Ginny Musing- Playing The Same Record

Someone asked me why do I go to Mass every weekend, it’s the same thing every week, so what’s the point? This got me thinking about the different parts of the Mass.

One of the most important things we do on Sunday is listen to the Word of God. Every Sunday we hear the same thing over and over again- we are loveable because God loves us. Like a lover we never grow tired hearing God singing our praises and declaring”You are my beloved. I take delight in you.”

The Liturgy of the Word at Mass is like a grand opera or great play. It’s the same story line, the same song, every time. In the opera someone falls in love, the lover is rejected, she shoots him and then kills herself and it’s all done in an appropriately dramatic way. And we keep coming back for more of the same. We play the same record over and over again. Why? It’s because we want to feel the depth of the emotion so that it will come alive within us.

Week after week, we listen to what God in his great love has already done for us and what he continues to do. We try to take it in. It takes weekly repetition for the message to sink in. Week after week we are offered God’s vision, we are told here’s what God’s world looks like, here’s what God looks like, here’s life at its best. The liturgy is advertising God’s vision of how the world is meant to be and how life is meant to be lived.

The culture we live in obscures the Christian vision. Day after day, hour after hour, we are bombarded with a different message of salvation- this will save you; this will give you sex appeal; this will make you happy beyond your wildest dreams and make everyone want to kiss you. We are constantly exposed to countless images that tell us what we should be, do, want, wear and think. The psychology behind most advertising is to promote poor self-image. The message is consistent: You are inadequate unless you are buying our product. Buy our goodies, sing our song and then life is yours. We are being consistently told to be other than what we are supposed to be.

But once a week, sometimes more often for some, at Mass we are offered a vision of life that speaks to what is highest and noblest in the human heart. Maybe the Church in her wisdom knows her children need to hear the message over and over again, we are hearing but not listening. We are masters in the art of ignoring the great realities of what surround us.

My thoughts, any takers ???