Someone prayed for you today.

As the bells of the mission church in Santo Tomas, Guatemala sound, parishioners arrive for the evening weekday Mass about to be celebrated. In another part of the world, worshipers come for weekday-morning Mass in the Roman Basilica of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And in the exurban parish of Stone Mountain, Georgia, parishioners arrive for weekday Masses both in the morning and evening.

A uniquely Catholic custom, Masses are celebrated daily in countless urban, suburban, and rural parishes with the steady participation of small to large numbers of the faithful. More than a few of them rarely, if ever, miss attending daily Mass. One gentleman of my close personal acquaintance followed an interesting regimen to maintain daily attendance. Doomed to a lengthy ride on a Chicago el train to his work, he allowed himself ample travel time by using an unlimited pass. Then he interrupted his trip to attend Mass at one of several churches along his route that happened to have Mass at just the appointed hour.

It may well be that most Catholics today are blissfully unaware that this cohort is "keeping the faith" on a daily basis. Understandably, many if not most of this group have the time to get to Mass (although the alternative might be sleeping later). So in most churches, perhaps, the congregation is likely to number retired people, homemakers who no longer have children to get off to school, and, in parishes blessed with a parochial school, children, either mandated or voluntary.

Nothing about the eloquent witness given by the daily Mass corps contradicts in any way the renewed emphasis that the church has been placing on the Sunday (or weekly) parish Mass, with its importance as the center of the parish community. It goes almost without saying that those who attend daily Mass will also regularly be on hand for the parish community Mass.

Last year, the Northwest Indiana Catholic, one of the most sprightly Catholic diocesan newspapers, published a feature story, "Mass: More Than a Sunday Celebration." In it a number of people who make a practice of attending daily, weekday Mass were interviewed, and some comments are worth quoting.

Pat McInerney, a parishioner at Sacred Heart in Wanatah, Indiana developed a daily practice 60 years ago when he was an altar server. "It was then that I learned the importance of daily Mass. It's a habit I've formed and a habit I like," he explained.

"While an exact count is not kept," the article's authors report, "it is possible that each weekday more than 1,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Gary join McInerney in a practice that reaps different benefits for different people."

Father John Scott, pastor at Nativity of Our Savior Parish in Portage, Indiana said "Our participants are middle-aged and up. The others are probably working."

At St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Knox, Indiana Msgr. Richard Zollinger sees the same trend. "We do have a couple of mothers and children who make it here with some frequency, but the senior citizens are the ones who are able to make it regularly," he said.

Yet in the Northwest Indiana Catholic article, there is evidence that more than a few senior citizens among the daily Massgoers have been attending every day since they were young.

With senior citizens and retirees constituting a large percentage of participants at daily Mass, will there ever come a day when there is no substantial congregation for it?

The jury seems to be out in seeking an answer to that question:

"I don't think daily Mass will be abandoned," Zollinger believes. "A lack of priests may cause it, but as young people grow into senior-citizen age, they too will come."

On the other hand, Father Jerry Schweitzer, pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Gary, Indiana offers "there is a possibility of not having daily Mass. Some people see it moving to the weekend as the liturgy."

But other pastors quoted in the newspaper's article believe that "there will always be a need for daily Mass."

In some cases the community atmosphere of the weekday Masses carries outside church walls. Parishioners at Nativity of Our Savior in Portage, Indiana have gathered for breakfast after Mass and made trips to museums and shopping centers. Other parishes have similar activities, including praying the rosary before or after Mass.

Schweitzer remarks that he views weekday Mass as "a parish support group for the larger parish community."

It is at least possible that the devout corps of laywomen and men who habitually worship at weekday Mass make up a saving remnant, just as men in monasteries and women in cloistered convents do, praying for the church and, indeed, for the rest of us.