Editor’s Note: We have in the past addressed the question of how late one can arrive at Mass and still fulfill one’s Sunday obligation. Is there a certain point in the Mass — before the readings, before the Offertory, etc. — when one could be late and still satisfy the canon law requirement to participate in Mass?
Canon lawyer Dr. Edward Peters, however, said that such questions “miss the key point,” namely, that the Mass is “an integrated, sequenced order of prayers and actions organized by the Church to render fitting worship to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Miss any of that, and you have missed that much of ‘it’.”
The real question, Peters said in his blog, is not how much of Mass one can miss, but rather why one has missed any of it. He gives the example of two men who arrive late, a father whose child flooded the toilet with a shoe and a football fan who sat in his car for an extra ten minutes to hear whether his team scored a touchdown. Both arrived at the same time — at the start of the readings — and, under the traditional reckoning, both would seem to have met their obligation to attend Mass.
But, said Peters, “my approach, in contrast, says that missing any part of a gravely binding action (such as attending Mass) is excusable only, but surely, to the extent that one has a sufficient reason for missing that much of it. Again, it is not a question of how much did I miss, but why did I miss what I missed.” He illustrates his point by imagining these two men standing before the Lord on Judgment Day:
“The Lord says to one man, you were late for Mass on that Sunday. He answers, ‘Yes, Lord, I was late. I was shoe-fishing in the toilet to get it to stop flooding.’ The Lord says, ‘I know, I saw the whole thing. Thank you for washing up and getting the family to Mass when you could. My Father was very pleased.’ Then the Lord says to the other man who walked into church at the exact same time, ‘You were late for Mass that Sunday.’ He replies, ‘Yes, Lord, I was late. I wanted to find out what the score was.’ The Lord says, ‘The score? The score? I’ll tell you what the score is. Step over there and you’ll see what the score is’.”
Q. My husband and I were wondering if we would be married in Heaven and if we would know each other there. Can you give us any information? – M.A., Massachusetts.
A. Jesus was asked this very question by the Sadducees, who posed an elaborate scenario of a woman whose husband died and she eventually married six of his brothers in succession after the previous one had died. “Now at the resurrection,” the Sadducees asked, “whose wife will that woman be?” Here is Jesus’ reply:
“The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise” (Luke 20:33-36).
So there will be no marriage in Heaven, where all will be “like angels” but with resurrected bodies that are beautiful and shining like the transfigured body of Jesus that was seen by Peter, James, and John on the mountain (cf. Luke 9:29). However, this does not mean that those who were married in this life will not know each other or enjoy each other’s company in Heaven. They surely will.
The happiness of Heaven consists primarily in the Beatific Vision, which means seeing God as He really is and sharing intensely in the life of the Trinity. “At present,” said St. Paul, “we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). But in addition to this direct gaze on God, which in itself will produce incredible happiness, we will also be able to enjoy and communicate with Christ in His humanity, with the Blessed Mother and the saints, and with family and friends we had on Earth.
This reminds us of something Archbishop Fulton Sheen said years ago. He said that there will be three surprises in Heaven. The first surprise will be that we will see people there that we thought would not be there. Second, we will not see people there that we thought would be there. And the third surprise will be that we are there!
Q. You said in a previous reply that a baptized Catholic who marries in a civil ceremony is not validly married in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Please explain why the Church requires an annulment of an invalid civil ceremony before the Catholic can marry a different spouse in the Church. In other words, why is an annulment necessary if the marriage was invalid in the first place? — M.P., via e-mail.
A. The marriage is invalid only in the eyes of the Catholic Church. It is considered valid by the state since the couple obtained a license from the state and publicly professed their intention to be married at a civil ceremony. That is why the Church’s tribunals usually require proof of a civil divorce before accepting a petition for nullity. This is not an acceptance of divorce by the Church; it is rather a way of determining that the marriage is irretrievably broken, that reconciliation of the parties is not likely.
What is a declaration of matrimonial nullity? Canon lawyer Dr. Edward Peters says that an annulment “is an official determination by an ecclesiastical tribunal that what appeared to be, from one or more points of view, a valid marriage, was actually not one. An annulment is not a finding that the spouses never really loved each other, nor that the divorce was more one party’s fault than the other’s, nor that one party is a better Catholic than the other, etc.
“It is merely (if that word may be used) a juridic determination that, at the time of the wedding, one or both parties to the marriage lacked sufficient capacity for marriage, and/or that one or both parties failed to give adequately their consent to marriage as the Church understands and proclaims it, and/or, in weddings involving at least one Catholic, that the parties violated the Church’s requirements of canonical form in getting married” (100 Answers to Your Questions on Annulments, pp. 1-2).
It is the third condition that makes a marriage before, say, a justice of the peace, invalid according to the Church since the Catholic party or parties involved are required to be married before a priest (or deacon) and two witnesses (cf. canon 1108).
Q. My pastor said some odd things about the Bible at Mass this week. For one thing, he said that the story about Joshua bringing down the walls of Jericho was just a parable, that it never really happened. What do you think? — T.L.H., Massachusetts.
A. Since the Book of Joshua is one of the historical books in the Old Testament, and it tells of the feats of a real historical person, we think that your pastor was incorrect. Joshua was the successor of Moses and leader of the Israelites in their conquest of Canaan by military force. He had sent two spies to reconnoiter the city of Jericho, and they stayed at the house of a prostitute named Rahab. She saved their lives when the king of Jericho sent men to arrest them by first hiding them and then lowering them down the wall of the city through a window of her house, which was built into the wall.
The siege of the heavily fortified city of Jericho is told in chapters five and six of the Book of Joshua. After the Israelites had crossed the Jordan River into Canaan, the Lord promised to deliver Jericho into their hands, and He gave Joshua the following command:
“Have all the soldiers circle the city, marching around it. Do this for six days, with seven priests carrying ram’s horns ahead of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, and have the priests blow the horns. When they give a long blast on the ram’s horns and you hear that signal, all the people shall shout aloud. The wall of the city will collapse, and they will be able to make a frontal attack” (Joshua 6:3-5).
When the Israelites did as God had commanded on the seventh day, the walls came tumbling down, and they overran the city, sparing the lives only of Rahab and her household because she had saved two of Joshua’s spies. That’s a true story, not a parable.
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