All of us know the need to prepare well for things we are asked to participate in. If we’re playing on a sports team, we prepare through practice, getting enough rest in advance and eating well. If we are performing in a theatrical production, we need to learn our lines, practice our stage directions and again approach our performance well-rested. Have a business presentation to give? This too takes preparation by making notes, preparing our powerpoint and even rehearsing our delivery. If we serve on a committee, we’re expected to prepare for meetings having done our previous tasks, reviewed minutes and agendas, and given some thought to what we might contribute to the discussion. Any activity involving our participation is always better when we are prepared! The same is true of our participation in the Sacred Liturgy, whether on Sundays or even weekdays. We will have a much richer experience of Church, when we come prepared to fully, consciously and actively participate in the Mass! So how do we as Catholics prepare for our Sunday worship? First, take some time during the week to look over the Scripture readings proscribed for the coming Sunday. This is easily done by going to the US Catholic Bishops’ website to look up the readings: www.usccb.org/readings/ and clicking on the calendar for the date we want to review. Having read the readings and thought about them, we might also want to consider what concerns or intentions we’d like to pray to God about once we get to church. What’s on our minds and hearts this week? Maybe something great happened that we want to thank and praise God for, or maybe a heartache we’d like God to heal, or a concern for a family member, neighbor or friend that we want to place in God’s hands. Then for an hour before, we want to fast from all food and drink (except water or medicine) so that we come to the Eucharist “hungry” for the Lord, ready to receive both his Word as well as his precious Body & Blood in Communion. We then make every effort to arrive at church before Mass begins so as to participate fully in the entire Mass. As we come into the church, we bless ourselves with the holy water near the doorway, to remind us that because of our baptism we have the privilege to come into this holy place to offer our worship to the Lord. Finally, as we await the start of Mass, we take a few moments of quiet prayer, to get ourselves in a proper frame of mind to leave behind whatever we were doing prior to Mass and to set aside what we need to do later. (And don’t forget to silence our cell phones too!) All of this together is our preparation for Mass which will help us participate fully and reap the best from our experience at Mass!