Recent studies have shown that Sunday Mass attendance in Malta and Gozo has dwindled to just above the 50 per cent mark, a real shame for us who boast about being ardent Catholics.

Why go to Mass on Sunday? As a priest once put it bluntly in one of his Sunday sermons, we do so because we are all sick people needing to be healed, and Mass is the cure.

Unfortunately, many of us have been going to Mass without really appreciating what this means, what we are celebrating and who we are receiving in Holy Communion. This is really evident when people visit a church and just sit down not knowing who is present in the tabernacle. When adoration follows Mass, most of the congregation walk out.

The celebration of the Paschal mystery-sacrifice is to live the experience of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ our Lord, made present and efficacious within the Christian community.

In the communion-banquet with Christ, together with the other members of the community present, in a manner through Him, we become one. There are enough miracles to prove His presence in the Holy Eucharist.

Who instituted the Mass then? It was Jesus Himself on Holy Thursday, the night He was betrayed. Mass is therefore a memorial of Christ's sacrifice in the sense that it makes present, in an efficacious and bloodless manner on the altar, the sacrifice which Christ offered to the Father in Calvary for the redemption of our sins.

Why are we witnessing world-renowned branded organisations, banks and financial institutions collapsing, together with the world's economy?

It is because the world is feeling it can survive on technical and human development and does not need God any longer.

The time has also come for us Maltese to attend Sunday Mass and pray collectively for our island to ride roughshod over the waves, before it hits us very hard.