The Mass

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Fulton Sheen tells a story about a concentration camp in Germany during the Second World War called Dachau. There were 5,000 priests in Dachau.

Whenever a priest in the occupied countries spoke out against the Nazis in Holland, Belgium, France, and Poland, he was put on the next train to Dachau. Three thousand of them were killed in the most brutal ways imaginable.

One survivor was interviewed by Fulton Sheen, who told him how they were the servants of the people, so they were ‘human horses.’ They had to pull carts around the place.

Dressed in prison uniform, they had to pull carts down to the local railway station to load and unload various things.

On one of these occasions, they contrived to make one of the wheels fall off a cart outside the house of the local parish priest.

In the commotion, the priest came out, and they spoke to him in Latin. They didn't know German. They told him, "We are priests. We need bread and wine.”

On subsequent trips down to the railway station, the parish priest smuggled out to them a little bit of bread, maybe a grape, sometimes some wine on various occasions.

Late at night, back at the camp, after curfew, under penalty of instant death, they would gather to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, taking turns to be the main celebrant in small groups.

This survivor described how much the Mass meant to them. It was the consolation of their lives. He said, “It was Christ coming to us in our Calvary.”

Fulton Sheen comments that these people got so much out of the Mass because they brought so much to the Mass. They brought their sacrifices.

The Sacrifice of the Mass is the unbloody renewal of the sacrifice of Calvary, where Christ, through the ministry of the priest, offers Himself to His Heavenly Father in the form of bread and wine.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the Mass “makes Calvary present to us” (Catechism, cf. Point 1366).

When we are present at Mass, we get transported back to the foot of the Cross. The Mass is like a time machine.

Whether we are physically present at Mass, or whether we follow Mass online these days, the Mass doesn't lose its meaning for us.

Sometimes people say, “I don't get too much out of the Mass.” But the Mass is not like a supermarket. We don't go there to get things out of it.

We have to bring things to the Mass. We have to bring our sacrifices.

When we bring our pains, our worries, our concerns, contradictions of life, the challenges, the problems, the pieces of bad news, the little ups and downs of every day, and we place them on the paten, we unite them to the Sacrifice of Christ, to be offered to His Heavenly Father.

All those little things of every day acquire a redemptive value. Nothing is lost. Everything has meaning. It has value.

A lady asked me once, “Father, when I turn on my computer, can that be redemptive?”

The answer is Yes. That little pressing of a button, when united to the Sacrifice of Christ, acquires a redemptive value, an infinite value.

In and through the Mass, everything takes on meaning. That's one of the reasons why the Church has said in her documents that the Mass is “the source and summit of the whole Christian life” (Lumen gentium, Point 11; Catechism, Point 1324).

The summit is that to which everything is directed. If you're going to climb Mount Kenya or Kilimanjaro, your every little bit of preparation and every step is directed towards the summit.

The source is that from which all things flow.

It makes an awful lot of sense to get to Mass as often as we can. From there the graces flow for our marriage, for our family, for our work, for our health, for our spiritual progress, for the whole of society.

A couple of years ago, a lady stood up at a get-together in Colombia with Bishop Javier Echevarría, the Prelate of Opus Dei.

She said, “Father, I was a Lutheran. My daughter, who was Lutheran, began to attend a center of Opus Dei for young girls. She began to study there and then she began to attend some classes of formation. I got a bit worried.

“When my daughter came back from these classes of formation, we used to talk about it. That led to some stand-up rows because, little by little, I could see my daughter losing her Lutheran faith.

“And then there came a day when she started to attend Mass. ‘Horror of horrors!’ I thought. ‘This is the end of my daughter.’ And so, we had further arguments.

“Then she challenged me to come to Mass with her, and so I went to Mass with her. And now, I want to tell you, Father, that the Mass is the joy of my life.”

It's a rather beautiful statement. In that short statement, she was really saying: I have learned to bring all my troubles, my worries and my concerns, my pains, and place them on the paten and unite them to the Sacrifice of Christ. I let Him take care of all of these things. I offer them to Him, and that makes me as light as a feather.

It doesn't take away the difficulties and the crosses and the concerns and the worries, but it does give them greater meaning. The Mass also can be the joy of our life.

If we find it a bit difficult to follow an online Mass, that's an extra little sacrifice that we can offer to Our Lord, something that He has brought our way, possibly also to help us to grow in our understanding of the Mass, and in our sense of value and of treasure, because we realize how important it is.

“The center and root of our interior life” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 69); “the summit and the source.” How much we need the Mass!

Over time, in our lives, hopefully, God gives us the grace to be able to grow in our understanding of what we are assisting. It's a mystery. We never fully understand it but, little by little, God can give us the grace to get a little optical angle here and there.

That's why it's very good to follow with your eyes the words of the Mass that the priest is saying. You may find that, from time to time, a word or phrase jumps up out of the page and hits you in the face.

Or suddenly you come to understand the value of that word or that sentence. Its meaning comes to be a little bit more special to you.

A priest told me once in Ireland how he was going to say Mass for some nuns. He asked the Sister in charge: “Sister, would you like me to say a few words during the Mass?" And she answered, saying: “Father, surely the Mass has words enough of its own?"

In other words, No. “But,” he said, “I was very impressed with the way that she said it.”

Here was somebody who had learned to savor the Word in the Mass, to savor the beauty and the richness of the liturgy.

Possibly there are few legacies of greater value that you can leave your children than your regular attendance at Mass. It shows them what you really believe in. It shows them how your family hangs together, how you solve your problems. It helps us have faith in the eternal wedding feast which we are preparing for.

The Church invites us to take very good care of our Sunday Mass. That has to be a priority in our life, something that's not negotiable in our family.

As your children get a bit older, possibly they have to go to Mass on their own. They want a bit of independence. But in principle, in this Christian home, everybody goes to Mass on Sunday.

We give it importance. If we're traveling, we go to Mass the night before, or we get up earlier and we make sure we get Mass.

If we're traveling internationally, we check out on the Internet to see where our hotel is and where the local church is, and we have it all prepared before we arrive. We don't leave it to the last minute because this is something important.

The Church obliges us, under penalty of mortal sin, to attend Mass on Sundays unless we're sick or it's absolutely impossible.

If we're in the middle of China on a Sunday and there's no Mass within a thousand miles, obviously we can't get to Mass. But we try not to be in the middle of China on a Sunday, although now all the Masses in China in principle are valid.

We move heaven and earth to get to Mass.

There was a story of a lady in the early 1960s who was in the States, and she wanted to go to Confession to Padre Pio in Italy. So she flew across the Atlantic.

She landed in Rome early in the morning. She went to her hotel. She was feeling tired. She decided she would lie down and take a nap and catch a late morning Mass. In those days before the Vatican Council, there were no evening Masses.

She fell asleep and she slept the sleep of the just, and she woke up at three o'clock in the afternoon. She had missed Mass. She didn't mean to miss Mass. She knew she had not committed a mortal sin.

The following day she went to Pietrelcina where St. Padre Pio was, and she went to Confession with him. She confessed her sins.

When she was finished, he said, "Is that everything?” She said, Yes.

He said, "Are you sure?” She said, Yes.

And he said, "What about yesterday, when you flew across the Atlantic and you landed in Rome, and you were tired and you lay down and you took a nap and you slept the sleep of the just, and you woke up at three o'clock?”

He could read souls. He said, “I know you didn't commit a mortal sin because you didn't mean to miss Mass, but your negligence hurt Our Lord.”

This is the way the saints functioned. They didn't just look at their venial sins and their mortal sins. They looked at their negligences.

When we go to Confession, it can be a good idea to look at the areas of our spiritual life, our different virtues, where we've been negligent as a father of a family, as a husband, as a son of God, as a professional person; about our spiritual life, our professional life, our apostolic life, all sorts of different things; particularly, our negligences in relation to the summit and the source of the spiritual life.

One of the apostolates that God wants us to do in the world is to try and promote the Mass and its importance. We do that by our regular attendance.

Also, if you have some town or village or country that you come from, or you're in contact with, or you travel to occasionally, try and see what you can do to build up the liturgical items in that Church or outstation, because there's some little kid there that comes to Mass. Maybe that kid has a vocation.

God wants to use you to build up the Mass so that that Mass can have all the effects in the soul of that young person that He wants it to have.

We bring the Mass with all its greatness and richness to every last person on the planet, and help them to get that sense of the greatness of the Mass, and its importance.

“And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me’” (Luke 22:19).

Our Lord didn't say, ‘This is a symbol of my body. This is a figure of my body.’ He said: “This is my body.”

That word is the basis of our faith in the real presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the altar and in the tabernacle.

Christ is with us. He is there. He is in His Church. It's one of the basic truths of our whole faith, the central truth of our life.

We're called to be Eucharistic souls. The real presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament means an awful lot to us.

To be able to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion is something very important. It's good to work at the fervor of our Communions.

In every Missal or in booklets like the Christian Devotions, there are prayers before Mass and prayers after Mass of the saints, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Bonaventure.

These are all very good prayers to help us to be a little bit more aware of what we're doing, so that we don't develop a routine. We don't get used to things.

Sometimes great treasures that we are very close to—we can get a bit accustomed. From time to time, we need wake-up calls.

A lady in another country told me once how she grew up without any religion. Then she tried Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and different isms. Then she discovered Christianity, and her first encounter was Evangelical Christianity.

Then she discovered Catholicism, and eventually, she converted to Catholicism.

One day she told me, “Father, I think I'm becoming more and more Catholic because I find I don't like long homilies anymore. A 45-minute sermon on a Sunday was fine before, because that's all that there was.

“But now after ten minutes of the homily, I feel like saying to the priest, 'OK, Father, thank you very much, that's enough. Now let's get on with what's really important.’”

Those were very beautiful words. More like a wake-up call. We need to be reminded about what is really important.

We can think a whole pile of things in our life are really important. But really, there's only one thing that is really important: the real presence of Our Lord on the altar, in the tabernacle.

The priest does not say, ‘This is the Body of Christ.’ He says, "This is my body.” When he's giving Holy Communion, he says, “This is the Body of Christ.”

He says, “This is my body” because we believe that in the Mass, the priest is acting in what we call in persona Christi–in the person of Christ.

Christ takes over his words, his actions, his being. This is one of the reasons why the priests wear special vestments in the Mass. In the Mass, the priest is Christ.

There was a lady in the States once who said she had a vision, during the Mass, of Christ coming down and merging into the back of the priest, and a little light coming on above his head, staying on.

I don't know how true that vision was, but that's very orthodox doctrine. That's what we believe is taking place.

It's Christ who works in the miracle of the transubstantiation, whereby the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the substance of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ becomes really, truly, and substantially present in the Sacred Host, and He says, "This is my body given for you” (Luke 22:19).

That verb unites the Last Supper with Calvary: “given for you.” He foretells the Sacrifice of Calvary.

That's why the Mass is not just a renewal of the Last Supper. It's a renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary. It's a real sacrifice.

“And likewise, this cup is the new covenant in my Blood poured out for you” (Luke 22:20). Those two verbs prefigure what's going to take place on Calvary—they foretell it.

That is symbolized in the Consecration by the separation of the Body and Blood of Christ. The Body is on the paten, the Blood is in the chalice.

The month of July is the month that the Church dedicates to the Precious Blood of Christ. It’s a very beautiful devotion. There is a votive Mass for the Precious Blood of Christ.

In Benediction, we say the words, “Blessed be his most Precious Blood” (Rite of Eucharistic Exposition and Benediction, Divine Praises).

It's a rather interesting devotion to foster, to read a little bit about, and to focus on: the Blood of Christ—the blood that flowed in streams down His Body, which is symbolic of sacrifice.

We may get distracted at Mass. Why do we get distracted? Because we are human beings. We are like little children. Little children can't concentrate for a moment. They get distracted all the time.

But very consoling can be the words of Our Lord that say, “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

That can be very consoling when you're present at Mass and you find that your mind is in Hawaii.

There was a book by a priest in the States called Leo Trese in the 1950s. It's called Vessel of Clay, where he describes this reality very clearly.

He talks about how being a priest, he can be very vested in the Sacristy, very aware of what he is going to do; preparing himself with prayers, reminding himself he is about to celebrate the great Sacrifice of the Mass.

Then he goes out to the altar and he genuflects at the foot of the altar. Then a thought goes through his mind, which is: “I wonder what's on the menu for breakfast.”

But then he recollects himself again and he goes up and he kisses the altar. He's back. now aware of what he's about to do.

Then he goes to the lectern. He begins: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The Lord be with you.” “And also with you.”

The next thought that goes through his mind is Manchester United 3, Chelsea 1. He has the football results from the previous night.

And so on, all through the Mass, swinging from the sublime to the ridiculous, the mind wandering in all sorts of ways.

He recommends having certain wake-up calls during the Mass, like, “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.” We come back from wherever we are and focus again on what's taking place.

Or, “Holy, holy, holy.” Or when the bell rings at the Consecration. These are wake-up calls that bring us back from Hawaii, or to wherever we have strayed.

If we have the words of the Liturgy in front of us, that can help us to concentrate a little better, and not to be worried by our wanderings, and to get consolation from those words of Our Lord that we have to be like little children.

Little by little, Our Father God takes us by the hand and leads us forward to a deeper appreciation of what is taking place.

The Second Vatican Council talks a lot about participation in the Mass. That doesn't mean an external participation. Only one person can read the readings; only one person can bring up the gifts.

But the Church is talking particularly about interior participation. Every person in the congregation can have a profound interior unity to what's taking place on the altar, so that the Mass can truly become the joy of our life, and hopefully, we can give witness to many other people.

I heard a story once about two guys who had stopped going to Mass in their late teen years. They borrowed their father's car one day and they went for a drive in the mountains.

They saw an elderly man coming across the fields and he was lame or handicapped. They were good guys, so they decided to give him a lift and asked him where he was going. He said he was going to Mass.

The Church was still a few kilometers away. He was walking all the way to Mass. They drove him to Mass and then they left him there.

Then they thought, "We better do the decent thing. We have nothing really to do, so we could hang around and drive him back to where he came from.”

While they were sitting in the car park, they decided: “We may as well go into Mass.”

They went into Mass. There was a priest hearing Confessions. They went to Confession. They were able to receive Communion.

Afterwards, they drove the man back to where they had picked him up and he went off across the fields. He didn't say anything to them. He didn't give them a lecture about not going to Mass. He didn't give out to them.

But he did give them his silent witness of how important the Mass was in his life.

Often in our family, in our neighborhood, in our community, in our parish, in our office, that may be the sort of witness that God wants us to give.

I heard of a man once who was attending a conference in another city. After the morning session, they were going to lunch. He was with a friend of his, but he said, "Look, I'll catch up with you later. I'm just going to catch Mass and then I'll join you for lunch.”

When the friend heard that he was going to Mass, he said, "I'll come along with you.”

He might not have been to Mass for a couple of years. But when he went to Mass, he recognized the priest. The priest had been in the class of his younger brother in school forty years previously.

After the Mass, he went to greet the priest, and they chatted a little bit. Eventually, that was the beginning of that man going back to Mass after three years—because a colleague of his had given him that example of what was important in his life.

He had not bent under the ‘What's he going to think?’ or 'What's he going to say?’ or 'Maybe other people will make a joke of this.’

He lived his faith in that moment. He gave a great example.

Every day is a great moment for us to give that sort of example to people around us. Blaze a trail. Give witness to what we really believe in.

It’s possible that that silent witness in our home is our greatest legacy to our children. They see what's really important in our life.

In every Mass, Our Lady is present. She was present at Calvary, and so she's present with St. Joseph at every Mass.

We ask Our Lady. She will help us to participate more and better in the Mass.

This week we have the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. On Thursday we can ask her in a special way, as we come to this feast day, that she might help us to grow in our love for the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JM