My dear Brothers and Sisters,

From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank each and every one of you for your contributions to the ABCD appeal last weekend. The response was overwhelming, and as usual, the generosity of this parish knows no bounds. If you were out last weekend, I invite you to please take one of the ABCD envelopes in the pews, fill it out, and drop the filled pledge card in the collection basket. On behalf of Archbishop Wenski, thank you for reaching out to help the poorest among us in our local Church in South Florida. God reward your generosity.

As millions across the nation gather today for “Super Sunday,” I will take pastoral advantage of this occasion to go a little deeper on the importance of Sunday, not because of football, but because of the importance of Mass at center of our Sundays. Now I know I’m (mostly) preaching to the choir here because you’re probably reading this bulletin while sitting in the church or at home online with the intention of going to church for Mass. In 1998, St. John Paul II published an apostolic letter called “Dies Domini” (The Lord’s Day) to explain to the faithful how to keep the Lord’s Day holy:

The Lord’s Day — as Sunday was called from Apostolic times — has always been accorded special attention in the history of the Church because of its close connection with the very core of the Christian mystery. In fact, in the weekly reckoning of time Sunday recalls the day of Christ’s Resurrection. It is Easter which returns week by week, celebrating Christ’s victory over sin and death, the fulfilment in him of the first creation and the dawn of “the new creation” (cf. 2 Cor 5:17). It is the day which recalls in grateful adoration the world’s first day and looks forward in active hope to “the last day”, when Christ will come in glory (cf. Acts 1:11; 1 Th 4:13-17) and all things will be made new (cf. Rev21:5).

Rightly, then, the Psalmist’s cry is applied to Sunday: “This is the day which the Lord has made: let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps 118:24). This invitation to joy, which the Easter liturgy makes its own, reflects the astonishment which came over the women who, having seen the crucifixion of Christ, found the tomb empty when they went there “very early on the first day after the Sabbath” (Mk 16:2). It is an invitation to relive in some way the experience of the two disciples of Emmaus, who felt their hearts “burn within them” as the Risen One walked with them on the road, explaining the Scriptures and revealing himself in “the breaking of the bread” (cf. Lk 24:32,35). And it echoes the joy — at first uncertain and then overwhelming — which the Apostles experienced on the evening of that same day, when they were visited by the Risen Jesus and received the gift of his peace and of his Spirit (cf. Jn 20:19-23).

St. John Paul II wants us to rediscover Sunday and the centrality of the Sunday Mass on that day:

It seems more necessary than ever to recover the deep doctrinal foundations underlying the Church’s precept, so that the abiding value of Sunday in the Christian life will be clear to all the faithful. In doing this, we follow in the footsteps of the age-old tradition of the Church, powerfully restated by the Second Vatican Council in its teaching that on Sunday “Christian believers should come together, in order to commemorate the suffering, Resurrection and glory of the Lord Jesus, by hearing God’s Word and sharing the Eucharist, and to give thanks to God who has given them new birth to a living hope through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (cf. 1 Pt 1:3)”… Sunday is a day which is at the very heart of the Christian life. From the beginning of my Pontificate, I have not ceased to repeat: “Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ!”.(9) In the same way, today I would strongly urge everyone to rediscover Sunday: Do not be afraid to give your time to Christ! Yes, let us open our time to Christ, that he may cast light upon it and give it direction.

Finally, the holy pope doubles down on the importance of the Sunday Mass to the life of a parish community:

…on the pastoral level the community aspect of the Sunday celebration should be particularly stressed. As I have noted elsewhere, among the many activities of a parish, “none is as vital or as community-forming as the Sunday celebration of the Lord’s Day and his Eucharist”.

And he concludes that the Eucharist is the “very heart of Sunday.” So, let’s reorder things. I urge all our families to plan your weekends around the celebration of Sunday Mass. There is nothing, I repeat with every fiber of my being, there is NOTHING that is more important to do as a family than to participate in the celebration of Sunday Mass. Everything flows from it, and everything flows back to it. I pray we may rediscover the primordial importance of Sunday in the life of every Christian family because the Eucharist nurtures every family insofar as we participate in it and weakens the family when we put sports, birthdays, trips or anything else above the third commandment of truly making the Lord’s day HOLY.

God bless you all,