St. Julie Billiart * Mass Attendance

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Christ the King

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.“The very ‘Church’ in the original Greek language of the New Testament, ekklesia, means “those who are called together, those who congregate.”

 We cannot be who we are meant to be in faith without getting together.”

Mass Attendance

.The following from "Sharings From The Pastor" in the Nov. 21, 2004 weekly parish bulletin:

Masses this weekend mark the end of the Church year. Next weekend we celebrate the First Sunday of Advent as we begin a new Church year.

The solemnity we celebrate today was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925. He felt that the western world was becoming increasingly secularized and therefore wanted to challenge it to a greater awareness of faith in the ministry, death and resurrection of Christ.

In this feast we Christians offer to Christ all our concerns in naming him king—concerns for good order, for respect for the Church, for the final triumph of the good news of Christianity, for conversion of the godless. Christ in turn accepts these concerns and does them justice while freeing us from anxiousness and self-seeking, inviting us to loving service of, and prophetic challenge to, the world.

We Follow Where Christ Leads

In other words, we follow the example of our master, the one whom we acclaim as universal king: Christ, the Lord. He came among us not to be served but to serve.

But, in order to follow his example, we have to become as deeply practicing a member of his Church as we possibly can. We have to “hang out” with each other, support each other, hear and reflect upon the good news with each other and celebrate the sacraments with each other, especially the Eucharist each Sunday throughout the Church year.

We don’t create our own faith, we hand on the faith—from generation to generation. We transmit that gift of faith by being present to one another—by becoming more truly what it is we eat and drink each Sunday in the Eucharist: a people of good news.

So it was, last weekend, on a Saturday morning, Fr. Tony and I were each popping our heads into the various classrooms in the Devine Center as young people were gathering to begin another session of religious formation.

All we were doing is saying “good morning” and asking what the kids were doing. Gone are days when kids would immediately jump out of their chairs and onto their feet to stand and say “good morning, Father!” (I know this dates me. I grew up in another era.)

Some of the kids knew who I was. Many didn’t. It’s a sad fact that many of our children in both the religious education program and the school don’t attend Sunday Mass on a weekly basis—because their parents don’t. One young guy even proudly admitted that he only comes to Mass at Easter!

This was said, of course, without a hint of guilt—as if Sunday Mass once-a-year was a good thing. I suppose it is, if the alternative is never at all.

That’s not what it means to be a member of the household of the faithful. To follow Christ in our Catholic tradition means that you “hang out” with other Catholics who worship on Sunday—every Sunday of the year. It’s how we become a family of faith, how we support each other in living the good news out in the world, precisely because it is a secular world, a hostile world that sees faith in God as something unimportant and Church as a reality that is accorded even by some so-called Catholics a seeming indifference.

The very “Church” in the original Greek language of the New Testament, ekklesia, means “those who are called together, those who congregate.” We cannot be who we are meant to be in faith without getting together.

For us Catholics that means every Sunday. Once a week isn’t so difficult or so much when you consider what we’re aiming for is eternity.

May this next Church year find us gathered together as a family of faith around the altar each Sunday, each Lord’s Day.

Fr. Steve Lanza
Nov. 21, 2004

This page updated on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 02:56 PM