Death

Scripture gives us a clear command: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13f.). Our grave obligation to share in the offering of the Holy Sacrifice arises out of the fact that our salvation is a continuous process which must go on day by day throughout our lives.

With regard to the Eucharist, Scripture explains that “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26). Proclaim the Lord’s death? Proclaim it to whom?

The common Protestant answer is, “proclaim it to ourselves and to the world.” But this is only a secondary reason for the proclamation mandated by Scripture. Our liturgy repeatedly declares that in the Eucharistic offering we are proclaiming the Lord’s death—and all that death entails—to God the Father.

Why must we proclaim the Lord’s death to God the Father? Because, says our liturgy (Prayer over the Gifts, 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time), “when we proclaim the death of the Lord . . . [God the Father] continue(s) the work of our redemption.” The same declaration occurs in another prayer over the gifts (Votive Mass B for the Holy Eucharist): “For whenever this memorial sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is renewed.”

Now we can begin to understand why the Book of Hebrews often exults over the fact that the work of Christ the high priest is going on right now and will continue to the end of time. Jesus “holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:24-25).

Hebrews speaks of the will of the Father which the Son came to accomplish. And what was that will? That we should be made holy “through the offering of his body made once for all by Jesus Christ” (Heb. 10:10). That offering made once for all is continually repeated in our behalf by the celebration of the Eucharist. And this continues the working-out of our redemption.

The benefits of the objective redemption of the whole world wrought by Christ have to be applied to each person in his or her unique life situation. It’s a continual process of applying that benefit, not a once-for-all event.

The bottom line is this. Sharing in Eucharistic worship is the primary means whereby we allow the Holy Spirit to work out our salvation in us. Listen to what our catechism tells us (Catechism of the Catholic Church).

According to section 1366, the Eucharist is a true sacrifice “because it re-presents [makes present] the sacrifice of the Cross, . . . and because it applies its fruit. . . .” In other words, the Eucharist applies to each worshipper who is in a state of grace, the fruit of Christ’s victory on the Cross.

Section 1325 of the Catechism uses even stronger language: “The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being.” Think of that! Through the Eucharist God maintains the very being of the Catholic Church, the ark of salvation.

Sum it all up. When we take our part in the Eucharistic action, what happens?

We allow Jesus to exercise His high priesthood in our behalf. We allow Jesus, in other words, to re-present His perfect offering of Himself to the Father for our salvation. We allow the Holy Spirit to apply to us the salvation won for us on the cross by God the Son. We cooperate in the continuing process of our own salvation: “work out your own salvation. . . .”

That process is never complete in this life: It must continue until we draw our last breath.

**********

To stay away from Mass on Sundays or holy days of obligation is to turn our backs on Jesus Christ. In that act we reject our own salvation. It’s like a deep-sea diver, a hundred feet down in the water, going out of his mind and putting a crimp in his air hose so no air can come through to keep him alive.

If anyone chooses to miss Mass on Sunday or on a holy day of obligation, that person cuts himself off from sanctifying grace. Simply coming back to Mass will not take the crimp out of our spiritual air hose. The crimp remains until we go to Confession.

Putting that crimp there by saying away from Mass is a mortal sin, which we must take to Confession, with the intention of never repeating that sin.

Then sanctifying grace can flood our lives again.

But only then.

Father Ray Ryland is CUF's spiritual advisor.

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