Mini blog: Why weekly Mass is required by God

I'm referring to the Catholic Church's Sunday Mass (and Holy Days of obligation), not the praise and worship services of non-Catholic Christians.



First you must understand that it was not uneducated people who decided that the Church needs to require them to go to Mass once a week, and now we are all so much more educated, busy, have other priorities and understand that "God is in the heart" and we really don't need to go. It was God who specifically said the Mass must be attended.



How do we know? It is in the Bible. Virtually one of the first things God taught humans, directly after they were expelled from Eden, is that they must take a portion of their goods and sacrifice them to God. This became the weekly Jewish ritual.



God requires sacrifice because he knows human nature better than anyone, obviously. He knows that if people are not forced to take something they value and sacrifice it (literally it was called holocaust, because it is not the giving away of the animal, grain or treasure, but the destroying of it on God's altar) that they will start to assume they are in control and that they do not know God or owe him anything at all. And how true that has become. Now people whine about being forced to give up their time on Sunday. In the past when people had to labor constantly to eek out a living for themselves and their family, they glorified in going to Mass and giving their time to God on their "day off."



When Jesus gave the New Covenant to humanity he did not eliminate the need for weekly sacrifice to God. He became the sacrifice, thereby substituting the need for actual livestock, food (like grain or oil) or coin to be taken from the poor and destroyed as the sacrifice. Jesus explicitly attended Temple and made clear that the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist was the New foundation of the New Sacrifice, which is the Sacrifice of the Mass.



God knows that if people are not disciplined enough to render unto God in a sacrificial manner every week that they start to change their mindsets into deciding that God is a secondary priority. I understand that society has conspired to make people exhausted with too long hours of work during the week and I deplore that. I blame employers for much of the lack of attendance in Mass. However, people must be adult and responsible and understand that the Mass is not a praise and worship service to be blown off or attended whenever or "done in the heart." It is still the sacrifice that God instructed humans to do for a reason. He knows human nature and that nothing is prized by humans unless they put it before themselves, and also sacrifice something of substance. It's not like he "needs" the attention. It is part of being a good parent, and that he is. He knows better than people do what they need to be healthy and righteous.



(And by the way, I am not at all against praise and worship service. I think they are great actually. But they are not switchable or substitutable for the sacrifice of the Mass).