BIG AND SMALL - CELL PHONES AT MASS

I'M SURE it’s happened to you. You’re speaking to an acquaintance one-on-one, and a third person walks up and cuts you off in mid-sentence without so much as a nod. He starts talking to your acquaintance as if you’re not there. Making things worse, the person with whom you were talking tolerates this rudeness and even ramps it up by giving you his back.

THIS IS obnoxious behavior, and we need to change our ways. It’s not that big of a deal, you say. But it is a big deal to the person who’s treated rudely. We all are human beings. Big or small, everyone deserves respect. So when someone gets cut off for nothing and treated as if he doesn’t exist, he’s marginalized. Whoever cooperates in marginalizing others commits wrong and deserves to be rebuked right then and there.

YOU NEED HIM

I DON'T do this sort of thing, you say. Think again. If you stop adoring and worshipping the Lord to “minister” to your cell phone, this is exactly what you’re doing. Everyone who attends Mass should be offering the Mass, not offering themselves to a cell phone provider.

EVERYONE IN adoration should be adoring the Lord and Him alone. Adoring the Lord Jesus means being fully engaged in the most important conversation of your life. By definition, your most important moment with Jesus is always the present moment.

WHO'S MORE important to talk to than our Lord Jesus Christ who made you, loves you and saves you? Someone who’s got your cell phone number? Your email or twitter addresses? You’ve got to be kidding. Don’t think for a moment you can worship and adore when you’re caressing your cell phone and multi-tasking. It can’t happen.

WHEN YOU worship and adore the Lord Jesus, you are conversing with him one-on-one. This must be your one and only task. Jesus deserves all your attention, all your love and all your respect. You need him. You never have enough of him. You need more and more of him.

LOVE, REALLY

YOUR LORD has much to say to you. He wants to share his love. He wants you to have his joy in life. He wants to teach you how live in this world. He wants to prepare you to live with his father in the next. So when you start minding your cell phone, what are you doing? You turn your back on Christ for some third person who intruded and cut him off in mid-sentence.

WILL YOU tell Jesus It isn’t a big deal? This is a very big deal to Jesus Christ whom you’re treating rudely. He is fully human and fully God and deserving of your top-level respect. So when you cut Jesus off for nothing and treat him—even for a moment—as if he doesn’t exist in his own temple, you’ve marginalized the Christ who died for you on the cross. You just turned the Mass and the King of Kings and Lord of Lords into background noise while you take care of what matters to you.

IT ALL comes down to love, really. Love is proven in big and small ways. You’ll never be ready to prove your love for Christ in big ways if you don’t have a habit of doing it in small ways. If a house could be built by someone tapping the keypad of his cell phone, we’d all be contractors and living alone in our own gated mansions. But this isn’t the case in the real world. In the real world, a house is made board by board, brick by brick with hard work and sweat. A good builder cares about what he does and loves his work.

PROVE YOUR LOVE

NOW THE Lord’s house is a temple made of living stones with Jesus Christ himself as the cornerstone.  [cf. 1Pet 2:5-6]  It takes all of us to build it, and we build it prayer by prayer, Mass by Mass, and Adoration Hour by Adoration Hour. Prayer is love. Mass is love. Adoration Hour is love.

WHEN YOU do these things and do them well, you prove your love, and you make the Lord’s house a place of dazzling glory. Anything less is substandard work and unworthy of the Carpenter from Nazareth. Do you really come to Mass and adoration to answer cell phone calls and text messages? No, I don’t, you say. Then don’t.