The headline of the article immediately caught my attention—for obvious reasons: "God to go: Churches offer speedy sermons." That’s right, the article was not about Fr. Ray! And it pleases me greatly to be able to say that! Here’s how it began—in case you didn’t catch it in last Saturday’s Providence Journal:

His solution is a new, 9AM Sunday express service at his church [with 3 upbeat hymns, a sermon, a collection, and a speed-reading of announcements], guaranteed to finish worship within 45 minutes.

Thank you, Reverend Speegle, for helping us put our priorities in perfect order. Thank you for reminding us that the worship of Almighty God is no more important than cutting the lawn, taking a nap, painting the shed or giving the Fido, the dog, a bath—since those are also things that we don’t want to "leave out" of our daily lives.

With all due respect, I think the Reverend Speegle has missed the boat on this one—despite his speedy sermon. He talks about this desire for short sermons and short religious services as if it were rooted in a time problem. But it’s not rooted in a time problem, IT’S ROOTED IN A LOVE PROBLEM! We don’t love God enough! We are not as deeply in love with the Lord as we should be. It’s as simple as that.

And this is extremely easy to demonstrate. When people are deeply in love, they lose consciousness of time when they’re in each other’s presence! Their eyes are on one another, not on the clock! In fact, they can spend hours together and it will seem to them like only a few minutes. Can you imagine a young man who claims to be in love ever saying to his fiancée, "Well, dear, I’ve got to go. After all, I’ve already given you 45 minutes of my precious time today. I’ve got other things to do, you know. You aren’t the only priority in my life." I wonder how long that engagement will last? Probably about as long as it takes his fiancée to pull the ring off her finger and throw it at him!

In today’s second reading from 1 John 4 the apostle says, "We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us." Have we? Have we really?! Biblically "to know" means "to experience." If we have truly experienced God’s love, and are allowing his love to come to perfection within us, then we will hunger for the Lord! We will want to be in his presence (especially his Eucharistic presence); we will want to spend time with him; and we will want to be instructed in his Word so that we can love him more completely. We will, in other words, have the attitude which St. Augustine had after his conversion. For years he had chased women and the pleasures of the flesh; but after he finally opened his heart to God’s love and experienced it personally, he found himself pursuing the Lord with same passionate intensity with which he had previously pursued sin. As he wrote in his Confessions many years later, "[O Lord] you called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace."

If I needed any further evidence concerning the weak love of many Catholics, I certainly got it two weeks ago when I was on vacation in Maryland, visiting my aunt and uncle. The pastor of their parish, who is suffering from the initial stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, said a very short Mass on Sunday. That’s understandable, given his physical and mental condition. It was so short, in fact, that he was giving out Communion only 25 minutes after the Liturgy began! But guess what? In spite of how short the service was, the Judas Shufflers were still making their way out the front door immediately after receiving the Eucharist. And they were going out in droves! I know because the door made an incredibly loud noise every time it shut--so it was hard to ignore what was going on. Needless to say, entering into deep prayer after Communion was extremely difficult for the rest of us. But it does prove something that I’ve said many, many times: "When certain people complain about having to leave early because the Mass is too long, it’s all smoke. It really doesn’t matter if the Mass is 90 minutes, or 60 minutes, or 30 minutes, or 15 minutes. Whether it’s long, or whether it’s short, it will be too long for them."

That’s because they have a love problem, not a time problem!