The Mass as Mission (Part IV)

← Read Part III

The Mass, which is modeled (generally speaking) after Christ's life from Palm Sunday through Ascension Thursday, is an exchange between God and man, between heaven and earth. While the dismissal of Mass corresponds to the Great Commission (and the Lord's subsequent Ascension into Heaven), the whole Mass is, for each of us, an experience of Pentecost.

This encounter with Pentecost is where the Church draws the strength to carry out the mission given to Her by the Lord to preach to all the nations of the world. The primary end of the Mass is to glorify God by rendering proper worship unto the Blessed Trinity by prayers of adoration, petition, contrition, and thanksgiving, culminating in the ultimate prayer and the ultimate sacrifice, the Eucharist: the offering of the Son, through the Holy Spirit, to the Father. But the secondary end of the Mass is the sanctification of God's people, and through them, the world. It is through the sustenance and refreshment which God gives us in the Mass that each of us is able to be a disciple of and witness to the Lord in the world.

Pentecost and the Birth of the Church

More than one event has been called the "birth of the Church". One such incident is the piercing of the side of Christ as he hung lifeless on the cross (John 19:33-34), which corresponds to the forming of Eve from the side of Adam (her spouse) while he slept; but Pentecost also represents the "birth of the Church" because it is here that the Church begins to carry out the mission entrusted to Her by the Lord.

St. Luke, companion of St. Paul, wrote the Acts of the Apostles as a veritable sequel to his gospel, a chronicle the early years of the Church. He records for us the miraculous intervention of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, a Jewish feast day held 50 days after the sabbath following the Passover. (Leviticus 23:15-16) At the time, the Apostles were praying in Jerusalem along with Mary the mother of Jesus and other kin of the Lord and the other women who had followed him. (Acts 1:12-14) After the first novena — nine days of prayer starting on the day after the Ascension to that Sunday of the Pentecost — the Holy Spirit manifested himself to them in the form of tongues of fire. After this, they began to prophesy and St. Peter preached his first sermon, calling for the faithful Jews who had come to Jerusalem on pilgrimage to repent and be baptized into Christ. (Acts 2)

The Church, born from the side of Christ, now took her first breath, a divine breath, the breath of God, the Holy Spirit. It was on Pentecost that the mission began to be lived, and as soon as this mission had been commenced, the new disciples of Christ "devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers". (Acts 2:42)

An Exchange Between God and Man

The Mass, by God's grace, gives us what we need to fulfill His will for us on earth. Receiving the Real Presence of our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament when we receive Holy Communion is not the only thing we "get" out of Mass, and we put far more into it than we might imagine. Over the next several installments (under the title "The Mass as Exchange") we will examine each part of the Mass to see what "exchange" is made between God and man, always using Pentecost as our point of reference. Every grace and blessing which the newborn Church received to carry out Her mission is made present for us at every Mass. This perspective, whereby the Mass is our personal Pentecost, will help us to understand the Mass as mission and prepare us for living that mission daily.

May the Lord bless us +, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen.

The Mass as Mission (Part III)

← Read Part II

The mission of the Church is nothing other than the mission of Jesus Christ. The Church's mission is as much a part of her life during the Mass as it is outside the Mass. In order to understand how the mission of Jesus (which becomes our mission) is related to the Mass, let us interpret the parts of the Mass as if they were the events at the end of the earthly life of Jesus as recorded primarily in the Gospel according to Matthew.

1a. Jesus enters Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1-11)

On what we now commemorate as Palm Sunday, Jesus entered into Jerusalem humbly but triumphantly: while he rode upon an ass, a beast of burden, the crowd that gathered to great him spread their garments before him and waved palm branches while singing from Psalm 118:25-26, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!"

1b. The Entrance Procession

As the Mass begins, the priest approaches the altar, a symbol of the altar before God in the heavenly temple, the celestial Jerusalem. The priest, by the sacrament of Holy Orders he has received, is in persona Christi — in the person of Christ — as he prays the Mass and ultimately consecrates and offers to God the Father the sacrifice of the Eucharist. As the priest enters, the church sings as the people of Jerusalem did.

The significance of an entrance procession — rather than the priest simply being in the sanctuary at the beginning of Mass — is that the Christian life is a continuing journey: it is not complete yet; we are still walking with our Lord. It is a sign of the pilgrimage we are all making to the true sanctuary, the Holy of Holies where the heavenly hosts praise God without ceasing. (Revelation 4:8)

2a. The Cleansing of the Temple (Matthew 21:12-17)

What Jesus did next greatly disturbed many people, such as the chief priests and the scribes. Jesus drove out the people doing business in the temple, overturning the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold the animals for the sacrifices. Why?

Jesus came to Jerusalem just before the Passover, when many animals would be sacrificed according to the Mosaic Law (mostly lambs). Animals offered in sacrifice had to be flawless, the best you could offer. That meant that a Jew who was making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem from a distance would most likely have to buy his animals in Jerusalem, since any livestock he brought with him on his pilgrimage would get dirty along the way, diminishing its worthiness for sacrifice. So there would be people selling animals in the temple area. However, the temple had its own system of currency: since Jews from all over the region would come, bringing foreign currencies with them, they would convert their money into the temple currency and then buy their animals. But the money-changers operated at an unfair exchange rate.

What justification did Jesus use for this act? He quotes Isaiah 56:7 to them — "My house shall be called a house of prayer" — and then laments that they "make it a den of robbers". (Matthew 21:13) John's gospel records the disciples as remembering afterwards what was written in the Psalms: "Zeal for thy house will consume me." (Psalm 69:9)

Matthew also records that after Jesus had done this, "the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them". (Matthew 21:14) When does all this happen at Mass?

2b. The Penitential Rite

The business of the temple in Jerusalem was disrupted by Jesus, and four decades later it was destroyed. But even before its destruction the temple was becoming obsolete. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, reminds them of the great responsibility they have as men and women baptized into Christ:

Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? ... Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19-20)

For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, "I will live in them and move among them..." (2 Cor 6:16)

The priest introduces the Penitential Rite with these words: "Brethren, let us acknowledge our sins, that we may prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries." (OM 4) When we acknowledge our sins before God, we ask Him to forgive them and cleanse us of them.

Our bodies should be houses of prayer, but we have made them dens for thieves. Sin does not belong in the temple. Every sin we commit is an act of profanation. The word "profane" comes from the Latin profano which means "outside the temple"; something which is "profane" is not proper to -- does not belong in -- the temple. The "profane" is the opposite of the "sacred".

It is in this Penitential Rite, when we make a general confession of our sins (which does not take the place of the sacrament of Confession), that Jesus comes to his temple -- your body -- and drives out that which dirties and profanes it. And in that same moment, he heals and cures us, he makes us whole again. He repairs these fragile temples, and makes us fitting temples for his Holy Spirit once more. It is only then that we are prepared to participate in the sacred mysteries, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and to offer ourselves as living sacrifices as well.

3a. Jesus Preaches and Teaches (Matthew 21:18-25:46)

Over the next several days, Jesus was in Jerusalem preaching and teaching. He used parables and interpreted the Scriptures — writings of the prophets, the Psalms of David, and even the Torah of Moses — for people, especially Sadduccees and Pharisees. He spoke of the future, the tribulation to come, and the return of the King of Kings at the end of the world.

3b. The Liturgy of the Word

As Scripture is read to you, and as the priest or deacon reads the Gospel and conveys to you the truths of the faith in the homily, you are encountering the continuation of Christ's ministry. The Old Testament is explained and revealed in the New, as so many Church Fathers (such as St. Augustine) loved to say.

4a. His Passion, Death, and Resurrection (Matthew 26:1-28:10)

Next came the three most important days of Christ's work on earth: the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper (and the institution of the ministerial priesthood), the agony in Gethsemane, his sorrowful Passion — being put on trial, scourged, humiliated, condemned to die, and crowned with thorns, followed by his march to Calvary —, his crucifixion and death, his burial, the day of silence in the tomb, and his glorious Resurrection.

At the Last Supper, when Christ inaugurated the new and everlasting covenant in his blood, he made it clear why he was doing what he was doing, and just what it was exactly he was doing. He said that the bread and the wine was his body and blood (and not just a symbol of it), and he said that his blood was being poured out "for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:28).

4b. The Liturgy of the Eucharist

From the evening of Holy Thursday through to the evening of Easter Sunday, the Church celebrates the Paschal Triduum, the "three days of Easter". These days commemorate the events listed above. We encounter them altogether in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. It is most important to remember that in the Eucharistic Prayer, when the priest, in virtue of the holy ordination he received, calls upon the Holy Spirit and recites the words of Jesus Christ, the bread and the wine change in substance (transubstantiate) into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. This change is not apparent to our senses, but then again, neither is the change we undergo in baptism.

After the consecration, the bread and wine have become the Eucharist. Immediately afterwards, in the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest offers the Eucharist to God the Father. In doing so, he is re-presenting the sacrifice of Christ, the same sacrifice Christ pre-presented to the Father at the Last Supper and presented bodily on the cross. Pay close attention to the language he uses:

Therefore, O Lord, as we celebrate the memorial of the saving Passion of your Son, his wondrous Resurrection and Ascension into heaven, and as we look forward to his second coming, we offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living sacrifice.

Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church and, recognizing the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself, grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ. (Eucharistic Prayer III, OM 113)

When we receive Holy Communion — and we should only do so if we have confessed any and all mortal sins we have committed since our last confession, have fasted for an hour, and are not otherwise prohibited from receiving — we are blessed to receive our Lord as food. But this is not a "fraternal meal", it is the Most Blessed Sacrament, because it contains the Author of all the graces we can receive. This is, as the priest says, "the Lamb of God ... who takes away the sins of the world", and we are partaking in "the [marriage] supper of the Lamb". (The Communion Rite, OM 132; cf. John 1:29; Revelation 19:9)

While John's gospel does not record the institution of the Eucharist, John 17 reads as a form of "Eucharistic Prayer" (a prayer of thanksgiving and glorifying God).

5a. His Ascension into Heaven (Matthew 28:16-20)

After his resurrection, Jesus called the apostles together on a mountain in Galilee (Matthew 28:16) and gave them the greatest charge of all. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20) This mission, which had been and continues to be Christ's, he gave to his Apostles, to the Church.

Some time after he gave them this commission, he blessed them as he ascended into heaven from the Mount of Olives, as Luke's writings attest to. (Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:7-13)

5b. The Dismissal

The priest blesses us in the name of the Most Holy Trinity at the end of Mass, and then follows the dismissal. When we hear the words "Ite, missa est", we are hearing the words of Christ to his disciples: "Go, I am sending you into the world to continue my mission." The dismissal of the Mass is our entering into (and accepting of) the Great Commission before the Lord's glorious Ascension into heaven.

Conclusion

Now we can see how the mission of Christ has become the mission of the Church, and how, just as the Eucharist is the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the dismissal of the Mass is the re-presentation of that Great Commission whereby the Church was formally invested with that charge.

How can the Church, how can we today carry on so great and serious a mission? What is our sustenance? Whence do we draw our strength? Where do we find refreshment? To answer those questions, we need look no further than the Mass itself; for in the Mass, the first and most important end of which is the glorification and proper worship of God, God gives us the grace needed to fulfill this mission.

We have seen how the Mass follows the model of Christ's life from Palm Sunday through Ascension Thursday. We will see how the Mass is a conversation, a dialog, an exchange between God and man, between heaven and earth; we will see how in every Mass, we experience Pentecost in our own lives... in the next installment.

May the Lord bless us +, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen.

---

Sources:

• OM - Ordo Missae I (English Translation) [USCCB]

The Mass as Mission (Part II)

← Read Part I

In order to understand the Church's mission, we must first understand Jesus' mission. What is his mission? And who gave it to him?

The Gospel of John makes the mission of Jesus quite clear: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:16-17) The very name of Jesus means "YHWH saves" or "YHWH is salvation", and the angel told Joseph that Jesus "will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21)

Jesus tells us who gave him this mission: "For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me." (John 6:38)

In John's gospel, the word "send" or "sent" is used 50 times in conjunction with the Father sending the Son, or the Son sending the Holy Spirit or his disciples. Jesus worked great miracles (such as the raising of Lazarus from the dead in John 11) that the Jews to whom he ministered would believe that God had truly sent him. God the Father sent His Son into the world, "that the world might be saved through him". (John 3:17) So the mission of the Lord pertains to the salvation of those who receive him. But salvation from what?

Luke's gospel gives us additional information about the Lord's mission. Soon after Jesus began his ministry, he went to the synagogue in Nazareth and read from the Scriptures: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." (Luke 4:18-19) Jesus was anointed by God as the Christ (the Messiah, which means "the anointed one") to preach the gospel ("good news").

Who are the poor? Who are the captives, the blind, and the oppressed? Is the release and sight and liberty which Jesus brings purely a social or physical gift? Jesus restored the sight to many who were blind and cured all kinds of illnesses, but the depth of his mission goes far deeper. When he instituted the greatest of all sacraments, the Eucharist, Jesus said that the cup he gave to them to drink was the "the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20); Matthew records the purpose of that covenant: "[it] is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." (Matthew 26:28)

Matthew ends with the "Great Commission", where the Lord says to his disciples: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20) To receive a "commission" is to be entrusted with something.

So Jesus sent his disciples out to all nations. He assured them of his presence with them, and he gave this promise to them (and to those to whom he sent them): "he who receives any one whom I send receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me." (John 13:20) Jesus identified the sending of his disciples with his own being sent by the Father: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." (John 20:21) Jesus also made it clear why he was sending them: "I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide." (John 15:16)

Jesus sends the Church, he sends us, into the world for the same reason that the Father sent him. And the Church wasted no time! Just read the first two chapters of the Acts of the Apostles! The mission of the Church, then, is nothing other than the mission of Jesus Christ. But what does this have to do with the Mass? We'll cover that in the next installment.

May the Lord bless us +, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen.

The Mass as Mission (Part I)

"Ite, missa est!" "Deo gratias."

For around 1500 years, this is what Western Catholics heard at the conclusion of the Mass. You can still hear it today in some churches where Latin is employed in the Mass, at least from time to time. (You will also hear it if you attend the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, the Mass as celebrated in 1962.)

The response is easy enough to understand: "Thanks be to God!" Despite what you might hear in jokes or how you might feel sometimes, we're not saying "Thanks be to God [that Mass is finally over]." But we do need to know why we're thanking God. So what does "Ite, missa est!" mean? It's especially important to know, since the word "Mass" comes from this Latin word missa.

The word missa is a form of the word missio, which means "dismissal" in its original context. It was said to the catechumens (those who are preparing for baptism) just before they were dismissed at the end of the first half of the liturgy (the "Mass of the Catechumens", now known as the "Liturgy of the Word"); it was also said to the faithful at the end of the second half of the liturgy (the "Mass of the Faithful", now known as the "Liturgy of the Eucharist").

However, the word missio also means "sending" or "mission". With missio as with many other Latin words ending in "-io" — congregatio, ascensio, religio — the English equivalent is produced simply by adding an "n" to the end — congregation, ascension, religion.

A completely literal translation of "ite, missa est" is "Go, it is the dismissal"; but the phrase means more than that. In the forthcoming translation of the Roman Missal (the book from which the priest prays the Mass), the translation is "Go forth, the Mass is ended". (The Concluding Rites, OM 144) Along with this dismissal, the Church is preparing three variants:

• "Ite ad Evangelium Domini annuntiandum" ("Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord")
• "Ite in pace, glorificando vita vestra Dominum" ("Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life")
• "Ite in pace" ("Go in peace")

While the purpose of these additional texts is to emphasize the missionary character of the dismissal (and the Mass in general), the original dismissal text can still be used (whether in Latin or the approved vernacular translation). The problem these texts are trying to solve is that many Catholics do not know about this missionary character. As an alternative solution to using the new texts, proper catechesis of the faithful as to what the original words really mean will enlighten the members of the Church to understand what the mission of the Church is and how that mission belongs to each one of them as well.

So while pragmatically speaking the priest (or deacon) is letting the people know that the liturgy has ended and they are dismissed, there is a far deeper meaning to these words. Pope Benedict XVI spoke to this point in his 2007 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis:

These words help us to grasp the relationship between the Mass just celebrated and the mission of Christians in the world. In antiquity, missa simply meant "dismissal." However in Christian usage it gradually took on a deeper meaning. The word "dismissal" has come to imply a "mission." These few words succinctly express the missionary nature of the Church. The People of God might be helped to understand more clearly this essential dimension of the Church's life, taking the dismissal as a starting-point. (n. 51)

So what is the missionary nature of the Church? In order to understand the Church's mission, we must first understand Jesus' mission. And we'll cover that in the next installment.

May the Lord bless us +, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen.

---

Sources:

• "Sacrifice of the Mass", Catholic Encyclopedia [New Advent]
• OM - Ordo Missae I (English Translation) [USCCB]
• Sacramentum Caritatis (The Sacrament of Charity), Pope Benedict XVI [Vatican]