7th Sunday OT, C February 20, 2022
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
One huge mistake of the Church in the past 60 years, in my opinion, is we made the Catholic faith too convenient. In part, it’s a psychological thing. Human beings naturally place more value in things that are expensive, difficult, or rare. I’ve seen studies that show how strict religions tend to succeed more than easier ones. I’ve seen in myself and in others that when something is just given to us or made too easily available, we tend to neglect it and take it for granted.
I get the motivation. Leaders in the last century thought “if we make the faith a little more palatable, we’ll get more people.” So they avoided tough teachings, they lowered or removed requirements for fasting, they made Mass more convenient in a lot of ways. And yet, in the western world at least, we’ve seen massive decline. And do you know where Catholicism is growing and booming? Where it is hard. Where poverty, persecution, and cultural challenges make it costly to be Catholic, we see more people taking Catholicism seriously. Too easy, too convenient translates in our minds to “not that important.”
More importantly, convenience and ease are not fully compatible with what Christ himself tells us about the faith. “Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.” Then there is probably the most difficult in all of scripture: “Love your enemy.” And Jesus gets specific. Let people hit you without retaliating. Let people steal from you and even volunteer to give more of your stuff away. The Love of God goes beyond natural affections and loyalties. Rather than just repaying others fairly, it is a call to be generous and kind even to those who are unfair to us.
This isn’t about pacifism. There are times and places where defending others is necessary and good, but we are nonetheless called… challenged to choose love when it is hard, to return goodness in response to evil. When Christians follow this teaching, it works. The early Church shows that by how it grew rapidly despite being illegal. The challenge was real, the cost was felt, and so the reward and value of it was more apparent. Human beings don’t need convenience, they need purpose.
Which is why we must beware what I call “the cult of convenience.” It’s why my recent homilies have trended towards challenging you to dig deeper. It’s also why I’m taking this time to announce a change that is never popular: Sunday Mass times. Put simply, we have too many for the needs of our parish. There are three good reasons to have multiple Sunday Masses. The best reason is when the Church is too full for one Mass. We average 300 people a weekend and our Church can hold up to 600. It doesn’t add up. The next reason is significant cultural or linguistic differences. We do have some diversity, but it’s not like there are large groups of people in our parish in need of a different language. The third reason is to offer times that, if missing, would make it impossible for people to make it to Mass.
Imagine that, for Thanksgiving, you spend hours shopping and preparing and cooking only to have your children call you at the last minute to tell you they wouldn’t be there for lunch, but that each of them would pop in at various times at their convenience. Seeing them is better than nothing, but Thanksgiving is meant to be a meal shared by the whole family at the same time. For Mass, that is a million times more true. Mass is not about checking a box, but entering into the sacred sacrifice and meal of your spiritual family. Part of its value is worshipping with other parishioners. This is where I see the “cult” in cult of convenience. All too often, we are willing to “sacrifice” our schedule to meet the demands of work, school, sports, or our own hobbies. Mass gets fitted in wherever it’s convenient and if it isn’t, then we cut it out… sacrifice it to the idol of our own comfort and ease. Mass is quite literally the most powerful thing you can do on earth, but a little rain, a sports game, a competition of some kind suddenly becomes a reason to miss that altogether. And experience proves that you can get to Mass without significant health risks if precautions are taken.
Don’t get me wrong, there are situations when real obstacles make it next to impossible, when we can’t control our schedules without losing our entire livelihood. Saturday evening Mass is meant for people like healthcare, police, and emergency workers, who have to work all day Sunday. It won’t change unless y’all ask for it. But the 8 and the 10 am on Sunday? They are so close together that hardly anyone who can make one is genuinely incapable of making the other. So, starting the second week of Easter, we are switching to a single morning Mass at 9am, to meet in the middle of those two groups. Will it be inconvenient for some? Sure, but that might just be why it’s good for us.
This isn’t just some ploy to make my life easier. I am willing – if someone can show me a real need in this community – to offer an evening Mass on Sunday. That would require enough volunteers for ushers, lectors, sacristans, and, yes, music because every Sunday Mass should be authentic worship, not a convenient checking of the box. The measure with which you measure – the generosity you show in getting to and participating in Mass – will be what is measured out to you.
Still further, I do want to measure myself out to you more generously, particularly in ways that are not just more Masses, which are fairly easy for me and don’t reach those outside. Annulments, blessing marriages, confession. I want to get back to walking the neighborhood praying the rosary and visiting people. I still remember a survey answer 3 years ago that said I needed to take an interest in the lives of my people. I want to do that, but that requires you to let me in. Invite me to ride a tractor with you, to visit the office where you work, to join you at a club meeting or hobby, to have a meal or a coffee. I’m grateful for those who have already done these things and I’m mostly addressing those who might see me as just a stranger passing through. I can’t promise I’ll accept every offer or remember every name, but I can promise I will try. I can promise that I am praying for you, fasting for you, and generally concerned about you.
So let’s challenge one another to love as Christ commands, to measure out more generously. And if we perhaps find ourselves seeing the other as an enemy, well then we can practice that kind of love too. Because, in the end, that’s the real goal. Not convenience, not comfort, not getting our own way, and not political or social victory, but persistently, deliberately choosing to love God who always loves you and to love others, whether they love you back or not.