A Deeper Look at Some Parts of the Mass

• Preparation

From Saint Charles Borromeo: “Another priest complains that as soon as he comes into church to pray the office or to celebrate Mass, a thousand thoughts fill his mind and distract him from God. But what was he doing in the sacristy before he came out for the office or for Mass? How did he prepare? What means did he use to collect his thoughts and to remain recollected?”

2) The “Confiteor” or the “I confess”

          - This is really an AMAZING THING TO SAY!!!!

3) Gloria: We sing it WITH the angels

4) Old Testament Reading:

• Bishop Barron: Everyone tells me all the names in the Old Testament are too hard. I sat with a young child recently who rattled off names and planets from the Star Wars trilogy for an hour.  We need to KNOW our story

5) Psalm – the Scripture most often prayed and quoted by Christ!

6) The offertory – gathering up and sharing

7) The Eucharistic Prayer and Sacrifice

          Priest, Altar, Victim, Blood, Food

8) Perpetual Unbloody Sacrifice - The Mass is called an unbloody sacrifice to clarify the fact that we do not behold the Lord’s bloody body as it was seen on Calvary. Instead his body and blood are under the appearances of bread and wine. But it is the same sacrifice. This distinction became necessary as the result of the denial of the Mass being a sacrifice by various Protestant groups.

9) Gestures – get a bad rap but we fall back on these when we don’t know what else to do

          POSTURE AT PRAYER IS CRUCIAL – St. Ignatius

          Genuflecting

          Holy Water and sign of the cross

          Sign of Peace

          Kneeling

          “May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart”

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