Not long ago I had a conversation with a woman which is pretty typical. She\u2019s real nice, wealthy, upper middle class and Catholic. I ask her where they go to Mass. She says they don\u2019t go to Mass, but they are \u201creally good people.\u201d She then proceeds to tell me how good she is.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m at St Joseph\u2019s Catholic School and I ask the kids, \u201cSo here\u2019s a Catholic question for you..what\u2019s better to be good and not go to Mass or to go to Mass and be bad?\u201d They\u2019re pretty smart. A few of them say, \u201cBe good and not go to Mass.\u201d Some others come up with better answers, \u201cWhat if you went to Mass and you were bad, but going to Mass made you realize you were bad, and so you went to confession. Wouldn\u2019t that be better?\u201d Another said, \u201cYou couldn\u2019t go to Mass and fully participate and be bad. Just going and being close to God would make you good.\u201d Another was even smarter, \u201cThe person who says they\u2019re good is bad because they\u2019re self righteous. It\u2019s the person who thinks they\u2019re bad who\u2019s really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
So the conversation continues and I ask individual kids, \u201cSteven, are you a good person?\u201d Now they\u2019re beginning to get it and they\u2019re laughing. \u00a0Steve says, \u201cNo Father, I\u2019m not good. I\u2019m bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the right answer!\u201d I exclaim. \u201cMary are you a good person?\u201d She comes up with a corker, \u201cBy God\u2019s grace I hope I might one day be good.\u201d Wow! These kids are on it.<\/p>\n
This is the how exciting paradox of religion. Anyone who says, \u201cWe don\u2019t go to Mass, but we are really good people\u201d have missed the Christian bus big time. They don\u2019t get it and so greatly don\u2019t get it that they are almost uneducable. Their misunderstanding is so profound that you couldn\u2019t even say to them what they haven\u2019t got because they don\u2019t know what they don\u2019t know. The astounding blind ness of such folks is that nine times out of then they then turn around and blame the people who do go to Mass for being hypocrites. Their lack of self awareness and spiritual awareness reveals the depth of their own hypocrisy for they think they are good, and never see that the essential prayer\u2013the prayer at the heart of it all is the sinner\u2019s plea, \u201cLord Jesus Christ, Have Mercy on me a Sinner.\u201d<\/p>\n
This prayer, so simple and so profound is the prayer that truly liberates. See how free and how child like you can be if you simply say this prayer? Within this prayer is the soul\u2019s freedom and the soul\u2019s joy. Within this prayer is the \u00a0simple trust in God on which everything else depends. Therefore, \u201cBeing good or Going to Mass\u201d is a totally false dichotomy.<\/p>\n
As one of the students said, \u201cYou can\u2019t really go to Mass and mean it and be bad, and if you don\u2019t go to Mass you can\u2019t really be good.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not long ago I had a conversation with a woman which is pretty typical. She\u2019s real nice, wealthy, upper middle class and Catholic. I ask her where they go to Mass. She says they don\u2019t go to Mass, but they are \u201creally good people.\u201d She then proceeds to tell me how good she is. So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n