Question:
Answer:
There is no biblical evidence that stipulates that we must attend Mass on Sunday, although such attendance is in keeping with biblical principles.
Participating in Sunday Mass is an ecclesiastical law the Church imposes to assist the faithful in fulfilling the moral law to worship God, and there is biblical evidence that the Church has the authority to do this. Consider Matthew 18:18: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Implicit in this command is the authority to govern the way God’s people worship him in the New Covenant, including designating the Lord’s Day (Sunday) as the fulfillment of the moral precept behind the third commandment. Just as the apostles and elders decreed to impose certain disciplinary precepts on the newly converted Gentiles (Acts 15, e.g., abstain from meats offered to idols, etc.), so too the Church imposes the disciplinary precept as to when we are to worship God.
Therefore, it’s within the prerogative for the Church to stipulate the way we’re going to fulfill the moral obligation to worship God: participate in Mass on Sunday.
The rationale behind this precept is first the moral law that we must carve out some time in our lives to worship God. Second, Christ revealed the Mass to be the way that he intends for us to worship God (“Do this in remembrance of me” [Luke 22:19]). And third, the early Christians gathered on the first day of the week to “break bread” (Acts 20:7), which was an idiom used by the early Christians to refer to the eucharistic celebration.
Given these principles, the Church, over time, chose Sunday, in imitation of the early Christians, to be the day that we as Catholics would worship God the way that Christ intended us to and fulfill the moral law to carve out time to worship God.