Ascension Sunday, B May 16, 2021
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
The Bishop asked that this letter be read during the homily: “Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Diocese of Lafayette, the third commandment of God obliges us to keep holy the Lord’s Day. This commandment is fulfilled when we give God the most perfect worship possible, the worship of Jesus Christ himself in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We also observe it by works of charity, spiritual reading, and refraining from unnecessary servile labor to spend time with family and loved ones. In this way we give God the adoration that is His due, nourish our souls with the Body and Blood of Christ and direct our lives to our eternal goal — life with God. This understanding is what we know as the “obligation for Catholics to participate in Mass every Sunday.”
Because of seriousness of the pandemic, the Sunday obligation was dispensed by me to comply with safety directives recommended by health authorities. Now that conditions have improved, people more frequently shop, socialize, go to gyms and participate in other activities outside their homes, the time has come to also observe the Lord’s Day by assisting at Mass on Sundays. I am therefore lifting the dispensation from Sunday Obligation in the Diocese of Lafayette beginning on June 6, 2021, the Feast of Corpus Christi. All Catholics will be seriously obligated to assist at Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. Those who are sick, in nursing homes, immuno-compromised, of advanced age or caring for a sick person at home are, as before, exempt from the obligation.
I am humbled by so many who have already returned to Mass each Sunday. It is a testament to your faith and desire for the Eucharist. I thank God for that. I also wish to thank our many good priests who looked for ways to creatively continue to minister to us in a safe way during the pandemic. After consulting with experts who have confirmed that with proper precautions we can gather together for Mass, I think that this is the proper time for us to come together to worship God.
I know that for many, the pandemic has been a time of spiritual renewal, a deeper appreciation for the Mass and a desire to receive the Eucharist. I ask you to join with me on June 6, the Feast of Corpus Christi, to worship God at Mass, hear His word in the Scriptures and be nourished with the Bread of Life, the Body and Blood of the Lord.
Wishing all of you God’s Blessings, I am Most Reverend J. Douglas Deshotel, Bishop of Lafayette.”
I can’t count the number of times people have told me “no one cares if you say that missing Mass is a sin.” Maybe so, but I am obliged to speak the truth. The truth is that, starting June 6, missing Mass on purpose without a legitimate excuse, is considered a mortal sin. Like every other mortal sin, you need to go to confession before you can receive communion again. There, I said it.
But! I get why people say no one cares. We’ve got something of a PR problem, where it looks like all the Catholic Church cares about is shaming people, controlling them, and pestering them for money. Too much emphasis on “do this or go to Hell” is not very persuasive, is it? So, other than being a sin, why go to Mass? What does this have to do with the love I preached about last week or the joy we’ve been talking about since Easter? In a word, Everything.
“God mounts his throne to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord.” Today we celebrate Jesus Christ’s Ascension into heaven. For the first time since the beginning of time itself, a human nature, a human body and soul enters into heaven. The Son of God used to only be God. But then he became a human baby. That baby grew up, taught, did miracles, got arrested, then executed on the cross. That Man, who is also God, then rose from the dead and, after 40 days, he took his human nature back into heaven where he started. When he did that, he opened the way for all of us, raising us beyond our limits into eternal joy.
But do you have eternal joy right now? Not quite. Jesus led the way, he began the process. What we have to do is follow; A little at a time to make our own human nature match his. How? By dragging it into heaven. As St. Paul puts it, we work at it “until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature to manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ.” The full stature of Christ is to stand in heaven before God himself in perfect joy, love, and peace.
But what is love? We must never stop reminding ourselves that this word is so often misused, what is love? It is to will the good of the other, without worrying about how it benefits myself. Love is changing a child’s diaper. It is facing an hour-long commute to work each day to earn a living for your family. It is giving away hard-earned money to someone struggling to make rent. It is choosing to forgive.
Love has lots of emotional and psychological rewards, but often enough, love is work. If there is real love behind it, the work doesn’t seem so hard, the sacrifice almost comes easily. You might complain about the first few diapers or trips to work, but remember why, and it opens the way to joy. We become less selfish, more generous.
What does it mean to love God? He needs nothing from us, so how do we do what’s good for him? The same way you benefit your wife who is content. You do something that delights her, something extra that isn’t required but makes her a little happier just because. Sometimes, that extra thing is hard or boring; you lose motivation but push through anyway. And they delight in it.
So it is with God. God doesn’t need you to come to Mass. He’s perfectly content and happy without your presence just as he was before any of us existed. But he does delight in you when you do come. The one thing that delights the Father is his Son. And when He sees His Son in you, in your imitation of Him, He delights in it. When Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, he brought his father the gift of his own humanity, the gift of his obedience, the gift of his love for us. When we imitate Jesus in any way, we echo this gift.
Loving our neighbor and proclaiming the Gospel are key parts of this, as Jesus makes clear with this command to “go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” But so is going to Mass. Why? Because Mass is a participation in what Jesus did today. Jesus goes into the sanctuary of heaven to offer his own humanity to the Father. When we celebrate Mass, we make Jesus present on the altar and offer him, body, blood, soul, and divinity to the Father.
“But I don’t get anything out of it.” “I don’t feel fed by it.” “It’s boring.” The Mass is a liturgy. The word liturgy comes from a Greek word that means “the work of the people.” The work, not their entertainment or comfort, their work. You love your spouse, so you spend hours shopping, preparing, cooking, and then serving a meal. This can be boring and tedious, but if you love enough to push through, you bring delight to your loved ones, or at the very least some nourishment.
Approach the Mass the same way. Don’t come because we threaten you – that’s not what we’re doing. Come because God loves you and you want to love him back. Come to offer him your time and energy, to delight him with the gift of your presence, your attention, your voice, and even the pains and trials and petitions you place on the altar during the offertory. Come to help prepare and then to share in the meal that delights him the most, the very body and blood of his son, given to you so that you can become like him.
If you come to get something, you will often be unsatisfied. But if you come to give something, you will never fail. Continue to give, to show up, to put in the time simply because you love and that love means a commitment. Come to give worship to God the way he asks you to, receive back from him his own body and blood, and then go forth to proclaim the good news of the work Jesus has done for us, the work of love on the cross that, by going to Mass, we get to enter into and make present here and now. If there’s anything worth doing, anything worth loving, surely it’s going to place where you can offer love’s own love back to him, right?