You have a child infected with a deadly necrotic disease. There are two ways to cure the disease--have it run its course, infecting hundreds of other people, causing the child (and those around your child) to to lose the function of their body and they will have to be hooked up to machines, but the worse part is that it takes many years to recover--like seventy. Life will be hell for your child and all others--but eventually the disease will be cured-- but your child will never fully get rid of the symptoms and will have to remain on life support.
OR the child can go to the doctor's home once a week to receive a shot and not only will the child NOT get worse (and thus be much less likely to infect others), the child will slowly and eventually be cured.
If you are the mother of such a child, would you not REQUIRE the child (because they are immature) to go to the doctor's once a week for the shot? Would you not urge your child that is a matter of life and death for not only him but everyone he might infect?
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THAT is why the Catholic Church requires us to go to Church on Sunday. It is a great act of mercy. ENORMOUS mercy.
You see, we are so immature, we do not understand the horror of sin and how it makes us stupid and ugly and filthy and miserable. Sin is the cause of our suffering. Our sin affects our family and friends. We can actually, even unknowingly cause our brothers and sisters to sin! Sin leads to sin and we eventually so habituate ourselves in sin that we need a miraculous intervention of Christ to save us. But by that time, we are so wounded and deformed, so far off the path of righteousness that we spend many decades relearning how to think and behave and love and have faith.
When we allow sin to reign in our lives, we sink so deep that it takes a lifetime of suffering and sorrows, regret and heartache to get back onto the path.
But Christ had a better way. Baptize your children into the faith. Begin them early
The sacraments are not there to interrupt our fun time. They are there so that we don't have to suffer for sin. There is a hard way--learning through great agonies and hardships. Then there is the way God provided for us--the sacraments--the easiest possible way to prevent us from making terrible choices and living in a tsunami of misery. Sacraments kill the sin in us through God's unfathomable mercy.
The requirement to attend mass is not a burden. Our eyes are so weakened with entertainment and business and fatigue that we do not see that mass is WHERE we will find the joy and peace and restoration from sin we so desperately need.
