Sundays

We’ve had the flu for the last week, all of us except for #1. I don’t know how she escapes these things, maybe it’s because she hides in her room doing Algebra and listening to whiny teeny-bopper music.

Sunday morning we were better, marginally. Better enough that we could have made it to Mass and sniffled our way through it. A few years ago, we would have dragged ourselves from bed and forced ourselves to go. We no longer do. It is much harder to stay home.

We could have gone, but didn’t. The older I get, the more sure I become that going to Mass while ill is sinful. All the coughing, sniffling, hacking that I would do would spread my germs to rest of the congregation. There was a time in history when we didn’t know how diseases spread, and everybody who was physically capable of going was required to meet their Sunday obligation of attendance. We know how the flu is spread. My presence there would expose the 100+ in attendance at the 8AM Mass. To attend would, it seems to me, to be an act of selfishness.

It is not that I wished to stay curled up in bed. I ache for the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. My whole week, all the effort and the prayer, leads to what JP II rightly called the “source and summit of our faith.” Sunday Mass is the fuel that gets me through my stressful and hectic week. That one hour restores the calm of my soul.

In this case, it is either a sin to go or a sin to stay home. I am no theologian, therefore, I will do what any good Catholic girl would do. I will go to Confession and let God sort it out.