“I just do not get anything out of Mass. Can I not just pray to God on my own?”
These are two comments, of the many, I hear from the mouths of young people with respect to liturgy. Maybe as a youth worker you have heard similar comments.

An Experience of Prayer
For me, there is a real disconnect between liturgy and prayer. Quite often Sunday Mass is anything but an experience of prayer. As organized as we try to be for our youth/youth friendly Mass each week, inevitably there is something someone is scrambling to do at the last minute. Often that someone is me; whether it be finding an altar server, wondering who is proclaiming the first reading, or dealing with a report that the toilet in the men’s bathroom has overflowed. Add to that sitting with my family and the many distractions that come with spending any amount of focused time in prayer with a three year old and five year old children. Needless to say I am never as present as I would like to be at Mass.

Christ is Present
The good news: Christ is present to us in many ways (CCC 1088, 1373). His presence to us is not contingent upon our disposition. His presence is:

• In the church’s prayer
• In the sacrifice of the Mass
• In the readings proclaimed
• In the assembly gathered
• In the person of the minister
• In the Eucharist

If I can just be present, and mindful enough of Christ’s presence to us at the liturgy, if even for a moment at a time, I can turn a regularly chaotic experience of liturgy into a prayerful one.

Challenges and Truths
Challenge: I can not hear the reading being proclaimed because my head is under the pew as I try to collect spilled crayons, Goldfish crackers, or a child who has decided to lie down.

Truth: My ears are hearing the reading being proclaimed and converting sound waves into electronic impulses, that are sent to my brain for processing. Whether I can listen attentively or not, “it is he himself who speaks when the holy Scriptures are read in church.” (CCC 1088). Christ is present.

Challenge: The priest is long winded, has a difficult accent to decipher, and thinks his jokes are actually funny.

Truth: The priest, by virtue of the sacrament of holy orders, acts in persona Christi Capitis. It is the same priest, Christ Jesus, whose sacred person this minister truly represents (CCC 1348). Christ is present.

Challenge: I am often distracted by the people sitting around me, and fight the urge to be judgmental about what they are doing, saying, or wearing.

Truth: Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 11:20). Christ is present.

Challenge: Remembering as St. Augustine said, “We are what we receive.”

Truth: “The source and summit of the Christian life,” (CCC 1324) make no mistake, Christ is present.

Challenge: Being present at Mass, practicing active listening, singing songs I might not always like, entering deeply into prayer, reflecting during times of silence, and mindful of the great gift of our Catholic Mass.

Truth: I work for the church. Maybe I could look at the readings ahead of time and find time to go to Mass even one day during the week, either at my parish or better yet a neighboring parish where no one knows me and enter into the beauty and mystery of the ritual and prayer that I came to love so many years ago, before there were kids, or even a call to ministry. Then maybe I would learn to love all those things that I find challenging on Sunday, and encounter Christ in them too.