The other day, we had a heck of a time getting to Mass. The boring details included three cars, a sick kid, a kid who got sick in a different way on the way to Mass, and multiple texts and multiple trips back and forth to pick up stragglers.
When I was finally headed back to Mass with one final kid, I said I hoped we would make it on time. I had been taught you have to be at Mass for the Gospel reading for it to count as fulfilling your Sunday observation.
“Kind of a weird thing to have a rule about,” the kid said.
I said, “Well, it’s because if they don’t make a rule, people will pull some kind of nonsense like sticking their heads in the door for a minute, and saying they technically went to Mass.”
I told her that, when I was little, I had heard that you couldn’t spend a dollar bill if more than half of it were missing; so I spent a clownishly long time trying to work out how I could cut a bill in two in such a way that each part would be bigger than half, so I could spend them both. (Yes, I was kind of a dumb kid.) I wasn’t thinking about it having some particular value; I just wanted to get away with something.
Well, when we got to the Mass, it was almost the end of the sermon. We didn’t make it in time. And then yet another kid bailed out for complicated reasons, and my husband went to check on her, and the upshot is that very few Fishers were truly at Mass for very long at all.
The more I thought about it, the less it made sense that I could tell by looking at the clock whether or not we had fulfilled our obligation. It is a true obligation, and obligations come with rules; and yet it didn’t feel right to be looking for a rule that had nothing to do with our intentions. So I looked it up and discovered that in fact there is no “cut off” time that makes it “count” or not.
The rule, such as it is, seems to be: “All of the Mass is very good and very important, so get to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation unless you can’t; and be there for all of it, unless you can’t.”
I thought about it some more. (I am still kind of dumb, to be honest.)
I thought, when I was little, I couldn’t solve the riddle of the magically doubling dollar bill because the rules of geometry and the rules against counterfeiting are both pretty inflexible. They have to be, because they were made to protect something that is, in itself, perilously close to nothing. A dollar is just a piece of paper; it’s just an idea in the mind of an economist. It needs rules to make it actually be something. The rules are like an exoskeleton helping to define an amorphous blob.
But the Mass is nothing like that, in any way. And the reason it has rules is for entirely different reasons …. Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.
Image by Catholic Church of England and Wales via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Canon Law Made Easy, which you have quoted before, has a good article about this and it jibes with what you said. The article focuses on *why* you were late, not how late you were. https://canonlawmadeeasy.com/2021/01/28/canon-law-and-arriving-late-for-mass/
ooh, I forgot about this site!
Well, the “at Gospel” or as some say (not intending to go into this debate) “at the unveiling of the chalice” is not a rule about when you have to be at Mass.
It’s a rule on when the failure to do without excuse is sufficiently grievous to be, well, a grievous sin (or at least matter). That’s the thing. The rule is indeed as you say that you have to be there for all of Mass, but there are infractions of it when the thing is a venial sin.
I should know, I have this problem *a lot*, and I wouldn’t count oversleeping and bad time management sufficient excuses for myself (with others, especially families, it may be different). I never, or so I think about myself, *intend* to miss anything of it. But I do; and it’s often a relief that this is not a mortal sin, especially when you would have other Masses in the evening and to have to go to the entire Mass there, and maybe miss a theater performance or concert you might even already have tickets for, or even a religious program other than Mass as sometimes happens, for not being on time would be a real chore and hardly possible to do joyfully. (I mean, of course you have to go to Mass in itself even if you cannot do it joyfully, but perhaps you see what I mean.)
In the end, the question is not whether we shouldn’t really be there for all Mass (of course we should) but *how big* of a spiritual calamity it is if we are late without a really good excuse (and perhaps also how hard we should be on ourselves to make up for the delay).
“…it’s that they [the rules] help us turn into something that can withstand being visited by Jesus.”
That is so beautiful.
I admit that it’s also scary: that the Christian enterprise is, in CSLewisian language, killing off the tin metal soldier in me that I might become
real. But I only say it’s scary because I don’t truly know and trust the wonderful goodness that God is and that He has for me. But I want to.
So thanks for reminding me that the rules are there to help me turn into someone that Jesus can live in and be united with, forever. In the end, I do want that. ⛪✝️🕊️💕
This is really comforting to read right now. We usually have to take our daughter home after communion ( and sometimes earlier) . And quite frankly, I’m very mad at God right now and sitting through the whole Mass can be hard. I’ve left early once or twice because I don’t want to cry in front of everyone. (The Gospel reading this past weekend almost sent me out again..) But it still counts!
(The rule I had heard was you have to be at Mass before the end of the first reading to have it count.)