Would you willingly spend time with someone you didn’t love, or like, or even know very well? Would you spend an hour a week with them, simply because they asked you to?
What if they were a grumpy but fabulously wealthy old relative? Would you sit with them for an hour a week in the hope of being left something in the will?
It would be boring and a burden. The old person would grumble and sometimes say things that made you feel uncomfortable.
Perhaps they live in a big posh house where the staff aren’t very friendly. Would you keep going because of the money you hope you’ll inherit?
Every week after exactly one hour, I imagine you’d heave a sigh of relief as you got back in the car. You then forget about the old person until you have to go back next time.
You know what I’m really talking about, don’t you?
Let’s look again at the idea of going to Mass as having a relationship with another person. After all, that’s exactly what it is.
All good relationships are hard work: they’re made up of daily acts of either love or neglect. Sometimes we give up because the whole thing is too hard.
Your relationship with God is the same. If you have no idea who he is—if he’s just a distant grumpy relative, or a story, or a myth—then it’s very hard to love him.
It’s especially hard if your parents also have no idea who he really is, and no desire to spend time with him in church.
Maybe you started out being told that “Jesus loves you,” and if things went well, you were fine with that.
Then it turned out that God was not a slot machine where you insert prayers and pull the handle and get whatever you want.
Then you stopped loving him, as effortlessly as a young lady whose first love is money stops caring about a man facing bankruptcy.
Our relationship is as individual as the human soul. God constantly invites; we either listen, or we don’t.
My Catholics in Australia survey data shows that one of the core beliefs people embrace most enthusiastically—whether they go to Mass or not—is the existence of heaven.
This makes perfect sense. If you believe that you’re going to inherit anyway, and you don’t like the old relative and the snooty staff, why spend an hour in the posh house?
The only trouble with this formula for salvation is that it trades on a very childish idea of heaven: a sort of blissful theme park with perfect weather where everyone has wings.
This isn’t heaven at all. Take a look in the Bible if you don’t believe me.
Heaven consists entirely of a relationship. It’s where we are drawn into the Holy Trinity for eternity.
It’s all about knowing God for eternity, really seeing and loving him face to face. That’s what will make each one of us blissfully happy and complete.
When scripture describes the interior of heaven to us, it’s always the same thing: God on his throne, surrounded by angels and by human beings.
Human beings see him, talk to him, and eat and drink with him. They worship him, adore him, thank him, and sing all the time about how wonderful he is.
If this sounds like the most boring thing ever, then perhaps you’re not going to enjoy heaven after all.
But it could also be why you find Mass boring. The Mass is the closest thing to heaven you can get on earth.
We sit at the foot of God’s throne, we eat and drink with him, we praise and worship him. He feeds us with his innermost self in Holy Communion.
He does everything he possibly can to draw us into his own inner life and happiness, right here on earth. He relieves our worries and shows us the way to go forward.
What do we do in return? We sleepwalk through the whole thing, including Holy Communion. Then we get in our cars and go home without so much as a backward glance.
Or we don’t bother going at all. Oliver’s sporting fixtures and Ruby’s brunch with her school friends are more important to us than Oliver and Ruby getting to know the God who created them out of nothing (Mt 22, Lk 14).
Just who do you think God is? And is that why you’re hesitant to go and spend time with him?