^^But is that healthy? Honestly, I'm not calling for a cult-like scenario where every spare second of your schedule outside work is taken up with church activities, but a couple of hours on Sunday unconnected to the rest of the week? The people at your parish are your parish family, or should be; maybe you have friends closer to you than your family, but you still have family gatherings, you spend time together outside of periodic reunions...I don't know. I just think that if we're supposedly bound together with the love of Christ like St. Paul says, there ought to be at least some opportunity for our fellowship to overflow into the rest of our lives.
In other words, the Eucharist is the fruit of a unity that's already supposed to have been achieved. Where is the proof of that unity outside of the service and/or coffee hour? If all men will know that we are His disciples because we have love for each other, but we don't even have enough of a sense of community to call the elderly gal who fell and broke her hip, or visit the young, stir-crazy mom at home with her three-week old baby, or notify the parish of emergencies (like the priest's heart attack -- which happened at our parish, and some folks didn't get told about it, showed up when we weren't having subsequent services, and were very offended no one had told them), then how can we say that we love one another? How are we involved AT ALL in each other's lives?
We don't expect the family to always be the FIRST people we call in emergencies, but we have a shared history, a shared culture, shared interests in one another and in our common life together, so there are things to talk about, an inherent interest. We should (of course, this is a dream world in some parishes) care enough about our faith to at least have that be a common topic of conversation at times, or at the very least to where it's understood that, when the chips are down, you can count on someone at church to be on the other end of a phone should you need to pick one up, and that that someone will care for you and try to help meet your need somehow, whether material, emotional, or spiritual.
Are we lacking in that? Yes, in several parishes in multiple ways, at times. But to say that those with whom we labor to bring about the most miraculous work in the cosmos should therefore be held aloof from us, that our relationships with them shouldn't be affected in even the slightest way the whole rest of the week, doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps the laity is not involved: perhaps reinstituting the kiss of peace, as our archbishop (who will retire tomorrow, sadly
) has endeavored to do recently in Dallas, along with written inserts of the days' hymns, conscious seeking out of congregational singing, etc, maybe the start of an answer.
I'm preaching, I know.
Let us love one another -- bearing all things, enduring all things, mourning with those who mourn, weeping with those who weep, serving in love the weaker brethren -- that with one mind, we might confess our common faith.
Forgive me.
(With regard to the OP, perhaps this love will, in time, make itself manifest to kids who seem to despise church. I think ozgeorge's take on the OP is right on, btw.)
