BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

 A SERMON FOR THE 16TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

As you know, the Jews are very strict about keeping the sabbath.  Starting with sunset on Friday night, they stop all forms of work and business transactions, in honor of the seventh day of Creation on which God also ceased his work and rested.  The observance of Sabbath law became so rigorous that even today, in strict orthodox Jewish communities, they will hire non-Jewish people to turn their light switches on and off, even to flush their toilets.  It is a good example of how the letter of the law can be observed too meticulously, even to the extent of going beyond mere inconvenience and becoming unhealthy.  Certain Christian denominations are noted for such rigors: Seventh Day Adventists refuse blood transfusions, for example.  Sunday observance was so strict in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland that during World War II, when Britain was on the verge of being invaded by the Nazis, they insisted that the Royal Air Force must ground their planes every Sunday, thus leaving our Scottish coast wide open to enemy attack.

The same kind of thing went on in our Lord’s time, and he actually condemned such harmful observance of the letter of the law.  It has come to be known as pharisaical, sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, and the Catholic Church has always been careful not to fall into such practices.  So what is Catholic law on the subject of observing the Sabbath?  The Catechism tells us that it is based on the Third Commandment, “Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath day,” a day on which we are to give our time to the service and worship of God.  The Church has commanded specifically how we are to worship God on Sundays (and holydays of obligation), and that is chiefly by attending Mass.  In addition, we are encouraged to give ourselves to prayer and other good works, and are forbidden excessive and unnecessary servile work and whatever else may hinder us from our due observation of the Lord’s day.

The question of what we’re not supposed to do on Sundays I’d like to leave for another time.  Today, our focus is on our attendance at Mass, and I’d like to give you an answer to  one question in particular that confuses a lot of people.  It’s a question that often goes unasked, and for the wrong reason!  We traditional-minded Catholics have an unfortunate tendency to be like the Jewish Pharisees, seeking out the exact letter of the law so that we can condemn those who don’t follow it, or worse, so that we can find loopholes to avoid following it!  Either way, we don’t like to ask the priest what we should do because that might make us look judgmental on the one hand, or irreligious on the other.  So let’s answer this unasked question today, so you don’t have to embarrass yourselves by asking me later.

The question is, what exactly fulfills our obligation of hearing Mass?  How much of the Mass exactly do we absolutely have to be present at, in order to fulfill our obligation?  Do we have to arrive before the Gospel, or can we skip a bit more and just arrive in time for the Offertory?  Many people mistakenly believe that if they turn up after the Gospel or the Offertory they have “missed Mass.”  This is  a reasonable misconception to have.  After all, surely there must be a line drawn, beyond which you haven’t attended Mass sufficiently?  Surely I can’t just show up just before Communion and think I’ve kept holy the Sabbath?

The truth is that there is no rule in Canon Law pointing to any specific part of the Mass that absolutely must be attended.  On the contrary, moral theologians manuals say that the rule of attending Mass applies to the whole Mass.  In other words, you are obliged to attend the entire Mass, from the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar to the Last Gospel.  If you don’t, through your own fault, then you commit a sin, the gravity of which would depend more on the extent of your guilt, than on the amount of Mass you miss. 

It would be impossible, or at least highly impractical, for the Church to lay down a specific part of the Mass and say you must be there by then or you commit a mortal sin.  Because if such a rule existed, people would be tempted to just arrive by that point, they’d stop making the effort to be here for the beginning of Mass, since thinking that as long as they get there by the “official obligatory time” that would be enough.  Many people would wrongly decide that since it’s okay to miss the parts of the Mass that take place, say, before the Gospel, that means that elements like the Confiteor and the Gloria aren’t all that important, otherwise why would the Church say that we can arrive after these prayers are finished?   

So if you come late to Mass, it’s a bad thing.  But the degree of badness is based on the reason why you’re late, not how late you are.  Obviously, unforeseen things happen in life – perhaps the traffic that day was unusually slow because of an accident or construction, or maybe the baby threw up all over Mommy in the car.  You planned to be there for the start of Mass, you did everything you normally would do to get there on time—but unexpected circumstances made you late.  The Church has never penalized attributed any wrongdoing to such things.  You can’t be held to account for something you had no way of knowing about.  No one is ever held to the impossible. 

But at the same time, you shouldn’t imagine that you can make up excuses for being late to Mass.  If you know there’s construction on the road to church, leave earlier.   And please don’t think that just because you have children, that in itself is a good excuse for showing up whenever you feel like it.  “Well, you know I have children to manage...”  You didn’t wake up on Sunday morning to suddenly find you had a bunch of kids!  If you don’t bother waking them up in time to help put their socks on, then there is some degree of guilt on your part.  Figure out what time you need to wake up and leave the house in order to arrive punctually for Mass, and then stick to that time every week.  Make reasonable allowances for things to happen along the way that might slow you down: check the weather; you all have cell phones, check the traffic app to see what the traffic is like.  Our guilt accumulates if we’re late for Mass week after week, for the same reasons, which of course we ought by now to be able to foresee.

If you do end up being late for Mass, can you still receive Communion?  The right answer to this question is again not so much about being late, but rather whether you’re properly disposed to receive Communion.  Take a nurse, for example, who was preparing to go to Mass and receive, but then had a last-minute emergency which prevented her from being there for the beginning of Mass.  It doesn’t matter whether she showed up before or after the Gospel, or even halfway through the distribution of Holy Communion—if she still has the right disposition and is still fasting, she should still be able to go up and receive.  Some lazy good-for-nothing who saunters into the church half-an-hour late (or even half-an-hour early!) and then spends his time texting his girlfriend at the back and giving every external indication that he is not properly disposed to receive—he should not.

So let’s not be pharisees, either in our own behavior, or in being busy-bodies and looking at our watch every time someone walks into church, making a mental note of how we did a better job of being on time.  We can’t know why someone is late, so we should never rush to judgment, especially based on a quantitative circumstance like minutes and seconds. 

All morality is based on our knowledge of our responsibility and the motivation, or lack thereof, to fulfill those responsibilities.  As far as knowledge goes, we all know the obligation to attend Sunday Mass—all of it. It is a commandment of the Church which binds under the penalty of grave sin. It exists for a specific reason and should be not only known but loved, so that the soul feels a need to fulfill it.