So, Yesterday...

I had lunch with a good friend. Of course it was Red Robin. Why are you even asking me that? [Because you could always haul off and get a steak. We don't know.--ed.] It was a great conversation, hard to even sum up. But we ate and then talked for a couple hours. We ran into DJ The Youth Minister, a classmate from the "Old School" (let the reader understand) and we chatted for a bit. My friend didn't know him. But we lamented that certain "Comrades" of ours are harder to connect with than the president. [You wouldn't eat lunch with the President; stop lying to us.--ed.] Yes, I would. It would be an honor. I can't guarantee that I wouldn't ask a squirm-inducing question or five, but I am a patriotic, civic-minded American. There is a dignity to the office that none of us may disregard or disrespect, if we call ourselves Americans. I digress.

So my friend and I went to Mass a little out of the way. It was in a hospital. Even though I feel a little weird in hospitals, if one thinks about it, there are very few more obvious places to celebrate the sacred mysteries than this, if one reflects on the redemptive power of the Mass.

I thought he was British. He had that way of speaking. I was also thinking that he was suffering from some kind of respiratory illness, this priest. He had trouble with a cough as he went. It was a battle just to speak the words, or that's the way it seemed. For all I know, he just speaks slowly, and was having a bad day. But I have to shoot straight with you: I had the thought that he didn't have long to live. Maybe that's too dramatic; I have no idea.

But it was an effort for him. And the spiritual fruit or insight I was given is precisely this: Who is this Lord Jesus Christ, how glorious is He, that old men go to war against time and their own bodies just to acclaim Him? Perhaps it is not a small thing to offer this sacrifice of praise. We can think this way. Have you ever thought, "What's the big deal about our Mass obligation? It's just words. And surely I won't be condemned for missing one Sunday?" (Exceptions and allowances, as well as details as to the gravity of the obligation, are in your Catechism, paragraph 2181.) But I have eyes to see that small things seeming common are the big things. Whether I feel the desire to go is immaterial to the worthiness of the Person(s) whose glory calls me there. In this case, we were under no obligation at all. But all the better. I mean, would you say that you have had enough of the love of God? That's why it's perhaps the biggest misnomer in the history of religion to call it an "obligation." How silly does it sound? Oh, man! I have to go to Mass to hear all about how much God loves me and the whole world! He wants to bless me and asks for my life, such as it is, in return. How awful! I'm really not trying to guilt anyone here. And if you didn't hear about Jesus' love and His Cross, and the Resurrection and all those things, if you ended up a cog in the impersonal Catholic, Inc., maybe you and I should talk. Because the Church is not an institution for me; it is a communion of Love. It is the place--in us--where God dwells by His Spirit. All I'm saying is, I'm absolutely certain that Tom Brady and his glorious spirals, and his cronies, and other fantastic sweaty dudes doing their thing can't touch that. Not on Sunday, and not any other day, either.

Sometimes, we don't know if we are loved. We doubt whether we are understood, known and loved as we would like to be. Do you ever feel that? Well, He who was despised and rejected by everyone, even his closest friends, knows how we feel. And there is so much love in His victory over sin and death now that He can take our sorrow and alienation and make it a gift to the Father, if we offer it. He wants to utterly drown us in Himself, and I hope we are not unaware. He said, "After I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself." I'd definitely tell President Obama that there's some change I can believe in.