When Attending Mass Virtually Just Doesn’t Cut It

not too long ago i was talking with someone and they said i was on vacation so in some place and so it was so nice to have the masses online because uh we didn't have to go anywhere we just got to be in our hotel room going to mass online and i just was like [Music] hi my name's father mike schmitz and this is ascension presents so um i made a video before about the obligation to go to sunday mass maybe i've made a couple of those but recently i wanted to revisit some of this a little bit because as i mentioned in a previous video i did an interview for a place called theveilremoved.com and so it just kind of has a depiction of what happens at the mass one of the questions was um what if i don't go to in-person mass but go to online mass out of convenience and my response was kind of a like a knee-jerk response it was like oh that's a mortal sin and i was like i should clarify but it's not i'm not wrong it's not wrong to do that to avoid mass in person and go to online mass out of convenience is grave matter that's a it's a grave sin now if i you know you know the qualifications for us to be mortal we we have a lot of videos on that um maybe at least a couple it has to be a grave sin right it's a great matter i have to know it's great matter and i have to three third uh freely choose to do it so if someone didn't know that okay then they had lacked full knowledge but now you know that um if i have the opportunity to go to mass in person i can't substitute that by going to mass online now i know a lot of people have said have called you know written to me and they've contacted said thank you for having the online mass because in my country or in my area it's still locked down we can't go to mass in person or to be able to say i'm immunocompromised and i can't go to mass in person or i take care of my grandmother and she's compromised so she can't go to mass in person or i got sick this weekend we all got covered this weekend and so i can't go to mass in person whatever that thing is those are called legitimate reasons that's not convenience that's that's convenience but it's uh convenience because i'm unable to go to mass makes complete sense but let's look at this a little more deeply because there are good reasons at times when we may not be able to make it to mass so how about when they shut everything down not able to make it to mass what about when i'm sick not able to make it to mass what about this what about when i'm too nervous to go to mass but i'm not too nervous to go to walmart or i'm too nervous to go to mass but i'm not too nervous to go to the grocery store or i'm too nervous to go to mass but i everything else is back to normal for me now again if if you're like no father i have good reasons believe me i'm not coming at you i just want to explain to all of us make it really really clear that simply avoiding mass in person and going online out of convenience is a serious serious sin and we have to ask ourselves is this a good enough reason years ago we had a young woman working up here at the university and she is a rock climber i don't know if i've told this story before but she's a rock climber and she's traveled around the world climbing rocks and just one of her favorite things to do she was at one point she was in thailand she's on a little island i don't know all the details who's on an island that they didn't have a catholic church didn't have catholic mass and so she said well i'm here for a couple weeks i can't go to mass because uh to get to mass you'd have to take a ferry like at four in the morning um across the channel and then get on a bus and have a bus ride for like two more hours and finally get to mass and in order to be there on time you have to give it four to this trip so she just said well i guess i can't go to church guess i can't go to mass and she was going to give herself a pass and then she said she asked herself the question she said if it was a rock climbing thing i would do it i would get up early i would take the ferry i would take the bus and i would get to the rock climbing place whatever that time was and she said she asked herself that question she had a gut check moment where she said okay if i'm willing to do this to rock climb in a really cool place but i'm not willing to do this in order to get to mass to receive the eucharist to worship god then fill in the blank this is not a reason this is an excuse and so every sunday while she's on this little island she'd get up really early take the ferry across take the bus and go to mass because it wasn't a matter of like i guess i can't make it it was a matter of i guess i won't choose to make it so for all of us there are such a things as good reasons to not be able to go to mass the question i have to ask myself and only and maybe no one can answer this question for you except for you and the lord in your prayer or the reasons for any given sunday that you or i can't make it to mass are they reasons or are they excuses again as i said possibly only you and the lord will know the ultimate answer for that but here's the last thing i think it's really remarkable you know when we talk about the sunday obligation sometimes people can be really uh negative about it they can say like oh gosh obligation you shouldn't have to do such and such and i understand that i mean it's not like i'm not like i'm just ogre who can't i don't understand people um i get it i'm people too but i don't know if we've really reflected on what are we saying when we say that if you are a son or daughter of the father you have an obligation to go to sunday mass what we're saying at the heart of it is it matters to god if you're there and it matters to god if you're not there like i'm thinking about have you ever thought about this that this isn't just like a rule the church came up with this is something that comes out of the heart of the father that he is let us know this that yeah when you show up and worship me it matters to me and when you excuse yourself for no good reason it matters to me i don't know i i it's hard to see it as an obligation after that unless unless i just don't care i mean that that's possibility maybe i don't care what the father wants maybe i don't care that i matter to him my guess is if you're watching this if you're listening to this i think you do care i think he matters to you a lot and i think it matters to you to know that you matter to him so the next time you know it's time to like okay make the decision am i going to excuse myself or am i going to show up am i am i am i going to give myself a pass or am i going to say no that's simply an excuse to to face the reality it matters to god you matter to god and your being at mass matters to him and your and my not being a mass matters to him why because you matter to him he loves you very much and without you at mass it's not like you're it's not like it's just like you're missing something we're missing something we're all missing something because as a church you matter to us too and it matters when you're there and it matters when you're not there anyways promising ascension presents my name is father mike god bless [Music] you

Channel: Ascension Presents

Views: 146,803

Keywords: ascension, ascension press, ascension presents, father mike, catholic advice, catholic inspiration, catholic motivation, fr. mike schmitz, fr. Mike schmidt, father mike schmitz, michael schmitz, fr. Mike advice, fr. Mike videos, fr mike schmitz, fr mike schmitz bible in a year, go to mass every day, why go to mass catholic, sunday mass obligation, sunday mass obligation covid, sunday mass obligation during pandemic, why go to mass every sunday, ascension presents mass

Id: ectOsAbxbW4

Length: 7min 41sec (461 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 23 2022