[Erin] The habit of worship

In a little while, my family and I will be attending Mass. As Catholics we take the obligation to go to Mass on Sundays and on Holy Days of Obligation very seriously. Catholics are required to go to Mass on these days unless impeded by some serious reason, such as illness, the care of young children, inclement weather that makes travel unsafe, and the like. To miss Mass for trivial reasons or for no reason at all is, objectively speaking, a grave sin for an adult Catholic.

This, of course, has to do with our understanding of what the Mass is, and of Who we receive in the Eucharist. But it also goes back to the Ten Commandments, and specifically the commandment to keep the Lord's day holy. There are many ways we can, and should, honor the day of the Lord--avoiding unnecessary physical labor, unnecessary shopping, and the like, and setting aside at least some part of the day for rest, recreation, interaction with family and friends, and works of mercy and charity.

But all of those things are secondary. The primary way that Christians can keep the Lord's day holy is to participate in public worship. Though our ways of doing this are divided as a result of the sad divisions in Christianity, the principle is the same--we are God's children, and everything we have is His free gift to us, so we want to offer Him praise, thanksgiving, and prayers of petition in which we humbly thank Him for His many blessings, and beg Him to come to our aid in our needs.

America is a nation in which about eighty percent of the population identifies themselves with a religion; a little more than seventy-five percent of this group then identify themselves as Christians. But how many American Christians actually go to some kind of church service on a weekly basis?

Many sources say about forty percent. But there's some dispute as to those numbers, especially since people do tend to exaggerate when talking to pollsters.

Lest anyone think I'm calling for a return to some rosy-hued past, when church bells tolled softly of a Sunday morning as Sunday-clad families walked down pristine sidewalks to the neighborhood houses of worship, I know that the past wasn't always what we'd like to believe it was. This Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover says it all: American women went to church, and took the kids to Sunday school. American men? Not so much, not even in the past; that cover is from 1959.

But I think that something important is lost when we lose the habit of worship. I think that, culturally speaking, we start to push our faith out to the margins, instead of taking it seriously, when we don't seek regular contact with the rituals of our religion, whatever those may be. The community of believers needs community, after all, and you don't get to the point of community without commitment; random or infrequent church attendance all but guarantees that most of the people gathered together on any given Sunday will be strangers to each other.

God does not need us to worship Him; but perhaps one of the reasons He commands us to do so each Sunday is because He knows how much we need each other--and how easily we can make excuses to remain apart.