Fr. Andy's Pastor's Corner

UNDERSTANDING THE MASS

 

Dear Brothers and Sisters:   On the weekend of June 28-29 at Resurrection we had “Teaching Masses” at all four weekend Masses.  We’ll do the same this coming weekend at St. Paul at all four Masses on July 5-6.

These Masses are a chance to learn and to think about why we do what we do at the Mass and the history of the Mass etc.

 

The bottom line is also that the Mass is a statement of love from God to us.  And a challenge to bring his love into the world.  That we need to remember God’s love is why he becomes what we can receive at the Mass:  A fragile piece of bread or a sip of wine that have become his Body and Blood.

 

That is why last weekend and next weekend I kept an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with me throughout all four Masses (on the altar, pulpit, in my pocket, etc) in order to remember this core and central truth about the Mass:  that we have the Mass because God wanted to express his love for us in a radical way.

 

The image I kept was of the Sacred Heart statue in St. Paul Church. 

 

Peace in Christ!

 

Fr. Andy

 

 

DISCUSSING WHY WE HAVE THE MASS & UNDERSTANDING THE MASS. 

 

In the Bible you see that the night before Jesus was on the cross, he got his friends together and took bread and wine and said that it was his Body and Blood.   This is the one thing that Jesus asked his friends to do when they prayed TOGETHER, the one thing that he asked him to do when they gathered together to pray.

And in the book of the Bible “The Acts of the Apostles” Chapter 2, right after Jesus has gone beyond our sight in the Ascension, you see that the early Christians had mass EVERY DAY.  So you can see that the apostles understood that this was what Jesus wanted them to do.  And in the early churches that were founded by the twelve apostles from India to Egypt to Italy, you can see that all of the early Christian communities founded in these places had the Mass and believed in the Presence, that the bread and wine truly became the Body and Blood of Christ.

 

Indeed, even the structure of the Mass in these ancient times was the same as it is today.  Here is then a

a description of a Sunday mass from 155 AD from St. Justin and his “Apology of St. Justin.”  It is essentially just like a modern mass.  He writes:

 

On Sunday we have a common assembly of all our members….. The recollections of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read…. When the reader has finished, the president of the assembly speaks to us; he urges everyone to imitate the examples of virtue we have heard in the readings. Then we all stand up together and pray.

 

On the conclusion of our prayer, bread and wine and water are brought forward. The president offers prayers and gives thanks…. and the people give assent by saying, “Amen”. The eucharist is distributed….and the deacons take it to those who are absent.

Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead.” —St. Justin Martyr

So we have the Mass because it was the one prayer that he asked us to say when we were together, and the apostles celebrated the Mass every day in The Acts of the Apostles, and all the ancient Christian communities founded by the apostles, from India to Egypt to Italy, celebrated the Mass much as we do today and believed that the bread and wine truly became Jesus’s Body and Blood during the Mass.

 

And now we begin the Mass.

 

THE PENITENTIAL RITE: The first thing we do during the Mass is to ask God to get us ready to participate in the Mass by forgiving our sins.

 

This has been done for a very long time:  We have a document from 65 AD called the “Didiche,” and it says: “Every Lord’s day (Sunday) you must gather and first confess your sins so that your sacrifice may be pure, and then break bread, and give thanks.”

 

ETERNAL SONG OF THE ANGELS: In a moment we’ll hear “THE GLORIA” and this comes from a song of the Angels in the Bible, from Luke 2 when the angels sang to the Shepherds at Christmas.  Later in the Mass we will have the The Holy, Holy and that also is a song of the angels from Isaiah 6:3, which is the song the angels sang to the Prophet Isaiah when he was being called to be a prophet.  So, two important pieces of the mass, the Gloria and the Holy, Holy are based on songs of the angels. This reminds us, at mass, that there is an eternal song in heaven by the angels in saints….and that when we come to mass, we have the privilege to join in their song of eternal praise.

 

Readings from the Bible: Next we have readings from the Bible.  After the first reading, we say, “Thanks be to God.”  And then we have a Psalm and then (at least on Sundays and Holy Days) a second reading after which we say “Thanks be to God.”

 

But then before we reading the last reading, which is a “Gospel” reading (from one of the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- we do some special things:  Before the reading, 1. we all stand up (standing is a sign of respect like all standing for a bride at a wedding.) and 2. we sing “Alleluia,” which means “Praise God.”

 

Then the priest or deacon greets everyone by saying “The Lord be with you” and all will say “And with your spirit” and then he will introduce the reading and everybody will say “Glory to you O Lord” while they make a cross on their forehead, and then their mouth and then their heart.

 

Why all these special actions for this last reading?  Because while all Scripture is inspired, the last reading is always from one of the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and the four Gospels have the DIRECT WORDS AND ACTIONS OF JESUS:  And this is the core of our faith.

 

HOMILY: Then we have a sermon on the Scriptures we have just heard. Hopefully, when Fr. Andy preaches, what happened to St. Paul in Acts 20:9 won’t happen:  Where a man falls asleep during Paul’s “preaching” and he then falls out a window!   We usually call this sermon a “homily” because that word indicates that the sermon will be somehow connected to the readings of the day.

 

AT MASS ON SUNDAY AND ON HOLY DAYS WE ALSO SAY THE CREED: Then we proclaim our faith in “The Creed.”  This is the part of the mass that begins “I believe….”   You notice, that in the description of the Mass from 155AD you can see there was no Creed.  Our Creed, which says everything we believe in the Church, was put together in 325AD by the leaders of the Church at a “council.”   Christianity was illegal till 313AD….so till then they couldn’t get all the leaders of the Church together in one place.  So, once they could they all got together and hammered out what we believe.  We have used the same statement of belief at baptisms since 325AD.  And we started using that Creed at every baptism starting in 325AD and saying the Creed at every Sunday and Holy Day Mass starting around the year 500AD.

 

PRAYER OF THE FAITHFUL:  Next we pray to God on behalf of the Church and world.

 

PREPARATION OF THE GIFTS:  Next, members of the congregation, bring bread and wine up to the altar. 

 

SACRIFICE:  At the end of getting the bread and wine ready at the altar,

 

the congregation says to the priest says: “Pray, my brothers and sisters, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father”  But what does this mean, what is OUR sacrifice here?  Well, at the mass, we offer our OWN SACRIFICES to Jesus at mass – our own struggles to be a good mom or dad or son or daughter or friend or Christian – and we OFFER THEM TO JESUS for him to use for the continued work of evangelization of the world.  That’s why, at this time in the mass the priest mentions “OUR sacrifices….”: 

 

Then the congregation responds to the priest “May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands….”  In this prayer, what sacrifice at the hands of the priest are we talking about?  For Catholics, we say that Jesus dying on a cross is the ONE sacrifice that takes away our sins.  And we say that, years later, that ONE EVENT STILL takes away our sins TODAY and at this moment we are remembering or claiming the salvation won for us at Calvary, where 2000 years ago Jesus died on the Cross to reconcile us to God, but that the cross at Calvary still takes away our sins today.

 

So at this point in the Mass we are remembering that Jesus’s Cross still saves us today….but that also we offer our own crosses to God for Him to use towards the salvation of the world.

 

THE EUCHARISTIC PRAYER: Now we begin the prayer that is based on the LAST SUPPER, when Jesus got together with his friend on the night before he died. 

1. WHAT DID THE EARLY CHRISTIANS BELIEVE ABOUT THE BREAD AND WINE BECOMING JESUS’ BODY AND BLOOD?  Well, in the Bible the early Christians talked about, in Gospels and in the Letters of Paul, that Jesus took bread and wine, blessed them and called them his Body and Blood. Well, we can also look at things the first Christians wrote about the Body and Blood of Jesus at mass to see more of what they meant by this: For instance: 

   1. St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was born in 35AD, and was a personal friend of John the Apostle, and this is a historically provable fact, in Rome around 100AD, wrote: "The Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ" (To Smyrna 7:1)

   2. And “The First Apology of St. Justin,” again from 150 AD says, “This food we call Eucharist …we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as… the flesh and blood of…(our Savior) Jesus (Christ) (ch. 66).”

 

THE GREAT AMEN:  As we continue the prayer based on the Last Supper, we finally come to the “Amen.”  We all sing that together.  The word “Amen” means “So be it” or “I believe it.”  So we are saying, at that time, that we believe all that has been said.  It is considered to be the high point of the mass because it is the ultimate moment of affirming our faith in the mass.

 

LAMB OF GOD:  Why is Jesus called “The Lamb of God” during prayers in the mass?   Well, “lambs” were a part of the story of the Jewish people fleeing Egypt and slavery in the Book of Exodus.  In that story, lambs were sacrificed, and their blood put over the lintels of the doors of the Jewish people in order to save their first-born sons and this is part of their story of gaining freedom from slavery in Egypt.  This story is remembered every year by the Jewish people in the celebration of PASSOVER.

 

Well, in the time of Jesus every Jewish Passover had a sacrificed lamb and they ate lamb at the meal.  Indeed, scholars believe that every year in Jesus’s time, about a half million people were in Jerusalem to have a Passover Meal.

 

And it was at a Passover celebration (Mt 26:17) that Jesus and the disciples had the “Last Supper.”    Indeed, in that chapter Jesus tells people to set up the Passover Meal for he and his disciples in the place where they would have the Last Supper.

 

But then Jesus gave the meal a twist:  And he took the bread and wine and said they were his Body and Blood.  But also there was no lamb at the table.  But then Jesus died on the Cross the very next day.  So Jesus’s followers started to say that HE had been the Lamb of Sacrifice, and in the Lord’s Supper, the Mass, now we didn’t just celebrate that the first-born sons were saved in the Passover meal, but that in the Mass, that now ALL people were saved from sin, from anything that oppresses them, through the blood of the Lamb who is Jesus Christ.

 

Peace and please go to Mass!