sunday, the importance of gathering in the Lord's day - 22nd week Saturday 2017

Our gospel today leads us to reflect on two things connected with our faith in the Eucharist.

First, Jesus reveals himself as Lord of the Sabbath.  He is Lord, he is God, he has authority over the many rules and laws of the Sabbath.  And to highlight the kind of authority Jesus exercises over the Sabbath, he cited an instance where compassion was the rule over the legalism of worship.  David and his hungry men were allowed to eat what rules only allow to priests. 
Again this divine characteristic is consistent throughout the bible – the defining characteristic of God – merciful and compassionate.  And this is invoked so many times in the mass – in the penitential rite of the mass when we all cry Lord have mercy; before and after reading the gospel when the priest or deacon says, through the words of the gospel may our sins be wiped away; in the washing of the hands when the priest says wash me from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin; and just before communion when we say Lord I am not worth but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.  In the mass this defining characteristic of God is played to us like a broken record – God is mercy and compassion.

Second, when Jesus says he is Lord of the Sabbath we are reminded as to whose name we gather every Sunday - we gather to worship God through him who calls himself the Lord of the Sabbath.  And this gathering is very important.  Voltaire who was a great attacker of the church once said, “If you want to kill Christianity abolish the Sunday.”  True enough when we begin losing the value of gathering together as a family and as a community every Sunday to worship God, to worship Jesus, we also lose our spiritual moorings and eventually we lose our sense of being Christian.  And what Voltaire said years back becomes indeed true.  It is imperative therefore to recover the importance of gathering as a community every Sunday for the Eucharist.

Two things about the mass which today’s gospel remind us of:  first we gather in the Eucharist to celebrate and to invoke the compassion and mercy of the Lord of the Sabbath; and second we need to recover the importance of gathering in Jesus’ name every Sunday and only then can we preserve and recover our Christianity.