Corpus Christi, 2023

When I was little, I loved being at church. It was a delight to the senses. When the people said the creed, it reminded me of thunder. When the older priest spoke in his deep but calm voice, I thought it was the voice of God. And when the ministers gave out holy communion, I had this belief that as they gave out one host from their ciborium, another one host would appear in its place.

I guess you could say that I’ve always known that something special was happening here. And, as I grew older, and I would read passages from the Sixth Chapter of John or the Eleventh Chapter of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, I would take Jesus and the Apostles at their word. I wasn’t eating bread. I was receiving Jesus’ body and blood. Even the crowds that disagreed with Him at least knew that Jesus was being serious about His words.

 

Yet, even with all of that faith, I never really understood why there was the Holy Mass. It seemed to me, firstly, that it was about the priest changing bread and wine into Jesus and us receiving Jesus. And that’s true. But, if that is all that the Mass is about, why can’t the priest just make a lot of Jesus and then just kind of have a Chick-fil-A drive thru distribution line to receive Jesus?

So I thought, ok-ok, maybe there is something more to Holy Mass. Maybe Mass is about receiving Jesus and …  being taught. And so the readings and the homily. But that conclusion was unsatisfactory as well because, well, the preachers weren’t really good at preaching. I could easily leave church without getting anything out of it.

This is all to say that, even with faith, I always felt that there was something more to the Mass than just listening and eating.

 

And then, one day, I found it. I found the key to understand what the Holy Mass is.

It’s found right in the middle of Mass. The priest says:

Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Almighty Father.

 And the people reply: 

May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory of His name, for our good and the good of all His Holy Church.           

At its very deepest, most essential level, the Holy Mass is a sacrifice. If we don’t understand that, we don’t understand the Mass. 

 

So, when the priest lifts up the host, he isn’t just showing it to everyone. He is lifting it up, offering Jesus, to the Father. 

The entire Triduum is present at the Mass. You have the Last Supper, where bread and wine are changed into Jesus. You have Good Friday, where Jesus offers Himself to the Father. And you have Easter Sunday in that, when you receive the Eucharist, you aren’t receiving a dead Jesus, you are receiving a living Jesus, in His glorified, resurrected body, a body which is hidden for now. 

The Holy Mass and the Holy Triduum are one and the same thing: they are both a Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the High Priest, offered to the Father for our good and the good of all the Holy Church. 

 

This changed everything for me. Because, you see, I believed that God gave me everything. I believed that there was more to religion than just being taught something. I believed that there had to be a way that we could express the totality of our thanks and our sorrows, our hopes and our fears; a way to express our worship of the transcendent God and a way to express our utmost regret for sin; … 

And nothing-- no offering, no sacrifice of religion – could express that totality. That is, until I realized that our religion was offering Jesus, God, under the appearance of bread and wine, yet nevertheless present in His totality (body, blood, soul, and divinity) to the Father – Jesus, the only one who could express that totality and do so perfectly on my behalf and in a way that was acceptable to God the Almighty Father. That’s the sacrifice at our hands. 

That’s the definitive, perfect, and highest sacrifice God has given you and me to offer in praise and worship of Him. 

That’s the Holy Mass. 

And I believe that it matters to God. Even more than a child's work of art matters to a parent that places that child's art on the fridge. Sacrifices matter to God. It's why the First Holy Mass, given at the Last Supper, came with a holy command: Do this.