Why Go to Church?

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I once volunteered to help with a program at a huge, state mental health institute. It involved a brief training in an experimental process for helping profoundly catatonic patients “wake up,” if even for a short period. As I recall, it was loosely based on a widely recognized but largely obsolete procedure called logotherapy.

That term is derived from the Greek word “logo,” which translates into “meaning.” The therapy, invented by Holocaust survivor and renowned psychologist, Victor Frankl, in this case involved small group “discussions” about subjects that presumably had nothing to do with the traumas that resulted in the patients’ condition. With a group of women – with whom I worked on a hospital ward – it meant finding subjects about which they may have once been interested. In those days, the topics included gardening, sewing, child-rearing, etc.

The hope was that the women would be interested in one of the topics and “forgetting” her condition, offer an observation or question. The idea was brilliant, but it didn’t work. Most catatonic patients simply aren’t sufficiently tuned in to their environment.

That appears to be the case with many people at church. They may not be catatonic in the clinical sense, but they’ve definitely hit the “tune out” button. I suspect you have to be awe-struck with the discovery of God before feeling the need or desire to communicate with him/her, the churchy word for which is “worship.” And worship continues to be one of the principal dilemmas of religion in the modern world.

The problem is that if the principal aim of formal, communal worship is to be relevant – with trendy music, emotional homilies and stage performances – many will not take it seriously. It has nothing to offer that contemporary culture isn’t already offering. On the other hand, if you’re perceived to be irrelevant, few people will be interested.

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This dilemma is, perhaps, most obvious in contemporary Catholic worship. (For those of you who aren’t Catholic, forgive me for focusing on the Catholic version of this problem. It’s what I know best, but it’s shared to some extent by many faiths.)

Let’s face it, the Mass can be boring, especially for young people who have grown up on TV, fast-moving video games, PowerPoint, and access to a dizzying array of interesting videos. In many parishes, the liturgy seems to simply repeat the same prayers, the same stale, dragging music, the same insipid homilies that fail to connect the Good News of the gospel to contemporary life. The liturgy can be joyless and unappealing, not nearly stimulating enough to awaken us from our catatonic stupor.

By contrast, I was at a recent liturgy with a friend who commented as the Mass ended and people were leaving the church, “Wow! Look how happy everybody is!” No, they didn’t appear to be happy because the liturgy was ended. They were happy because the music was uplifting and meaningful, the Mass was prayed joyfully and without an exaggerated piety, and the homily was easily applicable to their lives.  

While I understand people’s frustration with a seemingly uninspiring liturgy – and acknowledge that appealing to everyone’s tastes is difficult – I believe a little logotherapy is in order. Despite the apparent desperation with which some churches’, especially mega-churches’, attempt to entertain, “going to church” isn’t about that. It’s about the meaning of worship, trying to fulfill Jesus’ prediction in the gospel story about the woman at the well. In that story, Jesus said true worship would be “in spirit and in truth.” Even when it’s boring, I believe the Catholic mass does that best.

Jesus’ showed what he meant by “spirit and truth” at the Last Supper. The gospels and Acts of the Apostles describe him breaking bread and sharing wine, urging his disciples to “do this in remembrance of me.” The ancient church seized on this, combining the synagogue service of Scripture reading with the sharing of bread and wine, which they believed – and Catholics still believe – become his body and blood offered to the Father.

If God is what we believe he/she is, what puny gifts could we have to offer in worship? At the Last Supper, Jesus invented a way for us to offer to God something of real value, his own life, and in communion to feel his presence in a physical way.

The Catholic mass still has two main parts: the Scripture readings and the Eucharist, which includes the re-enactment of Jesus offering of body and blood when the priest on our behalf says “we offer” or its equivalent, and the sharing of his body and blood in communion, or co-union with our brothers and sisters.

If we were really tuned in to the spiritual, none of this would ever be boring. But we’re not, so it sometimes is.

What to do? Two things come to mind. The first is to become more “spiritual,” habitually trying to focus on the meaning of the Mass. That means focusing on the priest’s prayers and making them our own, especially when after the elevation of the bread and wine he says “We offer,” then again on the meaning of com-union. The second is to do what we can to make the liturgy more meaningful by offering to help and doing so in the best way we can. That could be volunteering to be a reader, musician, singer, etc.     

It’s much better, of course, if the liturgy is well-planned, meaningful and joyful, but if it isn’t, the Mass is still the best form of worship and more than worthy of our hour a week. But only if we can awaken from our catatonia.