‘Attitude of Gratitude’ observation for Tuesday afternoon

I am grateful my parish choir welcomes mediocre voices, and has enough good voices for me to hide behind. This allows me to be a very small part of a very big sound, especially next week when we sing the Lord’s praises on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, and Easter morning. Now, if I can keep from getting laryngitis this year…..

Time To Emphasize Sunday Obligation

A couple months ago we had unexpected freezing rain on Sunday morning. On the way to Mass I saw a car that had slid off the side of the road. When I arrived at church I pressed the brake pedal and my car just kept going, gliding down the icy road right past the entrance to the parking lot.

The roads were very treacherous, and not surprisingly Mass attendance was a fraction of what it usually is. As I looked around the mostly empty church, I started thinking about the phrase “Sunday Obligation.” I haven’t heard that term mentioned in quite a while. Our Church has a very clear teaching on the issue of Sunday Obligation, which not surprisingly, goes something like this: on Sundays Catholics are obligated to go to Mass. See, that isn’t so complicated, is it? The Catechism of the Catholic Church says it’s a “grave sin” not to attend Mass on Sunday (or Saturday vigil Mass).

Now, of course, there are valid excuses for not attending Sunday Mass, such as illness, infirmity, family needs that can’t be helped (such as caring for a sick child), and employment responsibilities—but only when all other options have been exhausted. And obviously treacherous weather conditions are a valid excuse, too.

When I was a kid the nuns taught us that the word obligation comes from two Latin words, obli, which means “you had better,” and gation, which means “get to Mass or I’ll whack you with this ruler!” OK, maybe they didn’t exactly phrase it that way, but we got the message.

However, nowadays modern Catholics use a more sophisticated definition, deciding that the word obligation really means: “If I feel like it.” A lot of folks don’t even need the illness, employment, or icy road excuses. They simply declare, “I’m not going to Mass cuz I don’t feel like it.” And that’s that.

As I sat in the mostly empty church that icy morning, I wondered if Masses on sunny days in the near future would be as sparsely attended, since the trend continues to go in the wrong direction.

Why is Mass attendance plummeting, at least here in America? (Western Europe is even worse, by the way.) In recent decades I can’t remember any Church official boldly proclaiming that the term Sunday Obligation really means what it says.

After years of being accused of being “too authoritarian,” it seems the Church decided to take a different approach, beginning during the tumultuous 1960s. Instead of proclaiming, “You are OBLIGATED to go to Mass on Sunday!” the Church offered a new, gentle Mr. Rogers-like tone: “We hope you’ll want to join us at Mass on Sundays.”

Well, this is certainly a more gentle approach, but frankly, it ain’t working. Maybe it’s time once again for a bit firmer message. Not quite the authoritarian ruler-wielding nun approach, but maybe something with a tad more backbone, such as: “If you don’t go to Mass on Sundays, don’t blame me when Jesus kicks your butt!”

Yeah, OK, that’s not quite the correct tone either, is it? There’s got to be a way to communicate once again the clear message that the Sunday Obligation is a real thing, and there are truly eternal consequences for blowing off Mass each week. We really have to try something different. I mean, precious souls are being lost for all eternity.

Maybe there is a compromise somewhere in the middle, an approach that is both firm but gentle, urgent and yet loving. I’m thinking of a ruler-wielding Mr. Rogers. “Won’t you be my neighbor? Won’t you join me at Sunday Mass?” Whack!

The ‘Wait, What?!’ of the Week

According to news reports, a recently translated Iranian military textbook endorses a nuclear EMP attack against the United States. An atmospheric nuclear explosion would produce an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP), which most experts feel would cripple America’s electric grid for months, if not years. The resulting chaos and loss of life would be catastrophic. So therefore, since elements of the Iranian military endorse doing grave harm to our country, the Obama Administration is now threatening sanctions against … Israel.

Wait. What?! We’re abandoning our longtime ally, Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East? And at the same time we are allowing Iran, a nation that has vowed to destroy both Israel and the U.S., to continue working on its nuclear program? What am I missing here? Up is now down, and down is now up. Sheesh.

'Attitude of Gratitude' for Thursday Morning

I'm grateful today is the last day of winter. Uh oh, gotta go scrape ice off my windshield or I'll be late for work!

Burglars Love Social Media

I heard an interesting news story the other day: a research study found that 78-percent of burglars use social media to determine which houses to rob. I’m not quite sure how someone does a research study of burglars. I suppose you either could conduct prison interviews, in which case you’d be getting data from the less talented segment of that profession, the ones who got caught. Or maybe the researchers simply attended the monthly meetings of the Royal Order of Burglarizing Rogues (R.O.B.R., for short), which meets every fourth Tuesday at Applebee’s (where the manager wonders why the silverware keeps disappearing).

Well, whatever the exact percentage, I have no doubt many burglars use Internet-based social media to target their victims, because many people routinely use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to make the following announcement: “Attention please! My house will be empty for the next seven days, so feel free to steal my new flat-screen TV. Oh, and my jewelry is in the master bedroom dresser, top drawer on the right.”

OK, maybe people don’t phrase their social media comments quite like that, but they don’t have to. The exact same message is communicated when they, for example, post a selfie photo on Facebook with this note: “Just landed in Miami. Gonna sit by the pool for a full week. Try to stay warm in freezing Connecticut!”

Why do people announce to the whole world that their homes are empty? The answer is simple: people are as dumb as rocks. No wait, that’s not it. You can’t acquire a nice home with a lot of nice stuff worth stealing, and the money to vacation in Miami, if you’re dumb. The problem is, when a social media website like Facebook uses the term “friend,” many people actually assume it means “friend,” and they think to themselves, “I’m only sharing this poolside photo with my friends, and of course, my friends would never rob my house.”

But in Facebook parlance, the term “friend” actually means: “a random stranger who used to work with a person who was once a neighbor of a person who went to college with a person who I vaguely remember from high school.” The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon has nothing on the Five Degrees of Facebook Friending. (Sorry if that reference is too obscure. Google it.) In other words, when you post something on Facebook that you think only three or four of your closest friends will see, you might as well plaster the message on billboards along the side of every Interstate highway in America. I suspect your Facebook posting is one of the PowerPoint slides during the monthly R.O.B.R. meetings.

So, what is the solution to this problem? Well, people can wait until they return from their vacation before posting photos online. But that’s unlikely in our instant gratification, impulsive culture because it eliminates the “nyah nyah effect.” (This is the true sentiment behind the poolside photo posting, which is, “Nyah nyah! I’m sitting under a palm tree while you’re shoveling snow! Nyah nyah!”)

The better solution is to add a couple of extra comments along with the poolside photo, such as: “I’m glad my cousin Max is house-sitting for us while we’re away. He’s the guy with the extensive gun collection and anger management issues.” Or: “We weren’t sure we could afford to vacation in Miami this year after all the money we spent on the high-tech home security system, which includes surveillance cameras, electrified fences, and tripwires that set off claymore mines.”

If you still insist on telling the world you’re on vacation, and you end up getting robbed, all I can say is, “Nyah nyah!”

Want to Go to Heaven … Next Tuesday?

There’s an old expression I just made up: “Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to go next Tuesday.”

As Catholics, we have a firm belief in life after death. After all, it’s right there at the very end of the Creed we recite at Mass each week: “…I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

If we did not believe in life after death, then we would be, as St. Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians, “The most pitiable of all people.” Imagine living our lives as if God and Heaven were real, but then it turned out that neither was true. That would indeed be pitiful.

On the other hand, there are many Catholics who claim to believe God and Heaven are real, but live their everyday lives as if neither existed. This, too, is rather pitiful. And risky.

But if we really believe that Heaven is real and that eternal life with God is possible, then surely we must understand that getting to Heaven is infinitely more important than anything that happens to us during our time here on earth. And surely we understand that eternity in Heaven is better than even 90 or 100 wonderful years of natural life.

I did the math, and I discovered that when you compare 90 or 100 years to eternity, eternity is a wee bit longer—in the same way a billion-trillion miles is a wee bit longer than one inch.

So we all should be thrilled at the prospects of going to Heaven—even if it happens next Tuesday.

Ooh, how many of you instinctively cringed at the idea of going to Heaven next Tuesday? I admit I did. And the reason is simple: no one can go to Heaven unless they first die. Just the very thought of dying, whether next Tuesday or some other day, is, well, disconcerting to say the least.

As Catholics we really should not fear death. Does this mean we should encourage death and hasten its arrival? Obviously not. Even though we look forward to Heaven, we must cherish life—from conception to natural death.

That reminds me of when I was a youngster and made my First Confession and First Communion in the 2nd grade. The nuns taught us that Confession cleanses us of all our sins, and so if, for example, we got hit by lightning and killed the moment we walked out of the confessional, we would definitely go straight to Heaven. (On further reflection, I’m not sure that’s the best scenario to present to 2nd graders. But theologically speaking it’s correct.)

So here’s the conundrum (I like that word): the ultimate goal of life is to get to Heaven. But at the same time, the ultimate goal of secular, natural life is not to die. We have a bit of a conflict here. We fear “next Tuesday,” but unless we experience it we can’t go to Heaven.

This is what we need to do: first, don’t obsess about this topic nearly as much as I have over the past 500 words. Next, don’t fear death, even though it’s the great unknown and kind of scary. Every one of us will experience it, and it is not the end but instead a transition to something potentially much better. (Or much worse, which is why Confession is so important.)

Finally, we must make sure that when our personal “next Tuesday” arrives we will in fact go to Heaven. We must put our faith in Jesus, partake of the sacraments often—especially Confession—and love our neighbors as ourselves.

OK then, there’s nothing to fear, right? Plus today is only Wednesday, so we’ve got at least another six days!