Is virtual Mass and attendance physically the same? Are they simply different ways of praying?
If you can’t sing at Mass and mingle with others, then what is the point of going during Covid-19 restrictions?
My response:
All prayers to God are good, hence you can indeed pray anywhere.
But only at Mass is there “worth-ship“, i.e. the offering of someone who is worthy: the Son of God to His Father; and we get to not only be the audience, but active participants when we gather, join our prayers and sacrifices to this prayer and sacrifice of the Son to his Father, and finally experience communion — with Him, with the saints in Heaven, the souls in Purgatory and with those in the Church, those in churches outside your neighborhood and country (the living across space, and the dead across time).
And the Communion you receive is a foretaste of the wedding banquet in Heaven. Hence before receiving Holy Communion, the priest exclaims: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those called to the supper of the Lamb.” (Which is the wedding feast in the Book of Revelation.)
The bridegroom is the Lamb, Jesus. Who is the bride? The Church: all of us!
In light of this, would you prefer to attend your own wedding in person, or to exchange your vows via Zoom? If your current restrictions limit your participation only to the virtual, then we need to see it as a nurturing of a longing for physical contact, not an adequate substitute for it.
___
