“How I have longed to celebrate this Passover with you” (Luke 22:15)
When people ask, “Why should we go to Mass?” I answer, “Because Jesus is waiting for you there in the Church, and He wants to be with you — right there — in the Holy Eucharist.” It is about a personal encounter with Jesus that we have as individuals AND as a community, in the celebration of the Mass. The celebration of the Eucharist is the time and place where we can allow Christ to love us, and we can return His love. Knowing this, how could anyone stay away?
We are coming off a year and a half of “fasting” from full, personal, and active participation in the Eucharist because of the Covid pandemic precautions. Hence the Lord says again to us, as He did to the Apostles at the Last Supper, “How I have longed to be with you!” And how we priests have longed to be with you also to celebrate together the Lord’s passion, death and resurrection.
I cannot tell you how happy I was to see so many people coming back to Mass for Holy Week and Easter this year, and since the June 15 lifting of most Covid restrictions, for daily and Sunday Masses. I felt like St. Peter at the Transfiguration, when he said, “Lord, it is good for us to be here!” By participating in the Mass, we can be with Jesus at the moment He lays down His life for His friends. You and I are those friends. Jesus loved His Apostles “to the end” (Jn 13:1), and He will love us “to the end.”
When Christ taught “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest,” I believe He was encouraging us to come to Him where He is most intensely present, in His own Body and Blood on the altar of sacrifice at every Mass. Maybe that explains the sociologists’ study that found all socio-economic groups of people suffered more anxiety, more stress, and more depression during the pandemic, except one — those who attend church regularly.
When Christ said to the Apostles at the Last Supper, “Do this in memory of me,” He was not only giving a command to the Apostles to celebrate the Eucharist — He was also inviting all of us, Christian brothers and sisters, to come together at the altar, to listen to Him speaking to us in the Scriptures, and to receive Him inside our bodies and our hearts. In the documents of the Second Vatican Council, we read that communion with the Body and Blood of Christ changes us into what we receive. We become divinized. St. Thomas Aquinas taught “The proper effect of the Eucharist is the transformation of human beings into God” (Aquinas, Sent. IV, dist. 12, q. 2, a. I.). Do we realize this? Our belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is scriptural. Jesus meant it when He said “This is my body; This is my blood” (Lk 22:19–20; Mt 26:26–28; Mk 14:22–24; 1 Cor. 11:23–25). The Church has always guarded and preserved this teaching faithfully from one generation to the next, despite heresies diluting or even denying the real presence of Christ in Holy Communion.
Jesus Himself taught how important it was to Him that we come to celebrate the Eucharist and receive Him in Holy Communion: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. . . . Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me” (Jn 6:53-57). As Bishop Robert Barron recently wrote, “There is simply, this side of heaven, no more intimate communion possible with the risen Lord.”
So let us come back to Him at Mass in person, joining together as a worshipping community, to be fed with His word in Scripture, and His body and blood in Holy Communion. Since the Church always has our spiritual health as her primary consideration, I am reinstating the law which was dispensed because of the pandemic. Our solemn obligation to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation will come back into force in the Diocese of Oakland on Sunday, August 15, 2021, the Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven.
In the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Catholic Churches, at the sign of peace, each person says to their neighbor, “Christ is among us.” And the response is, “He is and always will be.” Let us come back into His presence “singing for joy” (Psalm 95:2).
The above comes from a June 29 statement from Bishop Michael Barber of Oakland.
Instead of wearing masks they can wear bullet proof vests.
Sorry Barber got robbed -once- but we got robbed of Mass and sacraments -repeatedly- for months.
Bishops should not cower to government over reach ever again!
I wonder if we’ll ever hear from them that they admit they (like us) were misled. They are sorry, ask for forgiveness and apologize? And, a promise not to be misled again.
Mass was online and you can always do a spiritual communion. You were not robbed.
If someone just takes my cash but leaves my wallet, I’m still robbed.
Maybe you are ok with accepting crumbs instead of the feast, I’m not.
The petitioner who accepted crumbs got the miracle.
The miracle is the consecration at the Mass, can’t imaging why you are ok with being denied access to receiving Christ in Holy Communion.
Those who scoff, he scoffs at,
but the lowly he favors.
Provers 3:34
It is too laugh. The bishops cared more about “social distancing” “masks” and “gel disenfentant”.
Remember when all the bishops cried “Trust in God, Trust in the Eucharist”, We’d never remove a powerful sacramental like holy water let alone the sacraments!”
Me neither.
Hirelings and not true shepherds.
Prudence is a virtue. Some churches filled bottles of holy water and anybody could take them.
We are not supposed to test God.
Wonderful that Bishop Barber uses this as an uplifting, evangelical, and catechetical moment!
What did he do during the crisis ? how did he help, serve , and reassure the faithful during this crisis ? what sacraments were made available to the faithful ? too little , too late . I doubt that many will return he has failed as a shepherd .
Anon99, my recollection is that Bishop Barber was very reassuring to his flock, the sacraments were still available most weeks in many parishes except with limitations on indoor celebrations, and he exhibited great concern for both the physical and the spiritual health of his flock. These have been difficult times for all of us, and it strikes me that to call him a failed shepherd is a bit of an overreach. And whatever mistakes any of us makes, I think it is the charitable thing to give credit where credit is due, as I tried to do yesterday and am doing here.
Most of Bishops were silent during covid and epeak up
They should bern more outspoken and joined in the lawsuit filed by the church in Chula Vista. Where McElroy and others. Democratic supporters
Why wait until August 15? Why not in July? This isn’t something that requires a lot of preparation. Just end the dispensation and say you have to go back to Mass. The dispensation was initiated without a seven week delay. Why a seven week delay to end it? He uses a lot of flowery language to try to make it seem he has a master plan. He just went along with what the government told him to do. Now that the government will let churches open again, he’s hoping people will forget what cowards the Catholic bishops were. It’s like a husband abandoning his wife and kids for a year and a half then calling one day and saying he’ll be back in seven weeks and how much he’s missed the family and longs to be with them again. Sorry, dude. You lost your credibility.