I had a classmate in the seminary who in every class would ask the same question: “Is this going to be on the test?” Every time he would ask that question, I could not help but think that he was somehow missing the point of education that the seminary was trying to provide us.  Anyone can pass a test but we were supposed to do something more with the knowledge that we were gaining.  We came to learn in order to be changed as a person.  If God was willing we would use the knowledge that our teachers were trying to import on us to be God’s instruments of healing and peace.  As priests our greatest tests would never be reciting Church dogmas to the people we served but rather helping them understand how these dogmas applied to their lives.  Some of the greatest lessons, I learned at the seminary, I was never tested on and I am not sure if the seminary could even develop a test that would show that I learned that material.  My Spiritual Ponderings for this month is a reflection on the Mass and ten life changing lessons that I believe God is trying to teach us through our attendance at Mass.

1.            The Mass teaches me that I am a part of something much bigger than myself.
                The first thing I believe the Mass teaches me is that I am a part of something much bigger than myself.   A good friend of mine works as a maintenance supervisor for a mine near St. Louis.  Many of his fellow workers are active members of their Christian faith communities.  My friend over the years has heard his fellow Christian co-workers talk down about the Catholic Church many times.  Instead of just sitting back and taking it, he has invested a lot of time into learning what the Catholic Church teaches so he can d efend his faith to his coworkers.  He once told me of an incident at his work where one of his co-workers came in to work particularly upbeat.  The coworker explained that his positive attitude came from the fact that his Christian community had a wonderful celebration over the weekend.  At this celebration his minister conducted an altar call inviting people to come forward and claim Jesus Christ to be their personal Lord and Savior.  His coworker went on to say that over a hundred people came forward that weekend and it was the largest altar call that his Christian community had ever had.  
      
          It was not long however, my friend explained that this coworker began to make fun of the Catholic Church and told him that the Catholic faith was not a true faith because we did not allow people the opportunity to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. 

                My friend said he paused for a moment and then told is coworker that he was wrong and that the Catholic Church holds an altar call every weekend and it called the Mass.  My friend went on to explain to his coworker that every week the priest holds up the Eucharist and says “This is my body, this is my Blood,” and all the people come forward to the altar and respond “Amen,” which means I believe.  The Mass teaches us that we are not individuals in search of God but rather we are companions on a journey toward the heavenly y Promise Land with God mysteriously in our midst.  Our faith as Catholics is bigger than just “God and I’ but stretches to include all who bear the name Christian. 

                Another way the Church teaches me that I am a part of something bigger is by the fact that the Church can trace its roots and the roots of the Mass all the way back to Jesus Christ and His apostles in the upper room on the night before He died.  I believe that there are some prayers that we say at Mass that date back before the New Testament was even put together.  The story of the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24) shows us how dear the Eucharist and thus the Mass was to the early Church.  Luke in the Acts of the Apostle describes the best Christian community as being gathered around the apostles for the breaking of the bread (Acts 2:42).

2.            The Mass teaches me is that I am not in Charge.
                The second lesson the Church teaches me through the Mass is that I am not the one in charge.  God is.  Even as a priest and as the main celebrant of the Mass, I am not the one in charge.  I must bend my will to that of God and his Church.  One way in which the Church teaches us that we are not in charge is that she is the one who laid out the ritual for us. We don’t simply come together and do whatever we want as Catholics.  We follow a detail ritual that is laid out for us by the Church.  We do not randomly open the Bible to a page and begin reading but instead we follow a three year cycle of readings on Sunday and a two year cycle of readings for weekday Masses.

                An additional way, we are shown that we are not in charge is through the human side of the liturgy.  No matter how much we prepare for a Mass there will always be something out of our control that happens.  It almost never fails that a child starts screaming at the beginning of my homily.  A cell phone will start to ring during the petitions and sadly it will belong to the poor old lady in the front pew who won’t turn it off because she is too deaf to hear it or she does not know how to turn it off because she only has it because he children wanted her to have it for safety reasons.  These little disasters are like larger natural disasters in the world as they remind us that no matter how advance our science and technology maybe we still in reality have control over very little. 

                Finally entering into Mass, we learn that we are not in charge when we have t let go of our personal preferences.  For example the choir directory chose music that Sunday that is more Protestant than Catholic in its theology or when a visitor sits down in the pew that I normally sat in forcing me to sit somewhere else.  All of these things serve as little reminders that we are not in charge and that is fine because God is in charge.