Understanding the Mass:
The Church Gathered in the Presence of God
Did You Know?
- The Procession: The priest and ministers (representing the whole people of God) symbolically move from the ordinary (the world) to the extraordinary (the sanctuary, which is a symbol of heaven itself) – from the secular to the sacred, from the everyday to the eternal.
- The Altar: The altar represents Christ himself. When we see the priest kiss the altar, we should reverence Christ in our heart. The altar is the center, where the mystery of our faith is celebrated.
- Sign of the Cross: We begin Mass with the Sign of the Cross. This is not an introduction to prayer, but is in fact a prayer in and of itself. It is a prayer! It affirms our faith in the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We recall our baptism and are reminded of the great act of love of Christ, who suffered and died for us.
The Penitential Act and the Gloria
At the beginning of each Mass, we take time to prepare ourselves through the Penitential Act to enter into the sacred liturgy and encounter Christ. We ask God to help us that by acknowledging our sins we may prepare ourselves to listen to his Word and share in the Body and Blood of Christ. We recognize our need for God’s help – our need to be saved – so we ask his mercy upon us: “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.”
Immediately following this (on Sundays outside of Advent and Lent and on solemnities, feasts, and at other solemn celebrations) we join the angels and saints in heaven and sing the Gloria – the same hymn sung by the angels to the shepherds heralding the birth of Jesus (Christmas). The incarnation is God’s response to our sinfulness! During Lent and Advent, we do not sing the Gloria due to the penitential nature of the seasons and the emphasis on expectancy.
In these seemingly routine moments of the Mass that we can become all too familiar with, the Lord invites us to bring our minds and hearts into the deep mystery of our faith – God so loves us that he sent his Son. Jesus has come not to condemn the world, but to save the world.
The Presence of Christ in the Word
The proclamation of God’s Word at Mass is central to our Eucharistic celebration: “The Church is nourished spiritually at …The celebration of Mass in which the Word is heard and the Eucharist is offered and received forms but ” (Introduction to the Lectionary, 10).
When the Scripture readings are proclaimed, it is Jesus Christ himself who speaks to us and invites us into dialogue with Him. The Gospel is the high point of the readings – everyone stands (symbolizing the resurrection) and sings the Alleluia (except during Lent), greeting and welcoming Christ who is present with us. God speaks to the Church, the community at large, and to the individual person. Mass is the privileged place where God speaks to us!
The Church encourages us to prepare for Mass by praying with the Sunday readings throughout the week, so that God’s Word might grow and live within us more deeply – thus enabling us to know his voice and hear Him more clearly at Mass and in our daily lives.
Every family has a story. We are the people of God – we are God’s family – and we have an incredibly important family story! Each Sunday at Mass and on certain holy days, we retell and enter into this story of God’s love for us when we say the Creed (or Profession of Faith, because in it we express the central truths of our faith).
The term creed, comes from the Latin credo, meaning “I believe,” and the first creed we profess is at baptism, through which we enter into the family of God, the Church, which is the Body of Christ. When we pray the Creed at Mass, we state our belief in God 1) the Father, 2) the Son, and 3) the Holy Spirit, and then we profess faith in 4) the Church. What we profess is what we celebrate!
The Creed is our response in faith to God who has just spoken to us in the Readings – it is our joyful YES to God’s Word and our acceptance of his invitation to life with Him. In the Creed, we each recommit ourselves to God, to our beliefs, and to a life of discipleship.
The Presentation of the Gifts and Preparation of the Altar
Following the Prayers of the Faithful each week, the collection begins and then all that is collected along with the bread and wine are brought forward to the altar. This is a prayer – it is an incredibly significant part of the Mass and one that calls for the full, conscious, and active participation of the assembly.
This is the time when we prayerfully gather up all our gifts – our sacrifices from the week, our monetary contributions, our pains, our joys, and our thanksgivings – and we present these along with the central gifts of bread and wine. The bread and wine are central for they are what Jesus offered at the Last Supper and asked us to continue to do in memory of Him. In connecting our gifts (our very lives!) to the gifts of bread and wine which will be transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, we, too, seek to have our lives (with our joys and pains) transformed and offered wholly to God.
So each week when we come to Mass, we cannot come unprepared or empty-handed. We must bring our whole selves which we truly place on the altar of our Lord! We bring all that we are – even when that might not seem to be enough – and we trust that as the Lord joins our offering to His own, that we will be acceptable to God and transformed by his life-giving Body and Blood.