For an addition, I thought I'd offer a link and some quotes from Archbishop Timothy Dolan's recent column on the Sunday obligation. According to his citations, only about a third of Catholics (at most) go to Church on Sunday regularly. Not a great stat. And according to him, in the end not really a beneficial choice for those who skip. The Sabbath, he notes, is a day of rest, that is, a day to renew and feed the spirit of our lives. It's supposed to offer us a taste of what we can expect after we die, a taste of the kingdom that God promises us.
The choices we make should reflect that. Spending Sunday running around doing errands might be necessary, but it's not a great pattern to fall into. (And let's be honest, shall we? Yes, we all have errands to run. But if you've ever opted not to do the errands on a given Sunday (and who hasn't), you know that by and large we can skip them on a given day, and the important things still somehow seem to get done. It's like trying to get at the front of the line when waiting to get a seat on the plane. Your seat's already reserved, and usually even today there's enough shelf space for everyone. We feel a sense of urgency, so we do it, but it's really not necessary.)
Our Sunday observance, says Archbishop Dolan,
above all our Sunday Eucharist, is our anticipation of that definitive Sabbath rest when we shall enter into the Lord’s Day that will have no end. We need Sunday here below so that we might not lose our path to heaven above! We live on Sunday now what we hope to live forever in heaven.Something to think about...
The full text can be found here.
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