Reflections on the Mass

            What is the Catholic mass? The definition most of us are familiar with is that it’s the unbloody re-presentation of the crucifixion of Christ. I’d like to examine the mass in a slightly different light. The mass is a journey in which we leave our everyday lives behind and enter the temple of God in heaven to serve him in a way that exceeds the office of the cherubim and seraphim. The mass is liturgical prayer par excellence. Liturgy isn’t simply a formal approach to prayer. Liturgy is service rendered to God presiding as king of his heavenly court. Didactic liturgy is a contradiction in terms. When mass is used as a teaching tool it ceases to be oriented to the great king whose name is the terror of nations.

            There is a movement in the mass, an approach to God and a leave-taking of God to enter once again the world of everyday life. As surely as we have to move from our houses to our churches, in mass clergy and people truly go to the court of heaven and come back to bring God to the world. God calls us up into the celestial temple of which the Aaronic temple was a type. It is our privilege to enter into his presence in order to serve and receive him as our king. At the climax of the mass, which in the Roman rite is the Per ipsum, we assume our place at the right hand of God, above and beyond the blessed powers mentioned in the Sanctus, in order to join Christ in the great service he is always offering God on our behalf as our great high priest. In the Byzantine prayer Axion estin it is said of the Mother of God that she is higher than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim -- and so she is! but in the mass, so are we. By God's grace we have been deemed worthy to offer God liturgical worship in the body and blood of Christ in the very presence of God in which seraphim cover their eyes lest they be consumed.

Sacred scripture is absolutely saturated with types of the journey of the mass. Those who came before us have walked this very path we have been called to walk. When Moses ascended mount Sinai with Aaron at his right hand and descended with the law and shining with the glory of God, he served as a type of our ascent with the Eucharistic gifts and our descent with Christ in holy communion. When on the Day of Atonement the Aaronic high priest entered the holy of holies in Solomon’s temple to sprinkle the blood of the lamb on the mercy seat between the cherubim, he prefigured our ascent in Christ to the altar on high in sight of the divine majesty.

When our father Noah was carried by the ark through the waters of the flood to Ararat and thereafter planted a vineyard and erected an altar of holocaust he foreshadowed the baptized Church being carried away to the celestial altar to offer the blood of Christ through the eternal Spirit. In the gospel when we read of Peter, John, and James ascending Mount Tabor and encountering the transfigured Christ with Moses and Elijah enthroned in his glory, we are meant to see a foreshadowing of the mass, in which we encounter king and court at the altar and serve them. In the mysteries of the new covenant, the host corresponds to Moses and the chalice to Elijah. As we enter mass we ascend the mountain with Christ to witness his glory -- as we leave we descend to participate in his sufferings.

It seems we have forgotten about the mass. All of the deficiencies of a typical Roman rite mass celebrated in the ordinary form amount to a kind of quiet denial of the transcendent. Instead of going up and forward to heaven, we look backward to earth. Instead of bringing an offering into the court of God, we place our offering at the center of our circle. Instead of serving God in his mystical temple on high, we expect God to come down to earth and serve us. Of course he will do so, but in proper turn, after we have done our duty in offering mass to him. It is imperative that we turn ourselves to the east, chant the mass, use the chalice veil and burse, and conduct ourselves in such a way that it is obvious the ground on which we stand is holy, holier indeed than the tree ever burning but never consumed, holier than Sinai ablaze, holier than Solomon's temple when it was filled with the majesty of God.