Clairity's Place is always a required stop

If you haven't been there yet, go visit. Right now.

If you don't you'll miss an incredible reflection on the Church as life like this one.

Taste and see:

The book we are currently reading in Schools of Community throughout the world is Why the Church? by the late Msgr. Luigi Giussani. The opening of this book explains why I'm now writing part two.

The Church is not just an expression of life, something born from life. It is a life, a life which has come down to us through many centuries. Anyone seeking to verify a personal opinion of the Church must keep in mind that any real understanding of a life, which is the church, requires that one share that life in a way that lets him or her know it.... The conditio sine qua for understanding life is living out a shared existence with it.

This is a fundamental concept in the CL movement, but not only for us.

The Church is life. It is the continued life of the Ressurected Jesus shared among us who are baptized into his very life, death and ressurection. Sharing the life of Faith is essential to living it. Too often, many of us don't get that. At the last mass I attended, a woman scurried after her children, much as Mira and I chased after Frankie. We commiserated with her on the difficulty of participating in a Mass under these circumstances. She had something interesting to say:

I keep asking myself why do I come. I don't get anything out of it. But I keep coming, hoping, maybe being here will do something.

It's as though coming to mass was like going to the gym. Those of us that have gone to the gym know why we're there. No pain, no gain, and all that; we work out, we get healthier. Somehow, some of us bring the same thinking to Mass. It's as though we're there to develop our Spirits, like we condition our bodies when we work out at the gym.

Unfortunately, this is the wrong analogy for understanding why we go to Mass. A closer one would be attending a family dinner. Now, how many of us, when we've gone to such dinners, come home wondering what we got out of it? It just doesn't occur. Sure, some dinners are better than others, and some days we have a better time than others. But would we even wonder about what we "got out of it?" I doubt it.

Mass is the ultimate family get-together. We celebrate the victory over death of our brother, Jesus. As sisters and brothers with each other in his name, we celebrate his sacrifice. Then we share a meal: his body and blood, through which we have union with our Father in Heaven. What's to get out of a banquet? The question doesn't make sense in this context.

Mass is the embodiement of the Church as Life. We part from our usual lives and come together as Family in the Lord. If more of us had this understanding of Mass--and of the Church as the continued sharing in the life of Christ--how much more Foolish would we all be. How much better the world could be then.