Why Should You Go To Mass?

“It gave me a good footing. ” Bruce is a twenty-year-old at the University of Scranton. A student majoring in the difficult nursing program, he attends Mass regularly. I asked him why.

“My first semester, I had some troubles. Mass, getting there, I felt it gave me a good footing. To hear the message directed to people our age… it’s helpful.”

One of the most common questions I get from the over fifty-year-old crowd is, “Father, my kids, my grandkids don’t go to Mass. What can I tell them?”

Somewhat seriously, I tell them what I tell the kids here at the University of Scranton. “Go to Mass. Get to class. If you go to Mass once a week, if you can discipline yourself to come and worship God with the community, so many other things will fall into place in your life…as long as you also go to class! And look, go to Mass every week for fifty years. If after that time you feel being at Mass was a total waste, come and find me. I’ll give you back double what you dropped into the collection.” Those who add fifty years to my age get the joke.

Still, there is a challenge for those of us who find in Mass “the source and summit of our faith.” We need to be able to explain more clearly and fervently why we experience Eucharist as moving and meaningful, transformative and true.

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