I was faced with a similar statement just the other day by a fellow Catholic who goes to church when she can and goes to other peoples’ churches when invited (but not following up by going to a Catholic mass, too). I reminded her that next time she needs to atttend Mass as well. She said, God is everywhere, if I can get to a church I will but it doesn’t have to be every week.
I told her “Keep holy the Sabbath”. She said, but I can do that from home or anywhere, and I did go to that other church last week.
She talked about how she enjoyed the small drama play presented before the pastor read from scripture because she had a visual to refer to as he read line by line, then paused to address what each line meant.
I told her other churches have wonderful ways of worshiping, but they don’t have the Eucharist. I told her it sounded more like a bible study to me. We have the word read to us at every mass, ‘straight from the bible’. We have 3 readings **and **the psalms sung - as they were intended to be. Then we have a homily which helps us think about how to apply the reading to our daily life.
She said she doesn’t always understand the scriptures though, and I told her that the scriptures are God’s way of communicating to us. Through the Holy Spirit the Word touches our souls, not through the mind or the intellect, but deep to our core - when the message is directed toward us. I asked her to recall how many times she heard the very same scripture passage over the years and how finally one time, it hit her as if God had called her name and was speaking directly to her. She recalled that it has happened that way for her several times. I told her that’s why the Church keeps the structure of the readings as they’ve always been. Those readings are speaking directly to several people in attendance. To stop at each line to interject a priest’s own interpretation muddles the message intended for those people, in interferes with God’s plan to speak to those people.
As for the Eucharist, she kept reminding me they had communion. I told her it was not the Eucharist because they don’t believe in transubstantiation and the pastor is not a successor of one of the apostles so he doesn’t have the ability to call Christ into the bread and wine. She said, like magic? I told her no, not magic. The Real Presence is a gift Jesus specifically gave to us through the apostles. I reminded her that even when he said “this is my body, this is my blood” to the apostles that night he was standing in the flesh beside them. He was very much alive, hadn’t died yet…and still when those apostles at that bread and wine they ate His flesh and blood. Since He could enter into the bread and wine then, why is it so difficult to believe He does it now through the priests ordained in the line of those very apostles? Other churches do not have the gift we have.
And then I told her **that’s **why we keep holy the sabbath by attended mass on Sunday. We literally receive the gift Jesus gave to us at the last supper. We consume Jesus fully present - body, blood, soul and divinity - through the mass. Why wouldn’t she want to have him physically within her instead of just ‘out there somewhere everywhere for everyone’?
Then her cell phone rang and we got back to other conversations. At least I planted the seed about the Real Presence. I plan to follow up with a couple of stories about Eucharistic Miracles I can email to her.
Anyway, yes God is always with your sister, but is she always with Him?? Doesn’t sound like it if she doesn’t make the time to visit him and receive him into her own body through the Eucharist. I suspect she does not understand the Real Presence.
This is a kind of a cold attitude but absolutely true of course .