With new supermarkets popping up all over the place do we not run the risk of being spoilt for choice? What are the criteria for choosing which supermarket you go to? Cost? Range of products? Value for money? Distance from home? Opening hours? All these things influence the supermarket that we choose for the weekly or monthly ’big shop.’
If we are not careful, we can apply nearly all the same criteria to the church that we go to, or don’t go to. I have often heard people say things such as:
‘I go to St So and So’s because the Mass is at a convenient time.
Oh, we go to St So and So’s because the Mass is quick.
I go on Saturday night so that I don’t have to go on Sunday.
We go to St So and So because the priest is nice.
We go to St So and So because we like the singing.
We go to St So and So because we don’t like the priest in our own parish.’
Yet all these considerations about which Mass to attend and which church to go to are very subjective. Surely, we don’t go to Mass because we like the priest or the Mass is quick or the church is warm? These things may help but they should not be the primary focus when we are going to Mass. Surely the Mass means more to us than purely human considerations? Maybe it doesn’t? Maybe going to Mass is just something that we do, like going to the supermarket for the ’big shop’ and we will go to wherever is the most convenient to us at that the time.
The Mass is far more important for it to be simply something else that we have to fit in to our already crammed lives. The Second Vatican Council said that the Mass was the ‘source and summit of the Church’s Liturgy’ Surely it should also be the central point of our lives from which all our other actions flow?
Is the Mass the centre of your life or just something to be fitted in like doing the shopping?
