If you only remember one thing from this pastor’s column, let it be this:

Catholics who marry are obligated to wed in the Catholic Church.  Failure to do so would constitute grave evil and the union would not be a valid marriage in God’s eyes. 

I never heard this fact growing up Catholic, so it was news to me when I discovered it in my early 30’s, and it may well be news to you too. 

So what happens to a Catholic who weds outside of the Catholic Church?  Although the union is recognized by civil society as marriage, it is not recognized by God as such: thus the couple are sleeping together outside of marriage. 

There is no Jesus without the Catholic Church, and hence, there is no salvation without the Catholic Church. Let me explain. Jesus Christ, God, founded only one Church and that Church is the Catholic (Greek for ‘universal’) Church. Before the Catholic Church, God made a covenant with the chosen people, now called Jews. If you belong to a religion other than Judaism or Catholicism, then God is not your founder. Jesus is the Messiah of the Jews and Gentiles, with his revelation a new covenant of salvation was created through the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Everything we know about Jesus Christ, the Holy Trinity, the Communion of saints, heaven, purgatory, and hell comes from the Catholic Church. It was the Catholic Church that wrote the New Testament and decided what books and letters would go into the Bible.

Remember the first precept, that we are obligated to attend Mass on all the Holy Days of Obligation, and Sunday is always a Holy Day of Obligation. However, we are not obligated to receive the Holy Eucharist (Communion) at each of those Masses, for that-we need to be in a “state of grace” or free of mortal sin. Concerning the fourth precept, as evident by the percentage of people who receive the Holy Communion at Mass, most Catholics in the U.S. assume that they are supposed to receive Holy Communion if they attend Mass, this is not correct. Only those who are Catholic, have received their 1st Communion, and are not aware of unconfessed mortal sin are able to receive Holy Communion.

Forgiveness of sins is so important that God decided to sacramentalize it. Today the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls that sacrament by various names: Confession, Reconciliation, Penance, Forgiveness, and even Conversion. A supernatural thing happens when we go to confession: our sins are absolved (removed), no matter how bad or how often they have been committed, and we are restored and strengthened in our life of grace with God. There is no other way on earth to have our mortal sins absolved other than through sacramental confession. So why don’t more people take advantage of it: ignorance of the information being presented here, and pride.

This week we continue our series on the Precepts of the Catholic Church: “pre” meaning “before”, and “cept” meaning “life” – before there can be full life in God, these seven laws must be observed. Failure to live them out would constitute a mortal sin: when one has knowledge of them, and acts without undue coercion to disregard them. “The obligatory character of these positive laws decreed by pastoral authorities is meant to guarantee to the faithful the very necessary minimum in the spirit of prayer and moral effort, in the growth in love of God and neighbor”. Catechism #2041. This week we continue working our way through them by exploring the second precept.

We know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide; we know how to drive a car with all its myriad rules; we know about photosynthesis; we know what it takes to do our taxes annually; but when it comes to knowledge of our faith, we can be woefully uninformed. Almost four years ago I ran a multiple part series on the precepts of the Catholic faith. I run them again now because they are critically important to know and live, and most of you don’t have them memorized and should, finally we should be able to teach them to others.

The easiest way to develop a greater devotion to the Eucharist is to attend daily Mass, so you can partake of Christ’s body and blood on a regular basis. You can also take part in a holy hour at a local chapel that hosts perpetual adoration or the Forty Hours Devotion. “This devotion takes place, as its name suggests, for forty hours after the sacrament is exposed. In Scripture, the number forty symbolizes the transformation for holy people, such as when the Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert or when Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days. Likewise, through the Forty Hours Devotion, the worshipper can take part in a spiritual transformation by spending time adoring the Lord (though he is not obligated to remain in adoration for the entire forty hours).

Although there have been no miracles involving the Eucharist that the Church has required Catholics to believe as articles of faith, there have been several reports of miracles that the Church has investigated and deemed appropriate for Catholics to accept. Here are just a few of them:

• Lanciano, Italy, 8th century: During Mass the consecrated bread and wine became actual flesh and blood. The host and globules of blood were preserved and are on display to this very day. A team of researchers in the 1970s and ‘80s examined the host and determined that the flesh came from a human heart and the blood was type AB.

The Church, of course, adores the Eucharist at every Mass, and treats it with adoring reverence whenever it is transported. The practice popularly called “eucharistic adoration” refers specifically to praying before the Eucharist outside of a liturgical setting, when it has been reserved or exposed in a sacred vessel.

The first recorded instance of eucharistic adoration took place on September 11, 1226, when, “In compliance with the wish of Louis VII, who had just been victorious over the Albigensians [a group of heretics], the Blessed Sacrament, veiled, was exposed in the Chapel of the Holy Cross, as an act of thanksgiving. So great was the throng of adorers that the bishop, Pierre de Corbie, judged it expedient to continue the adoration by night, as well as by day, a proposal that was subsequently ratified by the approval of the Holy See,”

The Mass and the sacrament of the Eucharist are discussed throughout the documents of the Second Vatican Council. For example, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, teaches that the Eucharist holds a central place in the life of the Church. It says:

The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows. For the aim and object of apostolic works is that all who are made sons of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of his Church, to take part in the sacrifice, and to eat the Lord’s supper.

According to the Code of Canon Law, “Any baptized person not prohibited by law can and must be admitted to Holy Communion. The administration of the Most Holy Eucharist to children requires that they have sufficient knowledge and careful preparation so that they understand the mystery of Christ according to their capacity and are able to receive the body of Christ with faith and devotion . . . . A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession.”

A person must normally be baptized or received into the Catholic Faith in order to receive the Eucharist and even then that person must be free from mortal sin or canonical penalties such as excommunication. For example, the Didache admonished first-century Christians to “let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, unless they have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for concerning this also the Lord has said, ‘Give not that which it holy to the dogs.’”

Keep in mind that this rule is not carried out because of a sense of spiritual superiority or because the Church wants non-Catholics to feel bad. Instead, it is done out of a sense of concern for non-Catholics who might want approach the sacrament.

Just as we should never take the Lord’s name in vain, we should never treat the Lord himself in vain by acting in an irreverent or blasphemous way toward him when he is present with us in the sacrament of the Eucharist. That is why special care must be taken with the remaining elements of the precious body and precious blood after Mass has concluded.

The Code of Canon Law states: “A person who throws away the consecrated species or takes or retains them for a sacrilegious purpose incurs a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; moreover, a cleric can be punished with another penalty, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state.”

Along with being properly disposed to receive the Eucharist by being free from the conscious knowledge of mortal sin, the faithful are required to fast before receiving the Eucharist. According to the Code of Canon Law, “A person who is to receive the Most Holy Eucharist is to abstain for at least one hour before Holy Communion from any food and drink, except for only water and medicine.” But the canon also specifically states that “the infirm” are not bound to observe the eucharistic fast.

After many years of sacrificing, saving, planning, permitting, and working we are finally ready to move into the addition on the back of the church! On the weekend of April 24-25, there will be tours of our new addition after all the Masses, so stick around after Mass. When I return from my sabbatical in August, we’ll have Archbishop Etienne come and formally dedicate the space [I’ll be gone from April 26 thru August 3].

I’ve got some good news and some bad news. First the good: I’ll be leaving for a sabbatical at the end of April and returning in early August.  Now the bad news: I’ll be leaving for a sabbatical at the end of April and returning in early August.  Specifically, I’ll be gone from Monday, April 26 through Tuesday, August 3.  While I’m away, Fathers Martin and Woodman, both retired priests living in southwest Washington, will cover most of the weekend Masses.  Fr. Martin will cover the weekday Masses as well.  I am so grateful for all the priests who cover for me when I’m gone, we’d be closing down Masses without them.

Every year we commemorate the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the same reasons we commemorate our loved ones who have passed away, yet there’s a huge difference.  Jesus Christ is the greatest life ever lived because that one life overcame sin, suffering, victimhood, and death itself.  Hope was not vanquished on a cross as the apostles feared, but born from a tomb as the result of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  When we commemorate our deceased loved ones, we do so precisely because Jesus was able to save them, if that is what they ultimately chose.  When we reflect on Easter, we reflect on our own salvation born of a hope that didn’t exist prior to that first Easter. 

This Sunday we “celebrate” Passion Sunday; memorializing the death (by torture) that Jesus suffered for love of us. Jesus models what a true hero is: someone who sacrifices his life for love of the other, even when the one he is saving is the one who is taking his life. Put another way: it’s one thing to willingly die to save those who love you, it’s another to die to save those who hate you. Add to that; the one who is doing the dying and saving isn’t a peer, but your creator. What love.

The last two weeks of Lent are historically known as Passiontide. During this time many churches cover their crosses, images of Jesus, angels, and saints with purple cloth. The season of Passiontide was more or less abrogated in 1969 when the Church came out with a new set of readings for Mass. It used to be that two Sundays before Easter (5th Sunday of Lent), the Gospel reading was about Jesus confronting the established powers with his divinity; this caused those in authority to pick up rocks to stone him, “but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple” (Jn 8:46-59).

According to the Code of Canon Law, “Any baptized person not prohibited by law can and must be admitted to Holy Communion. The administration of the Most Holy Eucharist to children requires that they have sufficient knowledge and careful preparation so that they understand the mystery of Christ according to their capacity and are able to receive the body of Christ with faith and devotion . . . . A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession.”