If Mass Is Boring

If Mass Is Boring
Interview With Prelate of Opus Dei
By Jesús Colina

ROME, APRIL 2, 2010 (www.Zenit.org).- Holy Mass is about love, reminds Bishop Javier Echevarría Rodríguez, prelate of Opus Dei, when asked for advice for those who are sometimes bored by the Eucharistic celebration.

Bishop Echevarría, who together with Bishop Alvaro del Portillo was the person closest to St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, has dedicated his latest book, "Living the Holy Mass," to this sacrament.

Bishop Echevarría is a member of the Vatican's Congregation for Saints' Causes and the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature; he is a consultor for the Congregation for the Clergy and an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. His book is an attempt to rediscover love for the Eucharist, "which must be the center of our life," he explains in this interview with ZENIT.

ZENIT: What would you recommend to Catholics who say they are bored at Mass?

Bishop Echevarría: I would recommend that they participate with sincerity in the Mass, seeking and loving Jesus. In "The Way," St. Josemaría wrote: "You say the Mass is long and, I add, because your love is short."

Feelings must not be given too much importance: enthusiasm or apathy, desire or lack of it. The Mass is sacrifice: Christ gives himself out of love. It is an action of God and we cannot fully understand its grandeur, because of our limited condition as creatures. But we must make the effort, not only to be at Mass, but to live it in union with Christ and the Church.

ZENIT: When did you discover the mystery that the Eucharist conceals and reveals?

Bishop Echevarría: Thank God, I try to rediscover it every day: in the Liturgy of the Word -- which helps to maintain conversation with God during the day -- and in the Eucharistic liturgy. We should always be ever more astonished before this reality that surpasses us, but in which the Lord allows us to participate, better said, invites us to participate.

In the Mass, not only is a descendent communication of the redeeming gift of God fulfilled, but also an ascendant mediation, man's offering of himself to God: his work, his sufferings, his griefs and his joys, everything is united to Christ -- through him, with him and in him. I cannot be silent about the deep impact that St. Josemaría made on me when he celebrated the Holy Sacrifice, on contemplating his daily Eucharistic devotion.

It profoundly moves us to think that in the presentation of the gifts, the priest asks God to accept the bread and wine, which are "fruit of the earth (or of the vine) and the work of men." Man can offer his work in any circumstance to God, but in the Mass, that offer reaches its full meaning and value, because Christ unites it to his sacrifice, which he offers to the Father for the salvation of men.

When the Mass is the center and root of the Christian's day, when all his tasks are oriented to the Eucharistic sacrifice, it can be affirmed that his whole day is a Mass and that his place of work is an altar, where he gives himself fully to God as his beloved son.

ZENIT: In his pontificate, Benedict XVI is stimulating a rediscovery of the enormity of this sacrament. What has most caught your attention in the words and gestures of the Pope on the Eucharist?

Bishop Echevarría: Especially important, it seems to me at this time, is his insistence that the liturgy is God's action and, as such, it is received in the continuity of the Church.

The Pope has written that the best catechesis on the Eucharist is the Eucharist itself well celebrated. Therefore, the first duty of piety for the priest that celebrates or for the faithful that participate in the Mass is the attentive, devout observance of the liturgical prescriptions: the obedience of pietas.

Moreover, the Pope also insists that the Eucharist is the heart of the Church: God present on the altar, the close God, builds the Church, congregates the faithful and sends them to all men.

ZENIT: Something more personal. According to your memories, what was the Eucharist for St. Josemaría? What role did it have in his day?

Bishop Echevarría: I served Mass many times for St. Josemaría. At these times he would ask me to pray so that he would not get used to celebrating that very sublime and sacred act. In effect, I was able to verify something he once said: that he experienced the Mass as work -- at times an extenuating effort, such was the intensity with which he lived it.

Throughout the day, he would recall the texts he had read, in particular the Gospel, and many times he commented on it, in a perfectly ordinary tone, as food for his spiritual and human life.

He was conscious of the fact that in the Mass the protagonist is Jesus Christ, not the minister, and that the faithful fulfillment of the prescriptions enables the priest to "disappear," so that Jesus alone shines. Many people who attended his Mass -- also in the difficult circumstances of the Spanish Civil War -- commented later that his way of celebrating Mass had something that moved them profoundly, and that they felt invited to grow in their devotion to the Holy Sacrifice. I am convinced that what moved those who participated -- those of us who participated -- in his Mass was precisely that: that he let Christ appear and not his person.

Good Friday Mass

Why there is no Mass on Good Friday
From The New Theological Movement


Many people are wondering today: Why is there no Mass on Good Friday? Of course, there is the Liturgy of the Presanctified, or the Commemoration of Our Lord’s Passion; but it is true that, although communion is distributed, Mass is not celebrated.

So, why no Mass today (or Holy Saturday, before the Vigil)? This question is especially relevant on the day when we commemorate the reality of which the Mass is a sacramental figure: The suffering and death of Christ.

This, like many other questions, was asked and answered a long time ago by a holy Dominican Friar named Thomas Aquinas. In the Summa Theologica, part III, question 83, article 2, reply to objection 2, St. Thomas tells us:

“The figure ceases on the advent of the reality. But this sacrament is a figure and a representation of our Lord's Passion, as stated above. And therefore on the day on which our Lord's Passion is recalled as it was really accomplished, this sacrament is not consecrated. Nevertheless, lest the Church be deprived on that day of the fruit of the Passion offered to us by this sacrament, the body of Christ consecrated the day before is reserved to be consumed on that day; but the blood is not reserved, on account of danger, and because the blood is more specially the image of our Lord's Passion.”

Yes, it is true that the Mass is the representation of the Passion, but as the figure passes away before the reality, so too the Church omits the celebration of Mass when she commemorates the Passion as it really happened in time.

So while we do not celebrate Mass today, we celebrate something more than Mass; for the Mass represents the Passion as a figure, but the liturgy of the Commemoration of Our Lord’s Passion represents our Lord’s suffering and death as it was in reality. In omitting the Mass, nothing is lost; but the sacramental figure is perfected in the reality commemorated on Good Friday.

But St. Thomas, good teacher that he was, does not stop there. Instead he anticipates another objection (ST III, q.83, a.2, ad 1): If any should say that—since the Commemoration of Good Friday is, in some sense, more perfect than even the Mass—we should then celebrate Good Friday many times and not only once per year; St. Thomas answers:

“Christ's Passion is recalled in this sacrament, inasmuch as its effect flows out to the faithful; but at Passion-tide Christ's Passion is recalled inasmuch as it was wrought in Him Who is our Head. This took place but once; whereas the faithful receive daily the fruits of His Passion: consequently, the former is commemorated but once in the year, whereas the latter takes place every day, both that we may partake of its fruit and in order that we may have a perpetual memorial.”

Since Christ died only once, we commemorate his Passion as it really occurred in history only once each year. But, since his suffering and death are infinitely efficacious unto salvation, Mass is celebrated every day in order that many people might rejoice in the saving fruits of his death.

Look here for a consideration on the adoration of the Cross, which takes place in today’s liturgy.

The Priest in the Communion Rites

The Priest in the Communion Rites
Liturgy Prepares for Reception of the Eucharist
By Paul Gunter, OSB

ROME, MARCH 19, 2010 (www.Zenit.org).- The priest approaching the Communion rites in the Mass is disposed by the Eucharistic prayer, which he has just completed, to know that "the power of the words and the action of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit, make sacramentally present under the species of bread and wine Christ's Body and Blood, his sacrifice offered on the cross once for all."[1]

Moreover, as the moment approaches when priest and people receive the Holy Eucharist; that is, as they prepare to eat the Lord's Body and to drink his Blood, we might turn to Jesus' speech at Capernaum which presents the reception of the Blessed Eucharist as both a coming and an encounter.[2]

In the context of a coming, St. John's Gospel states: "For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world."[3] As an encounter, the Eucharist is no less placed as an expression of the relationship within the Blessed Trinity and witnessed in the filial relationship of Jesus and his heavenly Father. Jesus explains: "Not that any one has seen the Father except him who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, Truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life."[4] "As the living Father has sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me, he also shall live because of me."[5] Consequently, personal and public preparation for the Blessed Eucharist, which the Communion rites so vividly amplify in both the ordinary and extraordinary forms, do not prepare the priest and others to receive a "thing" but a person. As Romano Guardini summed it up, "Not it but He, the supreme Person praised in all eternity."[6]

In the ordinary form (or the missal of Paul VI), the people stand to begin the Communion rites, which are led by the priest. Symbolically, the image of the priest, centrally at the altar, with the people standing around, anticipates the Church standing with Christ in heaven at the end of time. The priest introduces the Pater Noster according one of a number of formulas before it is said or sung by all. Various authors comment on the words Jesus taught us to pray with confidence and which we use before approaching the Blessed Eucharist.

Our Father

Texts from the commentary by St. Cyprian on the words of the Lord's Prayer are designated to the Office of Readings for the eleventh week of ordinary time in the Liturgia Horarum to catechize us into a greater appreciation of their meaning.[7] They counsel the priest to remember that every recitation of the Pater Noster is an ecclesial act that has its bearing on the lives of others. St Cyprian wrote: "Before all else the teacher of peace and of unity would not have us pray on our own and in private in such a manner that each prays only for himself. We do not say: 'My Father, who art in heaven', or, 'Give me this day my bread.' […] Our prayer is public and for all, and when we pray, we pray not for a single person, but for the whole people, because we are all one."[8]

The Libera nos continues in a gentle way to expound the resonances of the Pater Noster and describes the human unworthiness and need for deliverance with which we approach the Eucharist. The priest, who prays on behalf of everyone, acknowledges, on the one hand, the compromises that mar our peace in lives blurred by sins and anxieties, and on the other, the joyful hope that the coming of the Lord brings. The people complete the prayer with a doxology that expresses expectancy that the Lord will fulfill his promise to be glorified in us. The prayer, Domine Iesu Christe, takes the focus from our sins and anxieties and places it on the faith of the Church that awaits the peace and unity of the kingdom in fulfillment of God's will. Then the priest extends his hands and exchanges the greeting with the assembly: Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo.

Sign of peace

The physical sharing of the pax is not an obligatory component of the liturgy. The deacon or the priest may invite everyone to offer a sign of peace.[9] Controversies about when the sign of peace might be deemed more appropriate in the liturgy remains a separate discussion from that which describes how it is done. The missal maintains ecclesiological distinctions. It is not a moment when formality gives way to informality but a moment when the human intimacy that is an intrinsic part of order reveals itself in just proportion. "It is a ritual exchange, not a practical greeting."[10] St. Thomas Aquinas expressed this relationship between intimacy and order in his beautiful hymn to the Blessed Sacrament "Pange Lingua" that is sung on Holy Thursday and Corpus Christi in the Roman liturgy.[11] Verse three illustrates: "On that night of the supper, reclining with the brethren, observing the fullness of the law."[12]

The priest gives the pax to the deacon or minister. It is not envisaged he leave the sanctuary to greet the faithful in the nave, though the faithful exchange the pax with those nearest to them. The rubric distinguishes these parallel demonstrations of the pax that avoids the ecclesiological confusion that might arise from a purely horizontal model. Clear punctuation marks affirm the distinctions intended. "Everyone, according to their local customs, gives expression to communion and charity, the one to the other; the priest gives the peace to the deacon or minister."

The fraction that follows is both a practical and a symbolic moment. Ritually, in many circumstances, the celebrant breaks the larger host that he alone consumes. However, this rite allows for a larger host to be broken into the pieces that will be distributed to the faithful, while a particle is placed into the chalice when the priest says secretly, "May the commingling of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it."

Agnus Dei

The Agnus Dei which accompanies this action asks for mercy and addresses Jesus as the Passover Lamb whose sacrificed body has poured out his blood for the forgiveness of sins. The image of Jesus as the Lamb is outstandingly portrayed by an altarpiece in the Ghent's Cathedral of St Bavo where a lamb who stands on the altar pours out his blood into a chalice.[13] The Agnus Dei is the same as that cited in the Book of the Apocalypse which proclaims the worthiness of the Lamb that was slain [14] and the blessedness of those invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.[15] The antiquity of the Agnus Dei in the Roman rite is such that many scholars accept that it was Pope Sergius I, 687-701, who introduced it in the Mass. The third invocation, Agnus Dei, asks for peace because the Blessed Eucharist is a Sacrament of Peace because it is the means whereby all who receive it are bound together in unity and peace.[16]

The priest says secretly one of two personal preparatory prayers before Holy Communion. In the first, through the Body and Blood of Christ, he asks to be liberated from his iniquities and from any other evil, for the grace to keep the Lord's commands and that nothing may permit any separation from him. In the second, the priest prays that his receiving of the Body and Blood of Christ may not bring him judgment and condemnation but a defense and a cure for his mind and body.[17] The priest's communion, which precedes that of the faithful, always, consists in both species to complete the liturgical action of the Mass. He prays that the Body and Blood of Christ bring him personally to eternal life. However, at the purification of the vessels, he asks on behalf of all who have communicated, including himself, that what they have received with their lips may be received with a pure heart and that from being a merely temporal gift it may become for them an everlasting remedy. The sum of these words and actions announce that a great mystery has been celebrated where, in the Eucharistic celebration, kairos, the favorable time of the Lord, has intercepted chronos which is the time otherwise restricted by the successive events described around us. Nevertheless, before God, silence is ultimately the only appropriate personal response from the innermost part of our beings to express faith, reverence and loving communion in him whom we have received.

The period of silence should be carefully protected. It should last minutes rather than seconds to provide a clearly defined space for prayer.[18] In the prayer after communion, which also envisages a period of silence after the call to prayer Oremus, especially if a period of silence was not observed previously, the priest leads the thanksgiving of the Church and prays that the gift of the Communion that has been shared may bear its fruit in us. The Amen with which the faithful answer this prayer made by the priest concludes the Communion rites that began with the priest's invitation to pray the Pater Noster.

Extraordinary form

The priest in the Communion Rites of the extraordinary form performs more complicated gestures that no less indicate priestly identity and function in preparing for Holy Communion. As in the ordinary form, it makes coherent sense to consider its parameters as the same, namely, from the introduction to the Pater Noster until the conclusion of the Post-Communion prayer. However, allowing for the different mentalities of the forms that unite to construct the Roman Rite, certain differences are noteworthy.

Since the Tridentine Missal envisages celebrations of distinct grades of solemnity, the assistants perform surrounding actions that a priest would fulfill himself at a Low Mass. The priest recites the Pater Noster alone and the server answers sed libera nos a malo. The Libera Quaesumus includes the intercession of all the saints in general but beyond mentioning Our Lady also includes St. Andrew presumably because of particular devotion to that apostle.

When the priest prays "for peace in his day,"[19] he makes the sign of the cross on himself with the paten and kisses the paten at its upper inside edge prior to slipping the paten under the host before preparing to carry out the fraction. In his explanation of the prayers and ceremonies of the Holy Mass, Guéranger provides a commentary to describe the purpose of the Haec Commixtio at the commingling which is at once engaging even in its tendency toward allegory:

"The priest then allows the particle which he had in his hand, to fall into the chalice, thus mingling the Body and Blood of the Lord, and saying at the same time: Haec commixtio et consecratio Corporis et Sanguinis Domini nostri Iesu Christi fiat accipientibus nobis in vitam aeternam. Amen. What is the meaning of this rite? What is signified by this mingling of the Particle with the Blood which is in the chalice? This rite is not one of the most ancient, although it is quite a thousand years old. Its object is to show, that at the moment of Our Lord's Resurrection, His Blood was reunited to his Body; by flowing again in his veins as before. It would not have sufficed if This soul alone had been reunited to His Body; His Blood must necessarily be so likewise, in order that the Lord might be whole and complete. Our Saviour, therefore, when rising, took back His Blood which was erstwhile spilled on Calvary, in the Praetorium, and in the Garden of Olives."[20]

Lord, I am not worthy

After the Agnus Dei, there are three prayers the priest says before Holy Communion with his eyes fixed on the Sacred Host and whose content is largely found in the Communion Rite of the ordinary form. Then holding the Host he says the Domine, non sum dignus three times when simultaneously striking his breast. As he purifies the paten into the chalice prior to consuming the Precious Blood he quotes from Psalm 115, "What return can I make to the Lord for all he has given to me. I will take the chalice of salvation and call on the name of the Lord" but adds "praising, I will call on the Lord for I will have been saved from my enemies."[21] During the purifying of the chalice, after the Quod ore sumpsimus, the priest prays that there remain in him no stain from his misdeeds and that the Body and Blood of Christ which he has received transform his entire being.

It can be seen that any emphasis placed on priestly character and on the priest's liturgical actions in the Communion rites are overwhelmingly encouraging. While they do not hide a priest's awareness of his unworthiness, they highlight his unique dignity and remind him of how he must strive to become pure and holy like Christ. Then they are inviting; that is, immediately inviting to the sacrificing priest to enter into a closer union with Jesus Christ The High Priest and Victim, and inviting to the faithful that they may recognize with joy the ministry of the priesthood whose mystery is essential for the Eucharist, the 'Source and Summit of the life and mission of the Church'.[22] In those different aspects of that invitation, the Church glimpses at the wonder of the love of God who humbled himself to share in our humanity, renewing his invitation each time his Covenant of Love is made present on the altar when Christ draws our human existence ever more deeply into his Risen Life. As the author of the Book of the Apocalypse testifies: "Look, I am standing at the door, knocking. If one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share his meal, side by side with him."[23]

* * *

[1] CCC 1353
[2] John 6

[3] John 6:33
[4] John 6:46-48

[5] John 6:57
[6] GUARDINI R., Meditations Before Mass, tr E.CASTENDYK, reprinted Sophia Institute Press, Manchester NH 1993, 174

[7] ST CYPRIAN., «De Oratione Dominica» 4-30, PL 3A, 91-113
[8] ST CYPRIAN., «De Oratione Dominica» 8

[9] #128, 'pro opportunitate', Missale Romanum, Editio Typica Tertia, Typis Vaticanis 2002
[10] J. DRISCOLL, What happens at Mass, Gracewing Publishing, Leominster 2005, 123.

[11] During the Solemn Transfer of the Blessed Sacrament on Holy Thursday and as the hymn at vespers on Corpus Christi.
[12] "In supremae nocte caenae recumbens cum fratribus, observata lege plene […]"

[13] J. VAN EYCK., The Adoration of the Lamb, detail from the Ghent Altarpiece, 1432, St Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium
[14] Apocalypse 5:11-12

[15] Apocalypse 19:7,9. The priest introduces the Domine, non sum dignus based on Matthew 8:8 and Luke 7:6-7 with the image of the Feast of the Lamb.
[16] St. Augustine, 'O Sign of Unity, O Bond of Charity' In Jo. ev. 26,13:PL 35,1613; cf. SC 47.

[17] #131 Missale Romanum 2002
[18] #139 Missale Romanum 2002 refers to sacrum silentium and temporis spatium.

[19] da propitius pacem in diebus nostris
[20] P. GUÉRANGER, Explanation of the Prayers and Ceremonies of Holy Mass, tr. L. Shepherd, Stanbrook Abbey, Worcestershire 1885, 61.

[21] Laudans invocabo Dominum et ab inimicis meis salvus ero
[22] BENEDICT XVI., Sacramentum Caritatis, 3, AAS 98 (2006)
[23] Apocalypse 3:19-20

* * *

Benedictine Father Paul Gunter is a professor of the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy Rome and Consulter to the Office of the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff.

Father Gagliardi Explains the Eucharistic Prayers

The Priest and the Canon of the Mass
Father Gagliardi Explains the Eucharistic Prayers


ROME, MARCH 5, 2010 (www.Zenit.org).- In this article, Father Mauro Gagliardi, a consultor of the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff, explains the importance of the Eucharistic prayer of the Mass.

The article invites the faithful, and in particular priests, to recognized in the Canon of the Mass the heart and culmination of Christian life.

***

The heart and culmination

The Eucharistic Prayer, known in the Eastern tradition as Anaphora ("offering"), is indeed the "heart" and "culmination" of the celebration of the Mass, as is explained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.[1] In the Roman tradition, the Eucharistic prayer has been known as "Canon of the Mass" (Canon Missae), a term that is found in the early Sacramentaries and goes back at least to Pope Vigilius (537-555), who speaks of "prex canonica."[2]

The Anaphora or Canon is one long prayer has the form of thanksgiving (eucharistia), thus following the example of Christ himself at the Last Supper, when he took bread and wine and "gave thanks" (Matthew 26:27; Mark 14:23; Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:23). St. Cyprian of Carthage (died 258), one of the most important witnesses to the Latin tradition, provided a classical formulation of the inseparable bond between the liturgical celebration and the institution event, when he emphasised that the celebrant of the Eucharist must imitate closely the acts and words of the Lord at the Last Supper, upon which the validity of the sacrament depends.[3]

Pope Benedict XVI expressed this essential truth of the faith in a homily in Paris during his Apostolic Visit in 2008: "The bread that we break is communion with the Body of Christ; the chalice of thanksgiving that we bless is communion with the Blood of Christ. Extraordinary revelation, which comes to us from Christ and is transmitted to us by the Apostles and by the whole Church for almost two thousand years: Christ instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist on the evening of Holy Thursday. He wanted his sacrifice to be presented again, in a bloodless way, every time a priest repeats the words of the consecration on the bread and on the wine. Millions of times for twenty centuries, in the most humble of chapels as well as in the most grandiose basilicas or cathedrals, the risen Lord has given himself to his people, thus becoming, according to Saint Augustine's formula, 'more intimate to us than we are to ourselves' (cf Confessions III, 6.11)."[4]

The actual words of Christ's "thanksgiving," by which he instituted the sacrifice of the New Covenant, have not been handed down, and so there developed within the Apostolic Tradition a variety of liturgical rites that are historically associated with the most important primatial sees, which are named by the sixth canon of the Council of Nicea (325), Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and, a little later, Byzantium.[5]

Essential elements

The essential elements of the Eucharistic prayer are presented succinctly in the Catechism:

In the Preface, "the Church gives thanks to the Father, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit, for all his works: creation, redemption, and sanctification. The whole community thus joins in the unending praise that the Church in heaven, the angels and all the saints, sing to the thrice-holy God."[6]

In the Epiclesis, the Church "asks the Father to send his Holy Spirit (or the power of his blessing) on the bread and wine, so that by his power they may become the body and blood of Jesus Christ and so that those who take part in the Eucharist may be one body and one spirit (some liturgical traditions put the epiclesis after the anamnesis)."[7]

In the heart of the Eucharistic prayer, the Institution Narrative, "the power of the words and the action of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit, make sacramentally present under the species of bread and wine Christ's body and blood, his sacrifice offered on the cross once for all."[8]

After the Institution Narrative, follows the Anamnesis, in which "the Church calls to mind the Passion, resurrection, and glorious return of Christ Jesus; she presents to the Father the offering of his Son which reconciles us with him."[9]

In the Intercessions, "the Church indicates that the Eucharist is celebrated in communion with the whole Church in heaven and on earth, the living and the dead, and in communion with the pastors of the Church, the Pope, the diocesan bishop, his presbyterium and his deacons, and all the bishops of the whole world together with their Church."[10]

Since late antiquity until the liturgical reform following the Second Vatican Council, the Canon Missae was the only Eucharistic Prayer of the Roman rite, and this is still the case in its Extraordinary Form according to the Missale Romanum of 1962. In the 1970 editio typica of the Missal, the Roman Canon has been retained with a few minor modifications (and a reduction of rubrical gestures) as the first of four Eucharistic Prayers. The new compositions contain elements both of the Latin and of the Eastern traditions. Subsequently, further Eucharistic Prayers have been added to the Missal.

The Canon Missae goes back to the second half of the fourth century, the period in which the Latin liturgy at Rome began to develop fully. In his De Sacramentis, a series of catecheses for the newly baptised that was held around 390, St Ambrose quotes extensively from the Eucharistic prayer employed at that time in his city.[11] The passages quoted are earlier forms of the prayers "Quam oblationem," "Qui pridie," "Unde et memores," "Supra quae," and "Supplices te rogamus" of the Canon found in the early Roman Sacramentaries.

In the oldest Roman tradition the Canon begins with what we now call the "Preface," a solemn act of thanksgiving to God for his innumerable benefits, especially for his works of salvation. The Sanctus was introduced at a later stage and separated the Preface from the subsequent prayers. It is a characteristic of the Roman Rite that the text of the Preface varies according to the liturgical season or feast. The earliest Mass collections had many different Prefaces, which were greatly reduced already in the early Middle Ages, so that the Missale Romanum of 1570 only retained 11 of them. Subsequently, a number of Prefaces were added, and it was certainly one of the gains of the most recent liturgical reform to enrich the corpus of Prefaces by drawing on ancient sources.[12]

Priestly prayer

As Pope John Paul II wrote in his Apostolic Letter "Dominicae Cenae" in the early years of his pontificate, the Eucharist "is the principal and central raison d'être of the sacrament of priesthood, which effectively came into being at the moment of the institution of the Eucharist."[13] The Eucharistic Prayer is indeed the priestly prayer par excellence, for, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, the ordained priest, "acting in the person of Christ, brings about the Eucharistic Sacrifice and offers it to God in the name of all the people."[14] The priest, who through receiving the sacrament of Holy Orders has been conformed to Christ the High Priest, acts and speaks as representing Christ the Head. It is for this reason, writes John Paul II in his last Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia that "the Roman Missal prescribes that only the priest should recite the Eucharistic Prayer, while the people participate in faith and in silence."[15]

In the consecration of the Eucharist, the ordained priest never acts alone but always in and with Christ's Mystical Body, the Church, whose members, through the infused virtues of faith and charity, participate in the action of Christ the Head as represented by the priest. Pope Pius XII states in his encyclical Mediator Dei, that the faithful too "offer the divine Victim, though in a different sense." This teaching is confirmed by reference to the writings of Pope Innocent III and St. Robert Bellarmine on the Mass. Pius XII also points to the fact that the liturgical prayers of offering are generally used in the first person plural, as in various parts of the Canon of the Mass.[16] The Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy follows Mediator Dei when it proclaims that "Christ's faithful, when present at this mystery of faith," which is the Holy Eucharist, "should give thanks to God [and], by offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him, they should learn also to offer themselves."[17] As the Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church "Lumen Gentium" teaches, "the faithful join in the offering of the Eucharist by virtue of their royal priesthood."[18] Through the indelible character they received in baptism, the faithful participate in Christ’s priesthood and hence also in his sacrificial offering of himself to the Father in the Holy Spirit.

This teaching of the Church's Magisterium provides also the foundations for a renewed and more profound understanding of the "participatio actuosa" (active participation) of the faithful in the liturgy, which is not merely external, but also, and more importantly, internal. From this perspective one also understands better why from the Carolingian period to the reform of Vatican II, and also today in the extraordinary form of the Roman rite, the celebrant priest prays the Canon in silence. As the then cardinal Joseph Ratzinger explained, thus communion before God is not denied: "It is not quite true that the uninterrupted recitation in a loud voice of the Eucharistic prayer is the condition for the participation of everyone in this central act of the Eucharistic celebration. My proposal then was: on one hand liturgical education must be such that the faithful know the essential meaning and the fundamental tendency of the Canon; on the other, the first words of the individual prayers should be pronounced in a loud voice as an invitation to the whole community, so that, then, the silent prayer of each one makes its own the intonation and can bring the personal dimension into that of the community, and that of the community into the personal dimension. Whoever has experienced personally the unity of the Church in the silence of the Eucharistic prayer has experienced what truly full silence is, which represents at the same time a deep and penetrating cry addressed to God, a prayer full of spirit. Here we truly pray all together the Canon, though in connection with the particular task of the priestly service."[19]

For priests, the celebration of the Eucharist is the most important moment of every single day. All other activities, indeed all aspects of their sacerdotal existence, must be intimately connected to the offering of the Holy Sacrifice. Here we find the heart of the priesthood and indeed of the whole sacramental nature of the Church, as the theologian Joseph Ratzinger put it so well: "In order that an event that occurred in the past is made present, the words must therefore be pronounced: This is my Body -- This is my Blood. But in these words it is assumed that the I of Jesus Christ speaks. Only He can say these things; they are His words. No man can pretend to declare the I of Jesus Christ as his own. No one can say here r many communities can transmit, rather it can only be founded on the "sacramental" authorization given to the whole Church by Jesus Christ himself. [...] And this is exactly the 'Priestly Ordination' and the 'Priesthood.'"[20]

Full Story in ParishWorld.net

Watch Saint Padre Pio celebrate Mass

Watch Saint Padre Pio celebrate Mass




An interesting video of Saint Pio in hjis later years.

Memorial and Presence in the Eucharistic Body of Christ

Memorial and Presence in the Eucharistic Body of Christ
By Mark Shea

Before I became Catholic, I was taught in my old Evangelical group that, of course, the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist was so much hocus pocus and that the whole notion of the Host and the Cup actually being the Body and Blood of Christ was a lot of superstitious hooey. So when Paul warned the Corinthians, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:27), I was taught this referred, not to the Eucharist, but to the Church, the Body of Christ. Whatever you did to the least of the brethren, you did to Christ, etc.

Now, to be sure, Paul is not happy with the Corinthians’ rowdy behavior. The Corinthians were being grade A bozos during their Eucharistic banquets. They were factional, they got drunk, and they routinely humiliated the poorest members of the Body of Christ. But it is also worth noting that absolutely nowhere in Scripture or Tradition is the Church referred to as “the body and blood of Christ”. This is language that plainly refers to what the bread and wine consecrated at the Last Supper and consecrated ever since in memory of him.

In short, Paul warned the Corinthians that to sin against the body of Christ which is the Church is to sin against the body of Christ in the Eucharist. Conversely, to honor the body of Christ which is the Church is to honor the Body of Christ which is the Eucharist. The Eucharist is, for Paul, the beating heart of the Church. Indeed, it was what makes the Church the Church. Without it, we are a group of Christians who happen to pray together in the same room.

The reality that the Eucharist is done “in memory” of Jesus has thrown a lot of Christians out of whack via the process known as “heresy”. “Heresy” doesn’t refer so much to false teaching as to half-true teaching. A heresy fixates on some small aspect of Catholic teaching and declares that it is the only part that matters.

So some Christian traditions have fixated on the memorial aspect of the Eucharist and reduced it simply and solely to a memorial meal, as though Jesus instituted the Eucharist as a (very strong) audio-visual aid to remind us of his passion, death and resurrection. All we are doing, on this theory, is calling to mind the events that happened to Jesus during the Passion, two thousand years ago on the other side of the planet.

On this view, the Eucharist is nothing more or other than a symbol (to which the puckish Flannery O’Connor replied, “If it’s a symbol, then the hell with it.” And, indeed, Christian traditions which have arisen after the reduction of the Eucharist to a mere memorial symbol have said likewise and radically minimized or even abandoned the celebration of communion altogether.

My own church was living proof of this, concluding (quite logically given the premise) that Communion was unnecessary since it was a mere symbol and that truly spiritual people (such as ourselves, of course) did not require such symbols any more than Catholics felt required to engage in footwashing every week.

What nobody knew or told me (till I started to learn about the Church) was that this notion of “memorial” was massively inadequate to the ways the New Testament writers though about the Eucharist. For the word used to describe the sort of memorial it is is “anamnesis”. It doesn’t speak merely of remembering something long ago as we might remember a fond Saturday afternoon in our childhood or a battle or some other historic occurrence in the remote past. Rather, it means a “making present”.

It is the difference between remembering our childhood and remembering where we are right now. Precisely because the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ and not a mere symbol, we remember who Jesus is, what he has done and, most importantly, what he is doing right now in making himself present in our midst.

This “making present” is exactly what is occurring on the altar every time the Eucharist is consecrated. It is the fullest presence of Christ. How can there be “more full” and “less full” presence of Christ. As an analogy, consider the disciples, lurking around in their hidey hole on Easter morning and trying to make head or tail of the burbling of Mary Madgalene after she burst in them with the news from the tomb. While they sat there listening to her and not believing a word of it, Jesus was right there, as present in the room with them as he is with you while you sit reading this. Yet after that, he became even more fully present to them: he appeared to them and they realized that there were different ways in which he could be present.

The same thing happens now. Jesus is present in various ways: in his people, in his word, in the poor and needy and suffering, and in many other ways. But he is fully present in the Eucharist. It is, says Chesterton, the difference between saying “The spirit of God pervades the universe” and saying “Jesus Christ just walked into the room.”

Full Story at National Catholic Register

"Why do we call it the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?"

Why do we call it the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?
By Paul Dion, STL

This morning I started a new curriculum about the relationship between the Bible and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I was quickly surrounded by 15 eager adults, wondering what I was going to say first. I did what I always do, I asked the persons in the group if they had any questions.

The first question was, "What is a sacrifice". We discussed that for about 10 minutes. The
definition that were given by the people in the room were very good, exact and correct in fact.

The discussion went over to the next question which was, "Why do we call it the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?" The person who formulated this question is a highly educated daily Mass goer with a high educational achievement and a strong spiritual life.

To this question, no one in the room had a really strongly acceptable answer. So I spent five minutes answering it. After saying all this, I invite you all to share your answer to the question:

"Why do we call it the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?"

CLICK HERE to see the answer to this Burning Question.
CLICK HERE to leave your comments or to see what others are saying.