Home Page          Table of Contents      List of Abbreviations

***

Men are born to live, Christ was born to die.

He was born in Bethlehem to give his life for our salvation, in fulfillment of his priestly mission. Christ wants us to remember him for his death. He himself gave us the fitting memorial of it, to re-actualize and make present the very sacrifice of Calvary, to remind us that he died so that we may have life, so that we may be freed from the tyranny of sin. He told us the exact way he wanted us to commemorate his death, his resurrection, and his ascension to heaven.

The memorial he gave us is the Mass.

***

It is mistake to think that the Mass is a memorial service like that on Memorial Day, or a sort of imitation of the Last Supper, or just a collection of prayers. The Mass is not just a collection of prayers, no matter how beautiful or moving they may be. Our Lord becomes present in the Mass, doing something deeply supernatural: performing a sacrifice.

***

Before his passion, Jesus and the disciples were on the road to Jerusalem. This was his last journey to the city, and Jesus was walking ahead of the disciples. He took the Twelve aside and began to tell them what was going to happen to him: "Now we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man is about to be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the pagans, who will mock him and spit at him and scourge him and put him to death; and after three days he will rise again" (Mk 10:33-34).

Jesus was going to offer his life to God as the ransom for our sins, as a gift for the others, as he was to declare in the Last Supper, "It will be given up for you." He sets the example for us, because "if life didn't have as its aim to give glory to God, it would be detestable -even more, loathsome." [1]

The disciples could not understand Jesus' demand for personal surrender to the will of God. They still conceived life as a commodity to be enjoyed in private pursuits and personal ambitions. While Jesus was talking about giving oneself to God for the others, by contrast, the disciples argued among themselves about who was to wield more power in the future kingdom.

"I have longed to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." An ardent desire filled Christ's heart: a desire to go through his passion and death and to leave a perpetual memorial of his sacrifice.

On the night of the Last Supper, Christ instituted the Mass. He offered his body and blood under the species of bread and wine to God the Father. Taking bread, Christ said, "This is my body which will be given up for you." Taking the chalice, he said, "This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all men so that sins may be forgiven."

In the book of Isaiah, the passages on the Servant of God strikingly presage and match in detail the passion and death of our Lord. We must keep in mind this prophecy of Isaiah if we want to understand well the passion of the Lord and, hence, to grasp the full content of the Mass.

A mysterious figure appears in these passages: the Servant of God. He is stricken with sufferings and rejected by all men. He takes our sins upon himself. He is humble and docile to God.

The sufferings of the Servant of God, however, are not accidental. Rather, they are the very means of accomplishing his universal mission:

His resurrection is then announced:

God has been pleased to crush him with suffering.

If he offers his life in atonement,

he shall see his heirs, he shall have a long life

and through him what God wishes will be done.

His soul's anguish over

he shall see the light and be content.

Hence I will grant whole hordes for his tribute,

he shall divide the spoil with the mighty

(Is 53:10‑12).

We know that the features of this mysterious figure, foreseen and outlined by Isaiah eight hundred years before Christ, were not to be seen in any man in Israel ‑until Jesus Christ came and suffered. And to him alone would these words of St Paul apply:

His state was divine,

yet he did not cling

to his equality with God

but emptied himself

to assume the condition of a slave,

and became as men are,

he was humbler yet,

even to accepting death,

death on a cross.

But God raised him high

and gave him the name

which is above all other names

so that all beings

in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld,

should bend the knee at the name of Jesus

and that every tongue should acclaim

Jesus Christ as Lord,

to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:6‑11).

Now we understand who is the Servant of God, crushed for our sins, and through whose wounds we are healed. Christ's sacrifice is the price of our liberation.

We shall see how the Mass, in which Christ offers his life to God in a perfect act of worship, is the reenactment and re‑actualization of this sacrifice of our redemption.

This worship is directed toward God the Father through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. In the first place, it is directed toward the Father, who, as St John's Gospel says, "loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life" (Jn 3:16).

This worship is also directed, in the Holy Spirit, to the Incarnate Son. We adore the Redeemer for his voluntary emptying of himself, accepted by the Father and glorified with the resurrection.

This worship, given therefore to the Trinity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, permeates the celebration of the Mass. And this worship must be prominent in all our encounters with the Blessed Sacrament, both when we visit our churches and when the sacred species are taken to the sick and administered to them.

* * *

The words of Jesus in the Last Supper, "Do this in memory of me," command the continuation of his sacrifice in every Mass celebrated anywhere in the world until the end of time. This was announced in the Old Testament by the prophet Malachi: "From the rising of the sun to its setting, my Name is great among the nations, and in every place there is sacrifice and there is offered to my Name a clean oblation" (Mal 1:11).

* * *

Therefore, in obedience to her Founder's behest, the Church prolongs the priestly mission of Jesus Christ mainly by means of the sacred liturgy. She does this, most of all, at the altar, where constantly the sacrifice of the cross is reenacted. Along with the Church, her divine Founder is present at every liturgical function giving fitting worship to God.

Every impulse of the human heart expresses itself naturally through the senses; and the worship of God, being the concern not merely of individuals but of the whole mankind, must therefore be social as well. Hence, the liturgy always has a social and external dimension.

But the chief element of the liturgy should be interior. For each one of us must always live in Christ and give ourselves to him completely, so that in him, with him, and through him the heavenly Father may be duly worshipped and glorified. The sacred liturgy requires, however, that its exterior and interior elements be intimately linked with each other.[2]

Consequently, it is an error to think that the sacred liturgy of the Mass is only the outward or visible part of the divine worship, or that it is just an ornamental ceremonial with a list of laws and prescriptions according to which the ecclesiastical hierarchy orders the sacred rites to be performed.

God cannot be honored worthily unless the mind and the heart turn to him in quest of the perfect life that unites work and adoration. The liturgy, --the adoration rendered to God by the Church in union with her divine Head-- is the most efficacious means of achieving sanctity.[3]

In the Last Supper, Jesus gave the apostles his body and blood to eat. In every Mass, Christ gives himself to us as spiritual food (Holy Communion). This is the sacrament of the Eucharist.

The Second Vatican Council confirms that Christ instituted the eucharistic sacrifice of his body and blood at the Last Supper.[4] "He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the centuries until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is eaten, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us."

Commenting on this text, Pope Paul VI says: "These words highlight both the sacrifice, which pertains to the essence of the Mass that is celebrated daily, and the sacrament in which those who participate in it through Holy Communion eat the flesh of Christ and drink the blood of Christ, and thus receive grace, which is the beginning of eternal life, and the 'medicine of immortality' according to our Lord's words: "The man who eats my flesh and drinks my blood enjoys eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day' (Jn 6:55)."[5]

To understand the Mass well, we should keep in mind all these aspects. Sacrifice and sacrament (with its two elements of presence of Christ and spiritual nourishment for us) pertain to the same mystery and cannot be separated from one another.

The Lord is immolated in an unbloody way in the Mass and he re‑presents (makes present here and now) the sacrifice of the cross and applies its salvific power at the moment when he becomes sacramentally present through the words of Consecration. He becomes the spiritual food of the faithful, under the appearances of bread and wine.[6]

* * *

All these points should be considered to have a complete picture of the Mass.

- The Mass is the memorial of the death and resurrection of the Lord, in which the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated throughout the centuries.

- Christ is there -substantially present- under the forms of bread and wine.

- In the Mass, Christ the Lord, through the ministry of the priest, offers himself to God the Father and gives himself to the faithful as spiritual food. The faithful are associated with his offering.

- The Mass is an action of Christ himself and the Church.

- The Mass signifies and effects the unity of the people of God and achieves the building up of the body of Christ.

- The Mass is the summit and the source of all Christian worship and life.

1. J. Escriva de Balaguer, The Way (New York: Scepter, 1979), no. 783.

2. Cf. Pius XII, Enc. Mediator Dei [=MD], 20 November 1947, nos. 3, 20, 23 and 24.

3. Cf.ibid., nos. 25 and 26.

4. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium [=SC], c. 2, no. 47.

5. Paul VI, Enc. Mysterium Fidei [=MF], 3 Sept. 1965, no. 5.

6. MF, no. 34.