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Adult Ed Class: “The Mass as Prayer”
A Walk Through the Mass
- The Mass is ONE CONTINUOUS PRAYER with ALL the types of Catholic prayer IN ONE PRAYER
Intercessions (petitions), the Our Father, Scripture, meditation, silence and contemplation, communal and individual prayer
- Here’s another main point: Many times people go to Mass thinking “I hope I experience something there or see something there or hear something there that will LATER help me. “I’m searching for God, and I hope that something I hear will help me on that journey”
The problem with that is this: the Mass IS an encounter with God, is one continuous prayer, it IS that relationship with God in its fullness, not something that will help me have that encounter LATER this week or LATER this month…
- We see this close link between God and the Mass in that whatever complaints people have about the Mass, they have about God (too quiet, too boring, not enough pizzaz, etc.)
- Thomas Howard – “On Being Catholic”:
“It may be worth pressing home a point that often troubles observers of Catholic worship and that certainly rises in the consciousness of Christians coming to the Mass having been nurtured in denominations where hearty fellowship and humming activity are the hallmarks of Sunday morning at church. It can be the case, however, that one comes to Mass from the happy precincts of Evangelicalism, say, and it goes away at the end with great sadness. "But I miss the fellowship!" He might say. "I didn't since the eager atmosphere of glad attention and participation I knew in my former church."
This response from a newcomer touches on a matter very near the center of the mystery brooding over Christian worship. When the Roman Catholic "goes to church", he or she sees themselves as joining them self to something that is already going on. He sets aside both the hurly-burly of his domestic or professional situation and any preoccupation he may have with such patently excellent concerns as fellowship or chat or even a certain vitality in the air. He has been summoned to the one necessary thing. He here takes his place, literally, he believes, with angels and archangels and with all the company of Heaven, who laud and magnify the Holy Name of the Most High.”
Pope Benedict XVI: “Ultimately, what a person wants to experience in Christian worship is something they DIDN’T create”
"(the Mass) will come off badly if it wants to enter the competition of show business. A pastor is not an emcee, and the liturgy is not a variety show. It will also come off badly if it wants to be a sort of engaging circle of friends." - Sing A New Song for the Lord
“In the liturgy one doesn’t grasp what’s going on in a simply rational way, as I understand a lecture, for example, but in a manifold way, with all the senses, and by being drawn into a celebration that isn’t invented by some commission but that, as it were, comes to me from the depths of the millennia and, ultimately, of eternity.” – Salt of the Earth, 175
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By fatherjohnhollowellA Walk Through the Mass
- The Mass is ONE CONTINUOUS PRAYER with ALL the types of Catholic prayer IN ONE PRAYER
Intercessions (petitions), the Our Father, Scripture, meditation, silence and contemplation, communal and individual prayer
- Here’s another main point: Many times people go to Mass thinking “I hope I experience something there or see something there or hear something there that will LATER help me. “I’m searching for God, and I hope that something I hear will help me on that journey”
The problem with that is this: the Mass IS an encounter with God, is one continuous prayer, it IS that relationship with God in its fullness, not something that will help me have that encounter LATER this week or LATER this month…
- We see this close link between God and the Mass in that whatever complaints people have about the Mass, they have about God (too quiet, too boring, not enough pizzaz, etc.)
- Thomas Howard – “On Being Catholic”:
“It may be worth pressing home a point that often troubles observers of Catholic worship and that certainly rises in the consciousness of Christians coming to the Mass having been nurtured in denominations where hearty fellowship and humming activity are the hallmarks of Sunday morning at church. It can be the case, however, that one comes to Mass from the happy precincts of Evangelicalism, say, and it goes away at the end with great sadness. "But I miss the fellowship!" He might say. "I didn't since the eager atmosphere of glad attention and participation I knew in my former church."
This response from a newcomer touches on a matter very near the center of the mystery brooding over Christian worship. When the Roman Catholic "goes to church", he or she sees themselves as joining them self to something that is already going on. He sets aside both the hurly-burly of his domestic or professional situation and any preoccupation he may have with such patently excellent concerns as fellowship or chat or even a certain vitality in the air. He has been summoned to the one necessary thing. He here takes his place, literally, he believes, with angels and archangels and with all the company of Heaven, who laud and magnify the Holy Name of the Most High.”
Pope Benedict XVI: “Ultimately, what a person wants to experience in Christian worship is something they DIDN’T create”
"(the Mass) will come off badly if it wants to enter the competition of show business. A pastor is not an emcee, and the liturgy is not a variety show. It will also come off badly if it wants to be a sort of engaging circle of friends." - Sing A New Song for the Lord
“In the liturgy one doesn’t grasp what’s going on in a simply rational way, as I understand a lecture, for example, but in a manifold way, with all the senses, and by being drawn into a celebration that isn’t invented by some commission but that, as it were, comes to me from the depths of the millennia and, ultimately, of eternity.” – Salt of the Earth, 175