Empty churches: Ain’t we still crucifying Jesus Christ?

Holy Week thoughts from Mumbai

  Our parish priest in Nerul, Navi Mumbai, narrated this story during the Good Friday homily last week. It was about a husband and wife in a family who used to fight all the time, day after day. Life was horrible for them because there was no peace at home and their days were filled with rancour and acrimony. One day, the husband died, that too in the same state of bitterness and animosity.    

  Then the wife changed her tone immediately. She was inconsolable and wept continuously. “Here lies my beloved one. He has gone leaving me alone in this world. Very sad,” she cried out to the mourners who visited her pointing to the dead body in the coffin. But the fact is that when her husband was alive, she had never given him peace of mind even for a day, and vice versa. “She was kissing the dead body again and again. What’s the use of kissing a dead body? When he was alive, she had never shown any affection or love,” the priest said.

  That’s not the end of the story.

 “We’re treating Jesus Christ in the same way. Most of the churches around world are jam-packed during a Good Friday service. Even the compound around the church will be choc-a-bloc with people. Why most of them come to church only during the Good Friday services?” the priest asked. His rebuke was also aimed at some such people in the Navi Mumbai church who made the rare appearance only on a Good Friday. In other words, the priest was saying that the story of the husband-wife and people coming for just Good Friday service once in a year is similar.

  “The sad part is that churches are practically empty in the rest of 364 days. We come to the church only on Good Friday to crucify him once again,” he said. Apart from the mandatory Sunday Mass, Roman Catholic churches around world celebrate Holy Mass every day. But you don’t see them on week days or even Sundays.  

 “Many people have still not understood the significance of the Holy Mass. If they knew the importance of Holy Mass, the church would not have been empty during the daily Holy Mass,” the priest said. The Eucharist, the sacrament of our salvation accomplished by Christ on the cross, is also a sacrifice of praise in thanksgiving for the work of creation. In the Eucharistic sacrifice the whole of creation loved by God is presented to the Father through the death and the Resurrection of Christ. “Through Christ the Church can offer the sacrifice of praise in thanksgiving for all that God has made good, beautiful, and just in creation and in humanity,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).
  When this writer went to a church in Rome – if my memory is correct it was the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls – on a Sunday, the Holy Mass was being celebrated on the north Transept (right side of the main altar) of the big church while the huge Nave (long front side), which is almost 150 metres in length, was empty. The number of people attending the mass was less than 15. Many of the churches in Europe are empty even on Sundays as the number of churchgoers have come down steeply.  As the priest summed up his Good Friday homily, “we are still crucifying Jesus Christ on the cross.”

 The words of Pope Benedict XV reverberate in one’s ears. "The Holy Mass would be of greater profit if people had it offered in their lifetime, rather than having it celebrated for the relief of their souls after death," the pope said.