Remembering Him

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First, a comment for my beloved non-Catholic readers. This is a blog about the Catholic Mass. You’re welcome to read it, of course, but it will undoubtedly be more meaningful for Catholics.

Like many non-Catholics, many Catholics, including those who attend regularly, appear to be unsure about what’s going on at Mass. Some are praying the rosary. Some are praying from their own prayer books. Many fail to answer the prayers led by the priest. Some fail to participate in the hymns, though singing is “praying twice.”

I’m no expert on the Mass, but I’ve participated in thousands of them, studied the liturgy (another word for the Mass and other services) and led masses in my former role as a priest. After a lifetime of attending, I’ve come to understand the mass and participate in it – always making the priest’s prayers my own – as never before.

The Way Ancient Christians Worshipped

Basically, the mass is a commemoration and representation of Jesus’ Last Supper, specifically carrying out Jesus’ request that we do what he did “in remembrance” of him. The manner in which it is celebrated – and I use that word advisedly because it should be joyful – has changed somewhat over the centuries. But basically, it’s the way ancient Christians and a majority of subsequent Christians have worshipped through the ages.

The Middle Ages were not kind to the Mass. It came to be considered so sanctified, so apart from the ordinary, that in many parts of Europe it was held behind a screen, too holy to be exposed to ordinary people. What was the ordinary dress of people of means became extravagant liturgical dress for priests and bishops. A church council at Trent, now in Italy, during the Protestant reformation, made some changes to the Mass but that reform was the norm until the second Vatican Council in the early 1960s.

Ironically, some Catholics want to return to what is now called the Latin, Tridentine Mass, with all its pomp and extravagance. That, despite the fact that among the reforms of the Second Vatican Council was permission for the Mass to be in the vernacular so people could understand it without use of translations.

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I think it’s really important to understand that almost all the prayers at Mass are specifically addressed to God the Father. They don’t make sense otherwise. And to understand that the Mass is a combination of the synagogue service of the time of Jesus and a remembrance of the Last Supper. So, we have the Liturgy of the Word – the readings from Scripture, the homily and the prayers of the faithful – followed by the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The later word means “thanksgiving.”

Arguably, the most important words of the Mass come just after the “elevation” of the consecrated bread and wine, in what’s called the canon of the Mass. Using the most common of these prayers, the priest says, “Therefore, O Lord, as we celebrate the memorial of the saving Passion of your Son ... we offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living sacrifice.”

The congregation, united with the whole church, here unites with Jesus in thanksgiving to offer the Father the only thing worth offering: Jesus himself.

At the end of this prayer comes what is called “the great Amen,” in which the priest and congregation together attest and agree to the meaning of the Mass. This may be the most important participatory response of the Mass. It’s followed by the Lord’s Prayer and communion.

"Real Presence"

Now, about what we Catholics call “the real presence” of Jesus in the bread and wine.

I believe in it, but I don’t like its traditional explanation, which is called transubstantiation. It’s a medieval, simplistic metaphysics in which all matter is composed of “substance” and “accidents,” that is, what a thing really is and its appearances. Applied to the Eucharist (a term also used to describe the consecrated bread and wine), it means it looks like bread and wine but is really Jesus’ body and blood.

I don’t know how to explain “the real presence.” I just believe what Jesus, the miracle worker, said, according to the gospel accounts, and what early Christians, and most Christians through the centuries, believed: "This is my body; this is my blood." There are, after all – even in modern usage – many ways to be present to others. Jesus invented this ingenious way of doing so.