(Originally published on Facebook, Sunday April 4, 2010)

Almost every Easter Triduum (3 consecutive days before Easter), I’ve volunteered at church either as an altar server (back in the day!) or a lector, the guy who reads all those readings at Mass.

Holy Saturday’s Easter Vigil is the longest of these 3 services, close to 3 hrs with several readings and psalms, baptisms, First Communions and confirmations for like 20+ new people joining the community, and lots of other stuff. I was half-jokingly telling my wife that if I wasn’t scheduled to help serve, I probably wouldn’t go to the vigil. Dude, it’s long!

Then, as if on queue from God, the priest giving the homily (sermon) talked about how people would complain to him, “Father, the mass is too long, the homily is too long, etc.” Everyone had a laugh including myself. Then he proceeded to explain that often times we view going to church from the perspective of ourselves instead of trying to see it from the perspective of God.

Then I felt like a bum.

Because it was like a slap upside my head reminding me of something that I teach my students (I volunteer as a catechism teacher too; it’s like Sunday school for Catholics except we meet during the week).

I give my students this math equation. There are 24hr in a day and 7 days a week. That makes 168hrs in a week.

And I have to sacrifice 1 measly hour of my precious week for God, who sent His only Son to come down here, raise people from the dead, perform miracles, be awesome, only to get the crap beat out of Him and hung on cross by the very people he came to save. What da…??

OK, so if God tells me to go to church, keep the Sabbath day holy and all that, I think that’s more than reasonable request. That still leaves me with 167hrs out of the week to myself. 

More often than not, we don’t go to church for God. We go to church for “me, myself, and I.”  Who’s the priest today?  Oh, I hope he’s not boring again ‘cuz I’ll just fall asleep.  I hope I don’t sit next to a family with loud kids.  Am I even going to get anything out of church today? Is this thing over yet? I’m totally not coming again next week if it’s going to be like this.

Exactly.

So I think sacrifice is the name of the game.  Jesus sacrificed his life for us, I think I can sacrifice 1 hour of my time for God.  Let’s face it.  Not every homily will be life-changing, not every priest will be entertaining.  But again, are we going to church for God or for just ourselves?

Mass is boring today. Offer it up. I didn’t get anything out of the sermon today. Offer it up. The guy next to me kind of stinks, and I don’t want to shake hands with him during the sign of peace. Sit there, politely bow to him instead of shaking his hand during the sign of peace, and offer it up.

Then with enough practice, maybe we can apply the same principle to the other 167hrs that we have to ourselves. I gotta stay late at work. Some jerk cuts me off in traffic. Offer it up. I gotta drive mom to the doctor. I gotta pick up something for my spouse at the store because they forgot to get it when they went. Offer it up.

These little things add up and instill in us a disposition of selfLESSness, something that we all need especially in a world that encourages selfISHness and pays nothing more than lip service to true sacrifice and true selflessness.  And in the long run, it has the potential to help us not only with our relationship with God, but our relationship with ourselves and others.

So Happy Easter, Happy Resurrection Day, and remember, the Easter season doesn’t end today– it BEGINS today!  And if we strive each and every Sunday to see church from God’s perspective and not our own, we will never leave church disappointed.