Straight Talk about Living the Mass By Fr John Bartunek, L.C., S.T.D.
Contents Not Just a “Story” ..................................................................................................................................................... 1 The Church Has Its Reasons......................................................................................................................................2 God’s Guarantee ....................................................................................................................................................... 3 Double-Barreled ........................................................................................................................................................ 3 Real Close ..................................................................................................................................................................4 Thanks, Mom ............................................................................................................................................................. 5 Questions for Small Group Discussion: ....................................................................................................................5 Questions for Discussion and/or Personal Reflection: .............................................................................................. 5
Not Just a “Story”
The following story is not just a story. A young man gets his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and graduates near the top of his class from an Ivy League Law School. Up to this point, he has stayed more or less faithful to his Catholic upbringing. He only missed Sunday Mass a few times– like when he was on Spring Break in Florida, and when he went on the dorm ski trip to Lake Tahoe. Maybe he should have gone to confession more often, but strictly speaking he faithfully fulfilled the precepts of the Church: he always received communion at least once during the Easter Season, never received communion when was conscious of having committed a serious sin, and confessed his serious sins at least once a year. He did everything by the book. Then he lands a job with a high-caliber law firm in Manhattan. It’s what he’s always dreamed of. He’s making six figures his first year out of school; he’s hobnobbing with New York’s jet set; and he’s on track to becoming a partner in the firm. All he has to do is hang on tight until everything falls into place. But hanging on tight involves 80 and 90-hour workweeks – all year long. It means weekends in the office ordering out for Chinese food. At first he handles it pretty well, making sure to carve out enough time for Mass on Sundays and holy days and confession every once in a while. But he gets tired fast. After a few months he starts to dread the extra effort needed to make it to Sunday Mass. And he gets uncomfortable too. No one else in the office takes breaks to go to Church. He wonders if they think he’s a religious fanatic. He wonders if it will endanger his chance of making partner. He
starts going to Mass on Tuesdays or Wednesdays instead of Sundays, even though his conscience bothers him about it. More months go by. He stops going to Mass altogether. A year goes by. The 80 and 90-hour workweeks continue, but he’s moving up in the firm’s pecking order. Now he knows how to manipulate the system and he can get a full weekend off every six weeks or so. He spends them in exotic locations: Paris, the Bahamas, Costa Rica. He deserves it, working so hard. But even on those $10,000 weekend jaunts, there’s no time for Mass. Another year goes by. His workload doesn’t decrease, but he does become junior partner. He has plenty of money and more perks. He knows the system. He starts fudging his reports so he can make the same amount without putting in so many hours. With his increased free time he is able to enjoy himself more with expensive entertainments, relax; he deserves it. It occurs to him that maybe he should start going to Mass again. But he works too hard to waste time being bored at Mass. Besides, he needs to go to confession if he wants to receive communion; but he doesn’t want to go to confession, because he kind of likes his newly acquired habits; he’s not really sorry for them. He’s done pretty well for himself in these past few years without going to Mass, why should he worry about it now? He’s on his way home from a party one Thursday night. He’s drunk and he’s high. He’s glad he lives in Manhattan, because you don’t have to drive. It’s raining. He steps off the sidewalk to cross the street. There is no crosswalk there. A car is coming. The driver doesn’t see him until it’s too late. They get him to the hospital, but he doesn’t wake up. The doctors say he’ll have to spend at least six weeks in intensive care; he may pull through, but they aren’t certain; it’s kind of touch and go.
The Church Has Its Reasons Sometimes we have the impression that the Church’s precept to attend Mass every Sunday and holy day of obligation is arbitrary, as if the Church were on some kind of meaningless power trip. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mass is the anchor of our spiritual and moral life. It holds everything else in place. If we let that anchor go loose, sooner or later the rest of our lives will drift off course, dragged away by the powerful currents of selfishness and temptation. The Mass is our anchor because it is objective contact with God, and we need contact with God to find fulfillment in life. Other ways of encountering God are helpful too, and even necessary, but cut off from the Mass they lose their objectivity. Often they depend on feelings or other external factors. If we go to a praise and worship gathering and feel good, we think we had
contact with God. If we go to a praise and worship gathering and feel bad, we wonder. If we make time for personal prayer, we often get distracted, or fall asleep, or run out of things to say, and we don’t know if we are really praying as we should. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t participate in these kinds of activities; it just emphasizes our need for an objective way of approaching God, a way that doesn’t depend primarily on our own ideas or feelings. And the Mass doesn’t. The Mass is the perfect act of worship, the perfect prayer – objectively perfect, because the Mass is Jesus Christ’s own prayer, it’s his own sacrifice, his own act of worship, really made present for us – whether or not we happen to feel any spiritual warm-fuzzies.
God’s Guarantee The priest who celebrates the Mass guarantees this: he has been configured to Christ in the very depth of his being through the sacrament of holy orders. God has set him aside to act in Christ’s place, just so we can be sure that this act of worship is truly Christ’s own. And the prayers, readings, and rubrics of the Mass as promulgated by the Church are equally objective: they accurately express the truths of the faith and the sentiments of Christ himself, and so they are objectively pleasing to God; they hit the nail right on the head every time. So even if the priest is careless and sloppy, and even if the church building is ugly, and even if the music is horrid, and even if the congregation is motley – even so, when I participate in Mass, my weak and imperfect efforts to serve God are swept right up into Christ’s perfect service. The Mass is a wrinkle in time. In the Mass, Jesus opens a corridor through history, linking three things: the here-and-now of our normal, everyday lives, the historical sacrifice of his own body and blood on the cross at Calvary, and his everlasting self-offering as it continues now in heaven. At Mass we plug in to eternity.
Double-Barreled
The Mass consists of two basic parts: the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. This fundamental structure has never changed throughout the 2000-year history of the Church. In the Liturgy of the Word the sacred ministers proclaim and explain the deeds and words of God as recorded in the inspired text of the Bible. We take our places beside the Apostles who spent three years living with Jesus, observing his actions and listening to his teaching in order to fill their souls with his truth. We tune our minds back into God’s wavelength, to remind us of his plans for the world and for our own lives, to stir up our appreciation
for his mercy and goodness. In the Liturgy of the Word we listen to God’s Word, we listen to Christ – at least, we’re supposed to be listening. In the Liturgy of the Eucharist we respond to that Word. The word “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving.” And thanksgiving is the most proper response to God’s mercy and goodness. But on our own, we cannot thank God properly; he deserves much more than we can give. So Christ comes to our aid. He is our high priest, our mediator, exercising this mediation through his ordained minister. Thus through the words and actions of the priest, Christ himself sacramentally re-presents, really makes present, the perfect offering that he made once for all on Calvary. The sentiments of Christ’s heart are re-presented through the words of the Eucharistic prayer; the physical sacrifice of his obedience is re-presented through the offering of the bread and wine, which he turns into his very own body and blood. The more attentively we unite our own hearts and minds to this Liturgy of the Eucharist, the more fully our lives are joined to Christ’s. That in itself-- hearing God’s own words in the Liturgy of the Word and participating directly in Christ’s own sacrifice through the Liturgy of the Eucharist –is a miracle beyond description. All the prayers and sacrifices of the whole human race, all its efforts to atone for sin, to praise its creator, to ask for his favors – all of them together are like a grain of sand compared to a mountain when juxtaposed with one, single Celebration of the Eucharist.
Real Close
But it doesn’t stop there. God wants to come even closer to us. He knows how difficult it is for us to participate with due reverence and attention in the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, especially when the music is bad or the congregation is noisy and distracted or the priest is in a rush. And so, to make sure this encounter with him is as intimate, as “real” as possible, he offers himself to us physically, body blood soul and divinity, in Holy Communion. Under the humble appearances of bread and wine, God, Jesus Christ, the creator and sustainer of the entire universe – daisies, whales, volcanoes, supernovas, and black holes included – comes inside of us, becomes our very food. In the Mass it’s no longer just a symbol, just bread and wine, as it was in the Old Testament. In Holy Communion, we really receive God. This, then, is the Mass. Through the objective, guaranteed ministry of the priest, God speaks and we respond-- and that heart-to-heart conversation culminates in the intimate, unspeakable embrace of Holy Communion, an embrace that happens objectively, no matter what kind of mood I’m in, or how tired I am, or how distracted.
Thanks, Mom
We need God; our souls yearn for him. But in this fallen world it is often hard to find him. In this fallen world it’s even hard to remember to look for him. And so the Church commands us to attend Mass every Sunday and every holy day; in fact, it is a grave sin to miss Sunday Mass except for a serious reason (like sickness). The Church is a good mother; she knows that sometimes children won’t do what’s best for them unless they’re ordered to, so she orders us to attend Mass. As we grow out of spiritual infancy, however, we don’t need to be ordered; we want to go. We yearn to receive God’s grace and to plug every aspect of our lives into God, and we know that there’s no better way to do so than by participating in Mass. And if there is ever a time in our life when we start skipping Mass because we don’t have time or we don’t feel like going, it is a sure sign that something’s wrong, that our soul is sick, that our anchor is coming loose. Our Mass attendance – its frequency and its quality – is the most objective vital sign of our spiritual life, and our spiritual life is the key to the rest of our life. Becoming a partner in the firm may not require a vibrant relationship with God, but lasting happiness does. And, in any case, law firms don’t get office space in heaven.
Questions for Small Group Discussion:
1. What struck you most in this chapter and why? What did you learn that you didn’t know before? 2. What do you think about the idea that the Mass is like a wrinkle in time, and that it opens a corridor in history where we are joined to Christ in a threefold way? How does that concept change your appreciation of the Mass? 3. The Mass is a wonderfully objective prayer, since it is the prayer of Christ. What are some ways that we can participate more fruitfully in his prayer as we attend daily or weekly Mass? 4. What can we do to help other people understand the Mass more deeply? As individuals or as teams, what would be some practical ways to help people appreciate what is really happening in the Celebration of the Eucharist?
Questions for Discussion and/or Personal Reflection:
1. How often do I go to Mass? Can I realistically go more often? 2. What are some practical ways that I personally can improve my concentration and spirit of prayer at Mass? Perhaps it could help to
arrive early, or to get a small missal with the readings and prayers, or to stay five minutes afterwards for a more fervent and focused thanksgiving? 3. Have I ever thought of Holy Communion before as the intimate, unspeakable embrace of God in my soul? How could this idea change my thanksgivings after communion?