Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you come to Mass on Sunday? Why do we leave our mundane world and come into a heavenly world each week? I’ve been reviewing the results of the Disciples Maker Index which 4,542 parishioners from the 18 parishes in the South Seattle Deanery took last spring. I was happy to note parishioner satisfaction with their parish, pastor, and parish activities.
57% strongly agree they would recommend their parish to a friend. 44% strongly agree the parish helps them grow spiritually through vibrant and engaging Masses. 71% of South Seattle parishioners want to grow in their faith. In other words, most Catholics come to Mass because they want to feel close to God and community. Don’t tell Father Ryan at the Cathedral, but Christ Our Hope ranked top in parishioner satisfaction.
Just how do we truthfully interpret these statistics that tell us that most Catholics come to Mass to feel close to God? For example, do we come to church on Sunday “to fill up on God,” something like filling up our spiritual tanks to get us through the rest of the week? Do we come to escape the absurdity of our daily world to find a heavenly world with our own satisfaction base?
Two believers struggle with the question of God’s place in our world in today’s scriptures. The first is Moses who, in his farewell sermon, tells his people not to look for the meaning of God in something mysterious and remote. God’s commandments are no longer written on tablets of stone, but are engraved on the heart. God’s law “is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts: you have only to carry it out.”
The second believer is a lawyer. He believes in God and knows his catechism. He knows that the law says to love God and neighbor as yourself. But business of lawyers is precision. They must always be sure of definitions. And so, he asks, “Who is my neighbor?”
No matter how we try, we can never get the full shock of Jesus’ answer. For the Jews, Samaritans were radically impure, politically dangerous and religiously heretical. For generations the Jews had been told, even by their great prophets like Hosea and Ezekiel, that the Samaritans were definitely not neighbors.
The priest and the levite pass by the man in the ditch. It’s easy to stereotype these two religious leaders. I remember some years ago in the play “Godspell,” playing next door in the Moore Theatre, how prim and proper they came across. One of the purposes of a play is to contrast the good guys with the bad guys. But life is more complicated than that.
The priest and the levite probably were moved by the pitiful victim. But something kept them from doing the human thing: the law. The story says the man was “half-dead.” The priest and the levite, despite their feelings of pity, were bound by the law which said they would be ritually impure if they touched a corpse. The law won out over the law engraved on their hearts.
The Samaritan is “moved to pity at the sight.” He proves to be neighbor because he acts like a neighbor. The Samaritan’s heavenly world pays attention to his daily world. His God is not in the sky but very near.
I think the story of the Good Samaritan gives us insight into our question of why we come to Mass on Sunday. The desire to feel closer to God is one of the most human desires of our hearts. But the true goal of our Sunday worship in word and sacrament is to make us aware that God is not just in church but in our lives. God’s grace is not locked up in a church building or a tabernacle or a homily.
God’s grace is in the world, especially in those times and events when we seem empty or at our wits’ end, when our journey to Jericho is interrupted by strange demands. We come to church on Sunday as a believing community not to “get God,” but to celebrate a world of grace and a God who is very near.
Paul A. Magnano
Pastor