The artistry of a skilled woodworker is evident in well-crafted furniture. The wood grains are matched in appealing ways. The dovetails in the drawers fit perfectly together. The mitered joints have no gaps. The legs and finials are turned to please both the eye and the overall style. None of this happens by chance. It comes about because of preparation, patience, practice, skill, and training.

How the church prays

When the church is at its best, Sunday Mass is just like that artisan and furnishing. Notice the harmony of entrance song, opening prayer, Scripture readings, and preaching. Notice the posture and movement of ministers and faithful. Notice the cleaned space set for worship. Notice hospitality and who is welcome. Notice accessibility to prayer and ministry. Notice the presence of Christ.

Whether it is the soberness of Lent or the exuberance of Easter, word and song, movement and stillness, proclamation and response all fit together to proclaim one reality. It is the paschal mystery of the dead but risen Jesus Christ the Lord and our faithful involvement in it. When the church is at its best, all of this is present.

What the church believes by praying

We know this, believe this: Sunday Mass at its best does not happen by chance. There is patient preparation, practice week after week, employed skill as well as art, and training and formation from presiding priest to the last parishioner in the last pew. Unlike that piece of furniture, however, none of us is ever completely finished. Although Christ saved us once for all, our training and formation in this paschal living is never complete. We come Sunday after Sunday, year after year, to celebrate the church’s liturgy because someone and something calls us there. That someone is Christ. That something is our need to be in and of the church.

One of the great aspects of the liturgical reform called for by Vatican Council II was the revision of the Roman Missal (Sacramentary) and the Lectionary for Mass. Over the three years of readings and throughout the liturgical year, we regularly review the basics, the fundamentals, of faith. The liturgy is important to the life of the church because it “is the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church” (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy 2).

What the church learns by believing

What does our faithfulness to Sunday teach us?

1. The Sunday celebration teaches the central beliefs of faith in Jesus Christ. The system used, the “scope and sequence,” is the liturgical year. This annual recounting of church life based on the words and deeds of the dead but risen Lord catechizes us on what is fundamental, what is basic, what is necessary.

2. The Sunday celebration enfolds us in a life that asks, “What’s in it for us?” Each of us comes to know that being saved is intimately bound up in the whole Body of Christ, which is the church. We are saved in community.

3. On Sunday we celebrate the rites of the church. This public prayer gathers the faithful in Christ around the tables of word and meal. This public prayer proclaims the grace, mercy, and power of Jesus Christ the Lord. In the changing of bread and wine into Body and Blood, we, the faithful in Christ, are also changed.

4. The Sunday celebration reminds us, calls us, changes us to be “present in this world yet not at home in it” (ibid.) and invites us to take part in “all the works of charity, worship, and the apostolate” (9). In short, in the Sunday celebration, we learn to be disciples of the one whose name we bear.

Resources for further study

• On the primacy of Sunday and the impact of the liturgical year, see General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar 1–44.
• On the key aspects of the Christian life, see Acts of the Apostles 2:42–47, which we proclaim on the Second Sunday of Easter, Year A.

On the ancient four-fold training and formation in the Christian life embraced by catechist and liturgist alike, see Sharing the Light of Faith 213 and Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults 75. ML

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