Sunday Mass has always played an important part in my spiritual well-being. As a child, my father insisted that I go to Mass each weekend. I remember one weekend when my parents were out of town and I was left with my best friend’s family. They were Protestant, and that weekend several Protestant ecclesial communions had decided to have a large prayer service that lasted three to four hours. When my parents returned that evening, I remember my father trying to explain to me that even though I had been praying all morning at a church service I still needed to go to Mass. “Because at Mass,” he explained, “we participate in Christ’s Paschal Mystery, and we receive his Body and Blood in Holy Communion.” My father was firm, but I fought back. I wish I could say that he won that day, but if I’m being honest, I think I ended up staying home from Mass that evening. Even though I ignored my parents that day, my father’s words continue to stick with me. No matter what sort of prayer life we have, without Mass each week, we spurn the Lord’s invitation to us: “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” (Jn 6:53).
When I was a teenager, I became involved in an active youth group through my parish while preparing for Confirmation. We took several trips over those years, and each time we traveled, daily Mass was an integral part of our normal schedule. I remember being struck by the fact that Mass was offered every day of the year (save, of course, Good Friday). It was not something I had been exposed to when growing up, and at first, I wasn’t sure what I thought about going to Mass more frequently. However, the more I was exposed to Mass the more I desired to participate and receive Holy Communion.
Eventually, I would try to go to daily Mass as frequently as I could, especially whenever I was on break from school. I would also invite my friends to join me, and we’d often go out for a couple of hours after Mass to hang out. I remember, though, just how difficult it was to get them to come. Sometimes their schedules didn’t allow them to come to the morning Mass (we were still in high school and most of us had a summer job or two), but most of the time they were reluctant or skeptical about the importance of daily Mass. Though my friends were good, prayerful people, the Mass seemed far from their minds. They viewed Sunday Mass as more of an obligation to be fulfilled while the rest of the week was a time to focus on their prayer lives.
But the Mass shouldn’t become just another chore for us, nor should it be something we do because we must. As disciples of Christ, we must allow ourselves to be formed by the whole Liturgy. In St. Luke’s Gospel, we are offered an example of how we should act through the narrative of the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. This account provides a unique glimpse into Easter Sunday and how central Christ’s Paschal Mystery is for the Mass. On the very day of Our Lord’s Resurrection, two of his disciples had left Jerusalem for the town of Emmaus, discussing all that had just happened to him. They might have even witnessed Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem not long before. They were certainly aware of his crucifixion and death, and they even had some knowledge of the Resurrection, but their faith in Jesus was shaken by the events and they didn’t seem convinced that he was indeed alive. They even seem irritated at Jesus’s apparent ignorance about what had transpired in the preceding days when he unrecognizably appears to them.
Jesus first rebuked the disciples for their pride and slowness of heart. Then, as they continued on, Jesus opened up the Scriptures (which are part of what we now call the Old Testament), explaining how they prophesied not just his coming, but also the suffering he would endure and glory he would enter into. The disciples would later exclaim, “Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” (Lk 24:32). At every Mass, we are instructed by the Sacred Scriptures, most especially the Gospel. We ought to listen attentively as God speaks to us in the Sacred Word, letting our hearts be set ablaze. It often helps to ask how the Old Testament readings relate to Christ, for they receive their fullest meaning in him and the salvation he won for us.
In this account, the two disciples still failed to recognize Jesus even after he opened the Scriptures. When Jesus gave the impression that he planned to continue onward, the two disciples invited him to stay and eat with them. Without even being aware of it, they had become receptive to Jesus by listening to him. Their irritation had been transformed into longing for him. We too express this longing at Mass when we make our offering to the Lord, praying that the priest’s sacrifice and ours be made acceptable. The Lord takes our humble sacrifice of bread and wine and transforms it into his Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity.
St. Luke then tells us, “And it happened that, while [Jesus] was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight” (Lk 24:30–31). Jesus’s actions in this Gospel narrative are performed by the priest at every Mass. The priest takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to us. By the time we receive it, this is no longer ordinary bread but the Bread of Life. Jesus, through the ministry of the priest, gives himself to us, wholly and without reserve, uniting us to himself.
The Emmaus account did not end with the disciples’ amazement. St. Luke recounts for us that the two disciples left in haste for Jerusalem to proclaim our Lord’s visit to the apostles. They ran to the Eleven and announced what they had witnessed, how Jesus was made known to them in the Breaking of the Bread. Their joy and being sent out to proclaim the heart of the Gospel—that Jesus Christ came in order to save us from our sins and bring us into everlasting life, and that this very same Jesus is alive for us today—is a model for how we should act when we’ve encountered Jesus in the Eucharist.
It can be easy to fall into the traps of mindlessly forgetting about Mass, being “too busy” to attend, failing to understand its importance, or even expecting too much from our priests. When we do this, we risk becoming like those two disciples as they left Jerusalem, dismayed because Jesus seems to have failed us. Before we can spread the Gospel, we must first encounter Jesus in a real and personal way. The best way to do so is through the Mass, where we are instructed through the Word and nourished by the Body and Blood of the one who was slain for us and who offers himself to our Father for our sake. To proclaim this Good News, we must commit ourselves to encountering Jesus, not just out of a sense of obligation, but recognizing his extraordinary gift of love for us made manifest in the Eucharist. We become better witnesses of this love only by frequently participating in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
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The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is an assembly of the hierarchy of bishops who jointly exercise pastoral functions on behalf of the Christian faithful of the United States and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Our mission is to support the ministry of bishops with an emphasis on evangelization, by which the bishops exercise in a communal and collegial manner certain pastoral functions entrusted to them by the Lord Jesus of sanctifying, teaching, and governing (see Lumen gentium, no. 21).
