Good evening, everybody. Welcome. Glad you’re here. Not talking to an empty church — it’s always good. We’ll go ahead and start with a prayer.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for all the many gifts that you’ve given us. We thank you especially for the gift of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Bless this talk. Bless the words that I say. Allow me to say what you want me to say. Draw us always closer to you. Help us to enter more fully into the sacrifice of the Mass and to become the saints that you created us to be. Mother Mary, we entrust all of this to you as we pray: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
A Few Leftovers from Last Time
There are a couple things I forgot last time that I just wanted to touch on real quick.
There are prayers that the priest prays before and after he proclaims the Gospel that don’t really show up anywhere — they only show up in the Missal. So if you haven’t read the Roman Missal, you probably haven’t seen these prayers. They’re beautiful, so I kind of wanted to just read them for you.
When the priest is going from the chair to the ambo, he’ll bow to the altar on his way over, and he prays this prayer: “Cleanse my heart and my lips, almighty God, that I may worthily proclaim your holy Gospel.” That calls back to Isaiah. When God calls Isaiah, he says, “Lord, I’m a man of unclean lips from a people with unclean lips.” And then the angel takes the coal and cleanses his lips so that he can preach to the people of Israel. So it’s calling back to that — that before you proclaim the Gospel, you would be cleansed from your sins so that you can more perfectly proclaim it.
Then when the priest says “A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew” or John or whoever, we make a cross on our foreheads, on our lips, and then on our hearts. It’s a prayer asking God to allow the Gospel to really take root in our minds, then to be on our lips so that that’s what we speak, and to be in our hearts, so that that’s what we love, what we reflect on. Sometimes when people are doing that, they pray, “Lord, be on my mind, on my lips, and in my heart.”
And then after he proclaims the Gospel, the priest will kiss the book as a sign of reverence, and as he’s doing that he prays silently, “Through the words of the Gospel may our sins be wiped away.” So those are prayers that are prayed silently that you would never have heard. They’re beautiful. They add to the beauty of the Mass, so I wanted to make sure I touched on them.
Ad Orientem
The last thing I didn’t touch on last time leads up to some other things we’ll talk about — the development of the liturgy, which I’ll get to a little later.
Sometimes in certain churches, when they celebrate Mass, they don’t use the altar here. They use the altar up against the wall, and the priest is facing the same direction as all the people. It’s called ad orientem, which is Latin for “to the east.” Usually, old-timey churches were built so that the altar was in the east: you’d walk in the door to the west and go toward the east. At St. Paul’s we’re flipped around the other way, but we don’t really do that anymore, and this is how the property was set up, so we’re good.
When the priest does that, he’s not turning his back on the people. Some people say, “Why would you do that? You don’t want to turn your back on the people.” That’s not what he’s doing. Nobody complains that the bus driver isn’t looking at them when he’s driving the bus. They’re glad his eyes are on the road, that he’s looking where they’re going.
What this highlights is that the two different orientations — ad orientem versus versus populum, which is how we celebrate Mass here — highlight different things that are both important. They’re both good. Ad orientem highlights that the priest is coming forward from the community to be the one to speak to the Father on behalf of the community, but it’s the one community offering the prayers together toward the Father. There’s a direction we’re all going together. Mass isn’t a show that God and the priest are putting on for people’s entertainment. That’s not what it’s about.
But the priest facing the other way highlights that it’s a community gathered around the table of the altar. It allows the circle to connect a little bit. It’s not just everybody facing the same direction, it’s a circle. It highlights the importance of the community and the communal aspect of Mass. So they’re both good, they just highlight slightly different things.
What Is the Mass About?
I want to say again — in case you weren’t here last time — Mass is a prayer to the Father, in the Son, through the Holy Spirit.
When we come to Mass, we participate in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. We join ourselves to that sacrifice, which is then offered to the Father. When the priest holds up both the chalice and the paten — “Through him, with him, in him” — he’s representing that sacrifice on Calvary to the Father. And we have joined all of our prayers to that. All of our pains, our sufferings, our good works, our failures, all that we are, are united to that offering of Christ and offered to the Father.
That’s how we participate in Mass. That’s how we participate in the offering of Jesus Christ, and we become part of his body — his body on the cross. We become part of that when we offer up ourselves and our sufferings with him.
The Development of the Liturgy
Before we get into the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the second half of Mass, I wanted to touch on a couple things. First, the development of the liturgy.
The way we say Mass now is very similar to the way Mass has been celebrated the whole two-thousand-year history of the Church. Some things have changed, though. We use English. Originally they used Greek, or Hebrew or Aramaic — they would have used those languages. Then Latin, because that’s what everybody spoke for a while. And then even after people spoke other languages, they still used Latin. So things change.
There are people who study the liturgy and its changes and all that. They’re called liturgists. And there’s a joke that priests tell: the difference between a terrorist and a liturgist is that you can negotiate with a terrorist. Some of these people who study the liturgy get really particular about small things — which is good, they care about the beauty and the sacredness of the Mass. Sometimes it’s like, all right, that’s nice, but the Church gives us options, so I’m going to take the other option, and that’s okay.
If you want to go do some research about Mass from the very beginning, here are some things to look at. There’s a whole lot here, but I’m just going to touch on these.
1 Corinthians. St. Paul talks about the Mass. This one I’m going to read, it’s pretty short — 1 Corinthians 11:23–29:
“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.”
So first he’s talking about Mass, and then he’s talking about how you shouldn’t receive Communion if you’re in a state of sin — go to confession first. But this is a non-Gospel reference to the Last Supper as something they’ve been doing, something that has continued. It wasn’t one and done. The Last Supper has continued to happen. St. Paul is saying, “I received this, and I’m giving it to you so that you do it too. Keep doing it.” So 1 Corinthians is the earliest writing outside the Gospels about the Mass.
The Didache, the teaching of the twelve apostles, is like a very original catechism. It’s from around the year 70 to 100. The Didache talks about the Eucharistic prayers, the Sunday assembly, and confession before receiving the Eucharist.
Pope Clement — I think either he’s the only one or it’s Pope Clement I. In the year 96 he wrote some letters, and he talked about the Mass and about the ordained ministry.
St. Ignatius of Antioch, around 107 — I think that’s about when he was martyred. He talks about the Eucharist, the real presence, and the bishop presiding over the Mass.
St. Justin Martyr wrote a whole bunch of stuff, but in his First Apology he gives a complete description of the Mass. He kind of goes through the steps, and you’ll recognize it. It’ll look very familiar: “Oh yeah, we do that.” Some of it may be in a slightly different order, but it’s like, “Oh yeah, we do all those things pretty much in that order.”
St. Irenaeus, around the year 180, wrote a book called Against Heresies. This one’s kind of funny. He was really bad at Latin — he probably spoke a different language and learned Latin later, so his grammar apparently is terrible, which gives me hope for writing things. But he talked about the Eucharistic sacrifice and the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
Tertullian, around 197, wrote about Christian worship and about the Eucharist.
And then in 215, St. Hippolytus — we have a copy of the Eucharistic prayer that he wrote down.
So these are very early. If Protestants ever tell you that we made up the Mass or that it was invented, these are resources you can go to and say, “No, this is what we’ve been doing from the very beginning. We didn’t make this up.”
In his First Apology, St. Justin Martyr writes that the president — the priest presiding over the Mass — offers prayers and thanksgivings according to his ability, and the people assent, saying “Amen.” So he’s saying the priest wings it. That’s a nice way of saying it, right?
There’s a structure that’s the same. The words of institution are there — St. Paul makes it clear, “This is my body, this is my blood.” Those same words are important. But the other prayers were a little bit like, he would offer prayers and thanksgiving according to his ability. So somebody like me, who’s not good at words, would offer shorter and probably less beautiful prayers than somebody who is more eloquent and holier, who would offer longer, more eloquent, holier prayers. That’s how the Mass went. There’s the structure, there are these things we talk about, but there’s a little bit of room for flexibility.
So this keeps going as the Church goes along. And the world was pretty disconnected. In order to get someplace you had to walk, ride a horse, or take a boat. There were lots of robbers. So the way Mass was celebrated developed slightly differently in different places around the world. The way they celebrated Mass in Rome was different from the way they celebrated it in Antioch, or in Milan — all the places around the Mediterranean where the early Church was. They started saying Mass slightly differently. Because when you hear one of the more eloquent priests saying Mass, it’s like, “Oh, I like the way he said that. I’m going to do that.” And so different versions got copied in different places.
The structure was always the same. The important prayers were always the same. But there was some amount of flexibility that differed place by place.
Then the liturgy develops a little bit, and we kind of have to look at regular world history to understand this. The Roman Empire split — in the 300s or something like that, I don’t remember exactly when — between Rome and Constantinople, into the Eastern Empire and the Western Empire. Then in the 400s or whatever, the Visigoths or the Vandals, whatever the Germanic tribes were, conquered Rome and squashed it. Most of them were heretics — they were Arians, who believed Jesus was kind of like Superman: not quite God, not quite man. So there was a lot of persecution going on then.
But these liturgies developed a little bit differently, and they developed with different languages. In Constantinople it developed using Greek. In Rome and Western Europe it was Latin. So these continued, and there was a lot of standardization, but there were some differences.
Around the year 800, the Western Empire — Rome, Western Europe — said, “Hey, let’s standardize this a little bit. Let’s make it the same, so that if you do travel, it’s not different place by place.” There were different books that had developed in different places, and they said, “All right, this is the book. This is what we’re going to do.” So they settled that around the year 800, standardized across Western Europe.
And then in the 1500s, during the Council of Trent, they said, “Everybody, for real, this is the book.” I think a couple of things changed, but it was pretty much the same: “Yep, this is the Missal you’re going to use to say Mass.” At this point, by the 1500s, the Eastern Church — Constantinople and over — had split off. That was in 1054. There was the Great Schism, and they became the Orthodox Church and didn’t listen to the Pope anymore. So it was just the Western, Latin-speaking Church.
And that continued the same all the way up until Vatican II. Then they reviewed the liturgy: “Hey, nobody speaks Latin anymore. It’s really hard for people to pray sometimes when they have no idea what’s going on.” At this point the priest would face the other direction, it was mostly silent, and there wasn’t a ton of participation. So they said, “Let’s help people pray better.” Most of the time when people would go to Mass, they’d pray the rosary or do something else, and they weren’t necessarily paying attention to what was going on. That’s why we have the bells — “Hey, wake up, this is the important stuff.”
The Different Rites
So Vatican II changed the rite. We still have different rites of the Mass, different ways of celebrating Mass.
At one point I got to go to Italy, and I was in a little town outside Milan. It was in Italian, so I had no idea what was going on, but I noticed the sign of peace wasn’t where we have it. It wasn’t right after the Our Father — it was before the consecration, before the Eucharistic prayer started, before the offertory. That’s the Ambrosian Rite, after St. Ambrose.
The reason is that in the Gospel, Jesus says, “Before you bring your gift to the altar, if your brother has something against you, make peace with your brother and then offer your gift.” So they take that as, “Oh, before we bring up the bread and the wine, before we do the offertory, we’re going to make peace with our brothers.” The way we celebrate Mass understands it a little differently: I’m coming to receive the Eucharist, and this is my gift I’m bringing to Jesus — myself. So before I do that, I’ll make peace with my brother. A little bit different understanding of what you’re doing.
There’s the Byzantine Rite — that’s the Orthodox, when they split off. Some of them have come back into union with the Pope, and we said they could celebrate Mass the same way they’ve been doing it. St. John Chrysostom, where Fr. Yeager is, is a Byzantine Rite church. You can go there for Mass; it’s all valid sacraments. Fr. Yeager’s a great guy. Go to Mass there and see what they do. It’s going to look very different.
There’s the Melkite Rite. One of my classmates is bi-ritual — he can celebrate the Roman Rite, which is what we do, and the Melkite Rite. I really don’t know anything about the Melkite Rite. I know it’s different, I’m not sure how. It’s a different language, so there’s that. There’s the Syro-Malabar Rite. There are all these different rites — there are twenty-plus different ways the Church allows us to celebrate Mass.
If you’ve never been to the old Latin Mass — the Tridentine Mass, the traditional Latin Mass — they do it at St. Leo’s. Go sometime just to see what it is. Get the book that has the English and Latin and tells you what’s going on, otherwise you’re going to be totally lost. But go check it out. This is the way the Church said Mass for a long time. Even if you pray better at this Mass — I pray better the way we celebrate Mass than at the old Latin Mass — check it out. It’s worth looking at. It’s worth going to pray it once, just to go see what it is. Both are good. The old way, the new way, they’re both Mass.
What We Use at Mass
Real quick, I’m going to show you some of the things we use at Mass.
Obviously, the chalice. This is called the paten — it’s the little plate that the host goes on.
This cloth is called the corporal. It’s a square cloth that the priest puts down on the altar, and the Eucharist is always set on the corporal. Why do we do this? Because at some point you do break the host — I’ll talk about that later. So if there are little crumbs of the Eucharist that go all over the place, the goal is that they stay on the corporal. Then the corporal gets folded up, and after Mass we take it back to the sacristy and it’s soaked in water so that the Eucharist can dissolve. Then it’s poured down a special sink called a sacrarium that goes straight into the ground. It doesn’t go into the sewers. That’s the proper way to dispose of little particles of the Eucharist.
As soon as the bread that has been consecrated — the Eucharist — is no longer identifiable as bread, once it’s been dissolved, it’s no longer the Eucharist. It’s no longer Jesus. So then you can pour it into the ground. It’s still holy, though. You don’t want to just dump it into the sewers. So it goes into the sacrarium, which takes it into the ground.
This cloth is called the purificator. It’s what the priest uses to purify the paten and the chalice after distributing Holy Communion, just to make sure all the little particles of Jesus get collected. This also gets soaked, and the water is poured down the sacrarium.
This little square thing, the cardboard piece, is called a pall. It sets on top of the chalice to keep flies and junk out. Mostly now, with air conditioning, we don’t have flies flying around the church. Every once in a while you’ll get one, but for most of the history of humanity we haven’t had air conditioning, so there were a lot of flies all over the place. That’s why we have that.
This is a chalice veil — it goes over the stack when the servers bring it over. And this is called a burse. It holds the corporals when they come over. I’m going to be honest, I don’t know why we have this or where it developed, but we do, and it’s cool. So there it is.
The Preparation of the Altar
Now, getting into the Mass itself. Last time we got through the petitions, the universal prayers. After that we have the preparation of the altar for the sacrifice.
I mentioned this a little last time, but the offertory is where the bread and the wine come up and they’re passing the basket. A couple of my friends from the seminary were from different countries in Africa. They went back after they finished school and got ordained over there. I got to watch the live stream of one of their ordinations, and it was kind of cool, because people were bringing up goats and chickens and a bag of rice and whatever, instead of just the bread and the wine or money.
In a lot of ways today we use money as a way to quantify our time and effort in a way that makes it easy to exchange. I think he was from Uganda — I forget which country over there he’s from. Money’s maybe less accessible over there. So it’s like, “All right, well, I’ve worked hard to raise this flock of sheep, and here’s this sheep that’s representative of my time and effort that I’m going to give to God.” Which is cool. The symbolism is much more present when you’re bringing up a chicken or a goat or a cloth that you made or whatever it is — a thing that you worked on.
In America, we don’t do this. Please don’t, at Mass next weekend, bring up a chicken or a goat or something. Or maybe do — just not if I’m the one saying Mass. Hand it to Fr. Wilson or something. That’d be funny.
But that’s what’s going on. That’s what this is symbolic of. When the bread and the wine are brought forward, it’s symbolic of the gift we’re making of ourselves being brought up to the altar. Then that bread and wine become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. Our gift becomes the body of Christ. It builds up the body of Christ that’s then offered to the Father.
That’s what I was talking about earlier today and last week: every Mass, you bring something to offer, you ask for a petition. This is where — instead of maybe singing the song, and I’m not telling you not to sing, but pray before you start singing — you pray, “Okay, what is it that I’m offering to God right now? What is it that I’m bringing to this Mass to offer to the Father?” That’s a helpful way to pray the Mass better. In that moment, we’ve just sat down: what is it that I’m offering to the Father? What am I bringing before him today?
The Mingling of Water and Wine
As part of the preparation of the altar, there’s the mingling of the wine and the water. The altar servers bring over the wine and the water, and the priest pours them into the chalice — wine, and then a drop of water.
The symbolism here is that the wine is Jesus, the drop of water is us, and we disappear. When you put one drop of water into a chalice of wine, it just disappears. We disappear. We become part of the body of Christ. We’re brought into Jesus’s divinity.
The prayer that either the priest or the deacon prays as he’s doing that is, “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”
Something that’s kind of cool: in any of the Eucharistic miracles, when they’ve done tests on them, the blood type is — I forget which one it is, but it’s the universal recipient. Whatever blood type that is. AB? There we go. Cool, AB. The universal recipient — where we all are joined into him. It’s just something that’s really cool.
Blessed Are You, Lord God of All Creation
On Sunday you usually don’t pray this out loud, because there’s music playing, but the priest holds up the paten with the host, and then the chalice, and prays, “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness you’ve given us…” and so on. It goes on. It’s a little bit different for the two, the bread and the wine.
These prayers are based on some Jewish prayers — the berakhot. I don’t know if I’m saying that right. But it ties us back to our Jewish roots. And then, at daily Mass, if the priest prays it out loud, everybody responds, “Blessed be God forever.” Lord, you’ve given us this. Thank you. Blessed be God forever.
The Washing of Hands
After this, the priest will wash his hands. Altar servers come over and pour a little bit of water on his fingers. Part of this, in the development of the liturgy, probably developed because people were gross. Hand washing wasn’t really a thing. It’s like, all right, I’m about to touch the Eucharist, my hands should be clean if they’re not already. So I’m going to wash off my hands.
Sometimes — not so much here, the sacristans here do a great job keeping the thurible clean — but at some other churches I’ve gone to, when you use the thurible there’s some grime that gets on your fingers. So it actually is helpful to wash your hands at this point.
Sorry, this is before that — I got mixed up. Before washing his hands, the priest will bow and pray this prayer: “With humble spirit and contrite heart may we be accepted by you, O Lord, and may our sacrifice in your sight this day be pleasing to you, Lord God.” That’s another prayer that’s prayed silently that you’ve probably never heard, but it’s a beautiful prayer that’s part of the Mass.
Then there’s the hand washing: “Wash me, O Lord, of my iniquity and cleanse me of my sins.” That’s what the priest prays as he’s doing it. Again, that ties back to some of the Jewish ritual washings before sacrifices, before entering the sanctuary. In Jerusalem there was a special pool at the base of the steps to the temple — before you’d go to the temple you’d have to go wash your hands and your feet, and then you could go in. So it’s calling back to some of that offering of sacrifice.
Pray, Brethren
Then everybody stands up. The priest says — shoot, what does he say? — “Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.”
It’s interesting that the priest doesn’t say “our sacrifice.” He says “my sacrifice and yours,” because the priest is offering the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It’s the high priesthood of Jesus Christ present in the priest. It’s that sacrifice that’s being offered — my sacrifice — and yours. All of your sacrifices, whatever it is that you’re offering to the Father, are brought in there as well. So it’s not diminishing those. It’s holding those as individual, but also there with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Your sacrifice is mentioned right alongside the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, which really elevates the sacrifice that you’re bringing in dignity. It’s like, wow, your sacrifice is like Christ on the cross. Which is kind of cool.
It’s also a distinction between the ministerial priesthood, the ordained priesthood, and the baptismal priesthood. We’re all baptized priest, prophet, and king, and that priesthood is the offering of our lives. St. Paul says, “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” It’s that offering of ourselves that is the living out of the baptismal priesthood.
The Prayer Over the Offerings
After that there’s what’s called the prayer over the offerings. The priest prays a prayer. These change not quite every Mass, but sometimes they change every Mass. In Ordinary Time there’s one per week — one for Sunday, and then you can use it throughout the week. In Lent, Easter, and Advent there’s a different one for each day, one that highlights a little bit of the mystery or whatever’s being celebrated that day.
It asks that what is offered will benefit us — that whatever offering we’ve brought, and then the offering of Christ, will be of benefit to us, that we’ll be able to receive it.
Here are a couple I have written down. “May this oblation, O Lord, we pray, cleanse and renew us, and may it become for those who do your will the source of eternal reward.” So: hey, let this benefit us in a specific way.
Another one: “O Lord our God, who established these created things to sustain us in our frailty, grant, we pray, that they may become for us the sacrament of eternal life, through Christ our Lord.” So, O God, who established these created things — the bread and the wine — grant that they become for us the sacrament of life. Let them become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ for the good of our souls.
The Preface
Then there’s the preface. This is “The Lord be with you” and “And with your spirit.”
The books don’t necessarily tell you exactly how to do the gestures. You’re allowed to do your hands a little bit differently — there’s a little bit of vagueness here, so different priests do it slightly differently. The way I like to do it: when I say “The Lord be with you,” I’ll have my hands on the altar, because the congregation is present symbolically through their gifts that have been offered and are there on the altar. “The Lord be with you” — through that symbolism of the gifts on the altar. “Lift up your hearts.” “We lift them up to the Lord.” “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.” “It is right and just.” And then back to the orans position, the position of intercession.
Somebody asked last time why the prefaces are never in the Magnificat. There are a lot of them, is why. There are five or six different ones you can use for Sundays in Ordinary Time. There are four or five for each of the other major seasons as well. Then there are different ones for daily Mass — another five or six. There are two for Mary, two for the apostles, I think one for pastors, one for virgins, one for just random other saints. There are a lot of different ones, so they don’t publish them all in your Magnificat. So the one you get in the Magnificat, there’s a good chance it’s not the one the priest is going to use. It might be — you might luck out — but probably you won’t.
Sometimes I’ll try to look at these before Mass and pick one that fits with the readings or with what I want to talk about in my homily. And sometimes it’s just, this is the one Fr. Wilson used at the Mass before, and that works, and it’s good. Sometimes I’m less intentional with which preface I use.
This prayer is a short explanation of why we’re praising God, and it’s directed to the Father. It’ll talk about the sacrifice of Jesus, that you’ve made us a holy nation, a royal priesthood, whatever. It talks about something — maybe what Mary did for us, or when talking about the saints, it’s like, “Thanks for the way you’ve worked in this saint’s life. That’s awesome. Help us do that too.” And there’s always some element of thanksgiving there.
Holy, Holy, Holy
After the preface there’s the Sanctus — holy, holy, holy.
Hebrew didn’t have a word for — they didn’t do big, bigger, biggest. Superlatives just don’t exist in Hebrew. So in order to show that, they would repeat the word. If something was bigger, they would say “big, big.” If it was the biggest, they would say “big, big, big.” So when we’re saying “holy, holy, holy” to the Father, we’re saying he is the holiest. It’s that superlative. That’s why we repeat holy three times. It’s not because God’s hard of hearing and we’ve just got to repeat ourselves. There’s a reason for it that comes from our Jewish roots.
It also shows up in the Book of Revelation. I have down Revelation 4:8. I didn’t write down the verse and I forget what that one says, but I think it’s “holy, holy, holy.” So it comes from the Book of Revelation, from the heavenly worship that St. John had the vision of.
The Eucharistic Prayer
At that point we enter into the Eucharistic prayer itself. The Eucharistic prayer goes up until the Our Father starts.
There are four different Eucharistic prayers. They’re all good. They’re all a little bit different. I’m going to talk a little about each one.
Eucharistic Prayer I is also known as the Roman Canon. This is pretty much a direct translation of what the Latin was from 800 up till Vatican II. That’s the one with the list of all the saints in it. It’s the really long one. So I always use this one on Sundays and solemnities and big feast days, to show that you do something more for the big feast days. I don’t use it at daily Mass because people have to get to work or whatever, and it’s long, so I’ll use one of the shorter ones. Its roots are from before 800, but it’s the one the Church has used from 800 up through today.
Eucharistic Prayer II is the really short one. So if Fr. Wilson preaches too long, he’ll use Eucharistic Prayer II. This one is based on the Eucharistic prayer that St. Hippolytus wrote down — what I mentioned at the beginning. You can go back and read Hippolytus, from AD 215. So, old. This is the Eucharistic prayer he describes. I think there’s probably a little bit of a difference, but mostly it’s just translation stuff. That’s also a great Eucharistic prayer.
Eucharistic Prayer III was written at Vatican II. This is the one I use for daily Mass most of the time. It’s based on some of the old Eucharistic prayers that got cut off around the year 800 — the Gallican Rite (Gaul was France), so the old French Eucharistic prayer they would use, and then the Mozarabic, which is old Spain. So it still has an ancient tradition, but you can’t just go back and find a translation of it. They took these two, combined them, and put them into Eucharistic Prayer III.
Eucharistic Prayer IV. I’ve never used Eucharistic Prayer IV. I don’t know why, I just haven’t. There are some days you’re not allowed to use it. Sorry, I phrased that slightly wrong — it can’t be used on Sundays that are outside of Ordinary Time. So you can’t use it on Sundays in Lent, Easter, or Advent. The reason is that it has a special preface you have to use with it, and on those Sundays in those other seasons you have to use the preface for that season. That’s why you can’t use it. This one gives a fuller summary of salvation history. It goes through a lot of the different aspects, traces how God’s been working from Adam and Eve up through today.
In all of these, the words of institution are the same. And the words of institution are in all caps. They’re real bold. It’s hard to miss them, because those are the words that you can’t mess up. If the priest decides to wing it on those, Mass doesn’t happen. Jesus doesn’t show up. So they’re the same in all of them, and they’re real bold, real big, hard to miss. That’s why I always pause before I get to those words. There’s quiet. It’s like, all right, this is the really important part. Don’t mess this up. Just to refocus myself, to enter into that prayer.
Why are there so many different Eucharistic prayers? Why do we have four different ones? Well, we also have four Gospels. Our faith would be less beautiful with only one Gospel. We could have had just one and we would have been fine. But we have four, because each one says something slightly different about Jesus. It puts it in a different way, phrases it a little bit differently, and it adds to the depth and the beauty of our faith. Same with the Eucharistic prayers. Each one highlights something different. It shows us something else that’s beautiful about our faith. They’re all good. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are all good. You can have your favorite one, and that’s great. Somebody else can have a different one, and neither one of you is wrong.
The Epiclesis, the Institution Narrative, and the Doxology
I’m going to go through some more stuff. If I have extra time — I don’t want to talk too long, I think I talked too long last time — if we get to the end and we have more time, I’m going to read through Eucharistic Prayer I and talk about it. But I want to get to the end of the Mass. There are a couple things I really want to talk about as well.
The epiclesis. This is when the priest does Superman hands, like he’s flying through the air. This is the calling down of the Holy Spirit. Epiclesis is a fancy Greek word — I forget what it means, but something about calling down the Holy Spirit. You ask the power of the Holy Spirit to come down and sanctify these gifts, to prepare them to become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ.
The institution narrative. This is the most special part of the Eucharistic prayer. This is where it says, “At the Last Supper, Jesus took bread, broke it, gave it to his disciples,” saying the words of institution. It’s the part that goes through what happened at the Last Supper, the institution of the Eucharist.
And then the Eucharistic prayer ends with the doxology: “Through him, with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, forever and ever. Amen.”
This is the most important part of the Mass. This is where all of our offerings, and the sacrifice of Christ, are presented to the Father as a gift. That’s the high point of the Mass. So pay attention to that part. If you haven’t made your offering yet, do it then. Real quick, sneak it in under the wire.
The Communion Rite
After the Eucharistic prayer we have the rite of the distribution of Holy Communion. We start with the Our Father.
I think it’s really cool. We’ve just made this gift to the Father, and then we pray the Our Father. The Our Father is the prayer Jesus gave us, and it’s the prayer that asks for the things we really need. It’s like the best petitions we could make. So we’ve just made this gift to the Father, united with the gift of Christ, and then we ask for the things we ask for in the Our Father.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” Some people say “daily” is a bad translation there — that “give us this day our supersubstantial bread” is a better translation. I don’t think we’re going to switch to that anytime soon. It’s a little bit of a tongue twister, and it’s not what we’ve been praying for a while now that we’ve translated it into English. But: give us this day our supersubstantial bread, the bread that’s more than just bread. Give us the Eucharist. That’s what that’s asking for.
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” and all these other petitions. We could have a whole series of talks on the Our Father, so I’m not going to go into it today, because that’s its own topic. A whole quarter of the Catechism is dedicated to the Our Father. It’s a lot of pages, and a lot of people have said more beautiful things than I’ll say. So if you want to know more about the Our Father, read — I think it’s the fourth part of the Catechism, Christian Prayer. It’s all based on the Our Father.
The Our Father comes straight from the Gospel of Matthew. We just take that. The Gospels all give slightly different accounts of the Our Father; we take the one from Matthew.
After the Our Father there are a couple of back-and-forth prayers, and then there’s one the priest prays that I want to highlight: “Lord Jesus Christ, who said to your apostles, ‘Peace I leave you, my peace I give you,’ look not on our sins but on the faith of your Church, and graciously grant her peace and unity in accordance with your will.”
This is one of the few times the priest talks directly to Jesus. Most of the prayers of the Mass are addressed to the Father. This one is addressed to Jesus. We only talk to Jesus a couple of times. When we say the mystery of faith — “We proclaim your death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection, until you come again” — we’re talking to Jesus. He just shows up, and this is the prayer we pray right when he shows up, right after the consecration. That’s one time. This prayer is another time. And then there’s a prayer later that the priest prays that’s directed toward Jesus instead of the Father, which is interesting. The Mass is mostly prayed talking to the Father.
One of the things with Mass ad orientem, with the priest facing the other direction, is that you can tell a little bit more easily who he’s talking to, because when he’s talking to the faithful he’ll turn around and face them, and then he’ll turn back when he’s talking to God. But pay attention to who the priest is talking to, who the prayers are directed at. Obviously “The Lord be with you” is talking to you all. Then when there are the prayers, it’s talking to the Father.
I talked about the sign of peace a little bit with the Ambrosian Rite.
The Lamb of God
Then there’s the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. This prayer calls to mind a couple of things from the Old Testament — well, Old Testament and New Testament.
When God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, they go up the mountain. That’s Calvary, that’s Mount Zion. The place where Abraham was supposed to sacrifice Isaac is the same place where Jesus was crucified. Same place, same mountain. Which is super cool. Then the angel stops the sacrifice and tells Abraham, “Whoa, chill. God sees your faith, saw that you were willing to do this.”
Maybe a side note about this too. God had promised Abraham that he would raise up descendants through his son Isaac. He was very clear: “It is through Isaac that I will raise up descendants for you.” So Abraham, in sacrificing his son Isaac, is doing something very different from other forms of human sacrifice you see in all the pagan areas around Israel. He’s trusting that God’s going to bring Isaac back to life, because Isaac didn’t have any descendants at that point. God had promised there would be descendants through Isaac, so somehow God is going to bring Isaac back to life. Abraham understands all of that, which is really cool, and I think we miss that a lot of times when we read it.
So anyway, Abraham goes, the angel stops him from making the sacrifice, and then there’s a ram caught in the bushes. But earlier it talks about offering a lamb, which is a little bit different from a ram. When Isaac asks, “Hey, what are we going to sacrifice when we get up there?” Abraham says, “God himself will provide the lamb for the sacrifice.” Then they offer a ram. It’s a little bit different.
And then here we’re saying, “Behold the Lamb of God.” This is the one who offered that sacrifice. Isaac was prevented from being sacrificed, but Jesus is the one who is sacrificed.
This also points to John the Baptist. After the baptism, at some point Jesus is walking along and John the Baptist says, “Behold the Lamb of God.” And that’s when Andrew and somebody else go follow Jesus and say, “Lord, where are you staying?” There’s that whole thing. So all of that is being called to mind when we’re saying the Lamb of God.
The Fraction Rite
After that, or while that’s going on, we have what’s called the fraction rite. The host is broken in half, and then a small piece is taken off and put in the chalice. Shoot, I’m blanking on the prayer. “By the mingling of your body and blood…” or — I forget. I’ll get the Missal out. I pray it every day and I can’t remember it right now. Yeah, I know. People tell me I’m too young to forget things. It’s not true. I forget plenty of things.
So what’s going on? When the Jews offered a sacrifice, the flesh was separated from the blood, because in the Jewish worldview blood was the life of something. So they separated the life from the flesh, from the animal, to offer that sacrifice, and they did different things with the blood and the flesh.
Here we have the Eucharist. Jesus is fully present under both species, under the form of bread and under the form of wine. But symbolically there too, they’re separated. The flesh and blood are separated as that sacrifice is offered. And then they’re rejoined in the resurrection. Jesus comes back to life. He’s resurrected. What we receive in the Eucharist is the resurrected body of Christ. So symbolically, the flesh and the blood are joined back together. It’s the resurrected body of Jesus.
I didn’t really recognize that that happened for a long time, until before I was ordained — I learned about it in seminary. But it’s this really cool moment in the Mass, when we’re singing or whatever’s going on, and we’re not necessarily really paying attention. There isn’t anything that draws our attention to it, but it’s a really cool moment.
Then the priest will bow and pray this prayer. It’s prayed silently, but it’s beautiful, so I kind of just want to read it out for you: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who by the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit, through your death gave life to the world, free me by this your most holy Body and Blood from all my sins and from every evil. Keep me always faithful to your commandments, and never let me be parted from you.” And then the priest genuflects and goes on with Mass.
It’s a beautiful prayer, and there’s no reason you couldn’t pray it. You’re not taking the place of the priest when you pray it. Free me from sin by your body and blood. Keep me free from sin. Never let me be parted from you. Help me be faithful. Help me be a good, holy person. Help me become a saint by the strength you’re about to give me in receiving the Eucharist.
Behold the Lamb of God
And then the priest holds up the broken host and the chalice and says, “Behold the Lamb of God” — again going back to John the Baptist. “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”
The supper of the Lamb is here. It’s also heaven. Jesus uses images of a great banquet feast for heaven a lot throughout the Scriptures. So it’s both. We’re talking about heaven, and we’re also talking about the Mass, kind of both together.
And then we respond, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” This is almost a straight-up quote from Scripture — we just change one or two words.
In Matthew 8:8 there was a centurion who comes to Jesus and says, “Hey, my servant is sick. Please heal him.” And Jesus says, “All right, I’ll come heal him.” And he says, “No, no. You just need to say it, and I believe you. I have a commanding officer that I have to obey, and there are people under me who obey me. So you just say it, and I know it’s going to happen, because I know how authority works, and I know that you have authority.” That’s my translation of what he says. So he says, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Only say the word and my servant will be healed.”
That’s the same thing we’re saying: “Only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” Slightly different, but sort of the same thing. And it’s entering into our tabernacle, under our roof, into us, that the Lord comes to bring healing — healing from our brokenness, our sins, all of that.
Receiving Communion
Then we have the distribution of Holy Communion.
Practically, just so you know, here are some priest pet peeves about people receiving Communion. If you’re going to come receive Communion and you choose to receive in your hand, keep your hand kind of flat and maybe a little bit cupped. If your hands are like this, I’m afraid Jesus is going to fall on the floor. I don’t want to drop Jesus.
If you choose the traditional way of receiving Communion, receiving on your tongue, actually stick your tongue out. Some people just open their mouths, and it’s like — and sometimes you get bit. So stick your tongue out. Be set. Don’t be moving. Otherwise you lick my finger, and that’s gross for both of us.
If you’re receiving in the hand, don’t walk away while you still have the Eucharist. Make sure the Eucharist is in your mouth before you move your feet. Otherwise I’m going to chase you down and tell you you have to receive Communion right here. Because some people will try to steal the Eucharist. Witchcraft is real. There are people who do that, and they’ll desecrate the Eucharist. So if you ever get chased down, that’s why — we’re making sure to protect the body of Christ from these satanists. They believe in the Eucharist more than some Catholics do. They know that that is Jesus. So receive before you move your feet.
Pray in the Communion line. Pray in the Communion line. It’s not just a procession, walking up. You’re not just standing in line to do something. You’re preparing to receive your Lord into your soul. So pray as you’re walking up. If you’ve forgotten to pray for all of Mass, pray in that part, as you’re about to receive the Eucharist.
Also practically, if you notice crumbs of Jesus in your hand, don’t just put them on the floor. Those crumbs — the Eastern churches call them pearls, the pearls of Jesus — that’s still Jesus. If you need to lick your hand, that’s fine. If you pick them up, make sure you receive them. Don’t put Jesus on the floor.
That’s why I do the pinched fingers after I touch the Eucharist, after the bread has become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. I’ll keep my fingers together until I’ve had time to rinse off any particles into the chalice and then receive them. So that’s why I do that.
Then there’s the purification of all the vessels — the ciborium, the paten, all of that — making sure we get all of Jesus and that he’s treated respectfully. The leftover hosts go back in the tabernacle. The ones in the tabernacle were consecrated at a previous Mass. That’s just so we don’t have to receive all of the Eucharist at every Mass — if ten extra people show up a little bit late, it’s like, oh, do we run out? So there’s always extra in the tabernacle.
The Prayer After Communion and the Dismissal
After all that there’s the prayer after Communion. This is the last “Let us pray.” Everybody stands up. It’s usually about asking the Lord to let the sacrament we just celebrated help us get to heaven in some specific way. It’s specified a little bit season by season, and the prayers are all a little bit different, but basically the general gist is: let what just happened, the sacrifice that was just offered, the Eucharist we just received, let it benefit our souls and help us get to heaven.
And then there’s the final blessing, and then “go in peace.” Get out of here.
The Latin is Ite, missa est. “Go, it is sent.” That’s where we get the word “Mass” — missa. Go, it is sent. Go take the Eucharist. Go take Jesus into the world with you. Go make the world holier now. You’ve been fed, you’ve been strengthened, you’ve been equipped. Go change the world — that’s one aspect of understanding it. Also, our prayer to the Father has been sent. Our prayer to God has been sent up to the Father, and we’re sent out into the world.
St. John Vianney said, “There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious, he would have given it to us.”
Praying the Mass Better
So, praying Mass better again — just some things to think about doing.
With receiving Communion, close your eyes when you’re in your pew after you’ve received. People are distracting. Whether it’s the cute kid, the little infant in front of you, or whatever — close your eyes. You’ll be able to pray a lot better if you’re not distracted by everybody who’s walking around.
Recognize that in receiving the Eucharist we’re made one with Christ. We’re joined to the body of Christ. We’re made one with him. It’s this really cool thing where we become one with him, but we don’t lose our individuality. We’re not all divided, totally independent. But we’re also not just one big blob of Jesus. We are individuals, but we’re joined to the body of Christ. It’s this really cool both/and, where everything that’s unique and good about us is joined to Christ and brought into his one body.
There are a few different prayers to pray at the end of Mass. St. Thomas Aquinas has a prayer after Mass that’s beautiful. That’s a really good one. It may be in the back of the red hymnal, like in the cover — I’m not sure if it is or not. I know there are a few different prayers there. It may be in there somewhere on a different page. But St. Thomas Aquinas has a really good prayer after Mass, just like he has a good prayer for before Mass.
The St. Michael Prayer was always traditionally prayed after Mass. If people pray the St. Michael Prayer, that’s a good one.
Or the Anima Christi. The Anima Christi is a beautiful prayer that I think a lot of people aren’t very familiar with, so I’m going to read it out:
Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me. Blood of Christ, fill me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus, hear me. Hide me within your wounds. Do not allow me to be separated from you. From the malicious enemy, defend me. In the hour of death, call me, and bid me come to you, that I may praise you forever and ever. Amen.
That is a beautiful prayer. I think sometimes the choir sings it in Latin as people are receiving Communion — I think sometimes at the ten o’clock Mass. I think I’ve heard them sing that before.
Questions and Answers
Anyway — do people have questions?
Q: My first question is about the Novus Ordo Mass versus the Tridentine Mass. Why was it that for almost 1,960 years the priest faced away from the congregation, and then somebody changed it? Was it Vatican II?
Yeah, that was part of the changes of Vatican II. Part of it is that when the priest was up there, nobody could see what was going on, and it was harder to enter into it. Some of the symbolism of the gestures and so on, you really couldn’t see. It was this very mysterious thing that was very other, and it was harder for people to enter into. So they wanted to make it a little bit more familiar. God is both other and familiar. Jesus is both King of the universe and the baby in the crib. So it’s just a different aspect of that.
Q: Do you know who changed this? Who was it? Was it Paul VI?
I think it was Paul VI. I don’t know — whoever was Pope in the ’60s. I think it was Paul VI.
So, at Vatican II, the least controversial thing among the bishops was the liturgy. Everybody was on the same boat with that. It went a little bit crazy afterward — we had clown Masses and stuff. That was weird. Nobody wanted that. That was bad. There were definitely some abuses there. But the changes the bishops all agreed on at the council were pretty universal. Everybody was kind of saying, “Hey, we should do this.”
Q: Why is it bread and wine? Why is the Eucharist bread and wine?
Because that’s what Jesus used. At the Last Supper, Jesus took bread and said, “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body.” And then he took a cup with wine and said, “Take this, all of you, and drink of it, for this is my blood.” So we’re just doing what Jesus did: bread and wine.
The offering of a sacrifice of bread and wine was also used by Melchizedek. He’s this kind of mysterious figure in the Book of Genesis. Some people attack a town and take captives, including people connected to Abraham. Abraham goes and fights these guys and takes back what they stole. The king of Salem is Melchizedek. Abraham gives him a tenth of everything, it says, and then Melchizedek offers a prayer to God, and he offers bread and wine. So this idea of offering bread and wine to God comes even from Genesis, and then it’s what Jesus used.
It’s kind of interesting too, because that’s probably most of what people ate and drank in Israel at the time. Bread was the food the poor people had. It was the easiest thing to cook, to get your hands on. And it wasn’t like our Wonder Bread today — it was thicker, more heavy-duty bread, fewer chemicals. And the water was usually actually not healthy for you. There was a lot of bacteria and stuff; they didn’t have plumbing. So a lot of times people would drink watered-down wine, because it was actually healthier, cleaner, less likely to make you sick.
So he takes these things that are very familiar but have also been used as a sacrifice, and he uses those. The Last Supper was at a Passover meal, and they would take unleavened bread — which is why we use unleavened bread for the Eucharist — and there was wine. Unleavened bread and wine at the Passover meal. So that’s what Jesus used, and that’s why we do it.
Q: I just want to clarify something about the Byzantine Church. It is all in English — the Byzantine Mass is in English. Or their Divine Liturgy, I think is what they call it. They do have one liturgy that’s in [another language], but churches only do it certain times of the year, and right now they’re not doing it.
Divine Liturgy. Okay, cool, I didn’t know that. So the Byzantine liturgy, most of it is in English. That’s cool. So if you want to go to St. John Chrysostom at some point, that could be cool too.
Q: How many different orders are there? I know there are Jesuits and Francis—
Oh, religious orders? That’s one of the things that only God knows.
[Follow-up: There are that many?]
Yeah. The average religious order only lasts about two hundred years — that’s the average lifespan of a religious order. Whereas some, like the Benedictines, have been around since the year 400, so they’ve been around about 1,600 years. There are a lot of religious orders that pop up and then kind of die off. A lot of them are founded for a very particular thing.
There’s a religious order we have here in Columbus, at Holy Family: the Mercedarians. Not mercenaries — those are soldiers. Mercedarians. They were founded to ransom people from the Turks and the Barbary pirates. These Muslim pirates would kidnap people sailing around the Mediterranean and hold them for ransom. The Mercedarians were founded as a religious order to raise money to ransom these people back, or to say, “Hey, I’ll trade myself for this person. You let them go, and I’ll be your slave until my order ransoms me back.”
They don’t do that anymore — that’s not really a thing. At Holy Family they just run the parish. But a lot of times their order will do work especially with drug addicts, and they see it as ransoming these people back from slavery to their addiction. So there are lots of different religious orders that all do different things.
Q: I went to a Jesuit school in India, St. Xavier’s. They all wore white robes. They were Jesuits. I was wondering—
Because it’s hot in India. Diocesan priests in Africa and tropical places wear white cassocks, because black is really hot. It’s a temperature thing. It’s purely practical.
One of my friends went to Africa for an ordination, and he was like, “Oh, I’m going to buy a white cassock just for the trip.” And I said, “Bro, that’s going to sit in your closet ninety-five percent of the rest of your life.” But he wanted to do it, so he went and did it.
Any other questions?
Q: Where can we find these beautiful prayers that you read?
The Anima Christi — if you just Google “Anima Christi,” you’ll find it. The rest of them are in the Roman Missal, the book we use for Mass.
Q: How many years is seminary? Like eight years?
Well, for me it was seven. I had a college degree. If you come in right out of high school, it’s eight. So my four-year degree got me out of one year of seminary.
[Follow-up: So you’re learning obviously so much information to share with us as we go through the year. It seems amazing.]
Yeah, we take a lot of classes about a lot of stuff. It’s a lot of school. I did, what, twenty-three grades, I think? Something like that. No more. I don’t want to go back to school ever again.
I was maybe going to go through the Eucharistic prayer, but we’ve gone over an hour now. So we’re going to go ahead and close in prayer, and then if you want to stick around, I’ll go through the Eucharistic prayer. If you want to leave, then you don’t have to feel weird walking out while I’m talking. So we’ll do it that way.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. We’ll pray the Anima Christi.
Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me. Blood of Christ, fill me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus, hear me. Hide me within your wounds. Do not allow me to be separated from you. From the malicious enemy, defend me. In the hour of death, call me, and bid me come to you, that I may praise you forever and ever. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The Lord be with you. May almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
You’re welcome to leave. I’m going to get the Missal and go through Eucharistic Prayer I.
[Brief informal conversation while Father retrieves the Missal — a parishioner asks again why the pall is placed on the chalice (to keep the flies out), and another asks about his upcoming assignment. He notes the lease starts August 23rd, though he’ll probably start saying Masses down there a little before that.]
Walking Through Eucharistic Prayer I
All right, so Eucharistic Prayer I. We’ve just finished the Sanctus — “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.” Everybody kneels down.
“To you, therefore, most merciful Father, we make humble prayer and petition through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord…”
We’re making a petition to the Father through Jesus. Without Jesus and without his sacrifice, we couldn’t go to the Father. We need Jesus to make that reconciliation, that redemption, that recompense, so that we can go to the Father.
Also, real quick: “Christ” isn’t Jesus’s last name. It’s a translation into English from the Greek, and it means Messiah, or Anointed One. So it’s Jesus, Anointed One. It’s not just his last name.
“…that you accept and bless these gifts, these offerings, these holy and unblemished sacrifices…”
Again, in the Old Testament, when you were going to offer a lamb, it had to be an unblemished lamb. You couldn’t bring a sheep that a wolf had gotten ahold of and mangled one of its back legs. It has to be an unblemished lamb. So this is the unblemished sacrifice of Christ.
“…which we offer you firstly for your holy catholic Church. Be pleased to grant her peace, to guard, unite, and govern her throughout the whole world…”
It’s always good to pray for peace, for the Church throughout the whole world. “Catholic” here is lowercase catholic, which means universal. So the universal Church throughout the whole world. We’re praying for the Church.
“…together with your servant Leo our Pope and Earl our Bishop…”
We have a very structural connection in the way the Church is governed, back to Christ, King of the universe. He has his vicar on earth, the Pope, and then the Pope has his vicar in Columbus, Bishop Earl, who has appointed Fr. Wilson as pastor here. It’s a very direct connection when we pray for those. There’s a lot that’s been entrusted to them. They have this huge responsibility of leading all these people to God, so yeah, we should pray for them.
The bishop isn’t just responsible for the Catholics who live in his diocese. He’s responsible for all the people who live in his diocese. So Bishop Fernandez is responsible for about 2.8 million people. It’s his job to get all of them to heaven. It’s not just the Catholics. It’s not even just the baptized. It’s everybody who lives in his territory.
“…and all those who, holding to the truth, hand on the catholic and apostolic faith.”
One of the groups included in this is parents who teach their children the faith. We’re praying for everybody who’s teaching the faith. If you teach your neighbor the faith, if you teach your kids the faith — anybody who’s teaching the faith, you’re being prayed for here.
“Remember, Lord, your servants…”
And then the priest will pause for a little bit. Some priests pause longer or shorter. This is where it’s time to list out anybody in your life who needs prayers. I saw Carol’s list of people she’s praying for, before the talk, and it’s pages long. So you can just say, “For all the people on my list.” Whatever it is. If you have a couple of people, maybe it’s one person you’re praying for in particular — however you want to do it. In that pause, list all the people you want to pray for. This is for the living. We have a place to pray for the dead later.
“…and all gathered here, whose faith and devotion are known to you. For them we offer you this sacrifice of praise, or they offer it for themselves and all who are dear to them…”
So everybody here is included in the prayers of the Mass.
“…for the redemption of their souls, in hope of health and well-being, and paying their homage to you, the eternal God, living and true.”
So: good things on earth, and heaven. Your salvation, your health and well-being, and that you can pray better.
At this point there are a couple of Sundays where you add a different insert. On Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, the Ascension, and Pentecost, each has a slightly different prayer that gets inserted here. So if you’re hearing something different here, it’s not that the priest is just winging it. It’s one of these feast days.
“In communion with those whose memory we venerate, especially the glorious ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, and blessed Joseph, her Spouse…”
And then we list out a whole bunch of saints. It’s the apostles and then a bunch of the first popes. Simon and Jude — those are the apostles — and then Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus. I’m pretty sure those guys are all early popes, or at least a lot of them are. They’re all early Church Fathers, people who were bishops in the early Church.
“…and all your Saints.”
So it’s in communion with all your saints. We’re not offering this prayer on our own, but with all the saints — with all the saints in the windows, with all the saints who’ve ever lived, with those who aren’t even declared saints, all the people in heaven. We’re uniting our prayer with theirs.
“…we ask that through their merits and prayers, in all things we may be defended by your protecting help.”
So through the merits of the saints, and through the prayers of the saints: protect us. Let us be protected and defended from evil. We’re still fighting the fight, which means sometimes we still sin. The saints don’t. Through their merits, let us be made holy.
“Therefore, Lord, we pray, graciously accept this oblation of our service, that of your whole family. Order our days in your peace, and command that we be delivered from eternal damnation and counted among the flock of those you have chosen.”
Accept this oblation, all the things we’ve offered. Free us from hell — don’t let us end up there. Count us among the flock. Keep us in the book of life, among those who are going to heaven.
And then the epiclesis. Superman hands.
“Be pleased, O God, we pray, to bless, acknowledge, and approve this offering in every respect; make it spiritual and acceptable, so that it may become for us the Body and Blood of your most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Bless it, acknowledge it, approve it, so that it can become for us the Eucharist — so that it can become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus.
The Institution Narrative
Then we have the institution narrative, the part that talks about the Last Supper and the consecration.
“On the day before he was to suffer…”
That keeps in mind the crucifixion. The crucifixion and the Last Supper have to go together.
“…he took bread in his holy and venerable hands…”
And at that point the priest picks up the host.
“…and with eyes raised to heaven…”
The priest will look up, as Jesus would have, as it says.
“…to you, O God, his almighty Father, giving you thanks, he said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his disciples, saying: ‘Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you.'”
And then the elevation, and the bells ring. In the old Mass the priest faced the other way, so you couldn’t necessarily hear the words he was saying — they didn’t have microphones and all that. So they’d ring the bell three times to let you know, and then you’d look up and see the Eucharist. Just kind of, “Hey, quit praying your rosary. Focus here now.”
These are just the words of Jesus at the Last Supper.
“In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took this precious chalice in his holy and venerable hands, and once more giving you thanks, he said the blessing and gave the chalice to his disciples, saying…”
And then the words of institution there.
Something about the Last Supper: in one of the Gospels — I forget which — it says Jesus took the cup of blessing. The Passover meal had four chalices they would have used. There were four different times they drank wine, connected to prayers throughout the Passover. The cup of blessing was the third one. And then Jesus says, “I will not drink of the fruit of the vine again until I drink it new in the kingdom of my Father.” And then in one of the Gospels he’s offered wine on the cross. He drinks it, and he says, “It is finished.” That’s the finishing of the Last Supper. The Last Supper doesn’t finish until Jesus dies on the cross. That fourth cup is on the cross. Which is kind of cool. There’s a lot more about that — you can Google it. Some really smart people talk about it.
The Mystery of Faith
And then the mystery of faith: “We proclaim your death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection, until you come again.”
There are three options here. That one is the one from the old Latin Mass — it’s the direct translation. Mortem tuam. We do the Latin sometimes. The other ones are options that are new. They’re still good, but here at St. Paul’s anyway, we pretty much use that one.
This is the time when we’re addressing Jesus directly. He just shows up, and we’re saying, “We proclaim your death, O Lord, and we profess your resurrection until you come again.” You died. You rose from the dead. You’re coming back. That’s what we say as soon as he shows up.
There used to be a fourth option, before they updated the translation of the Missal in 2011 or ’12. How did it go? No, not that one. It was one that talked about Jesus and didn’t actually talk to him. I forget how it goes. “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” That’s what it was. I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. Jesus shows up, and then you’re talking about him and not to him. So that one got the boot. It doesn’t exist anymore in the Missal.
After the Mystery of Faith
After the mystery of faith, the priest continues on.
“Therefore, O Lord, as we celebrate the memorial of the blessed Passion, the Resurrection from the dead, and the glorious Ascension into heaven of Christ, your Son, our Lord…”
Mass is all of these things. It’s the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. It’s all three. The whole Paschal Mystery, all of it together, is celebrated here in the Mass. It’s not just his Passion. It’s not just one of these. It’s the whole thing. You have to have them all together.
“…we, your servants and your holy people, offer to your glorious majesty from the gifts that you have given us this pure victim, this holy victim, this spotless victim, the holy Bread of eternal life and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.”
From the gifts you’ve given us, from all the good things you’ve given us, from the bread and the wine you’ve given us, from our gifts and talents that we’ve offered to be offered at the Mass — through the good things you’ve given us, we’re offering to you this pure, holy, spotless victim. You’ve given us Jesus; we’re giving him back.
“Be pleased to look upon these offerings with a serene and kindly countenance, and to accept them as once you were pleased to accept the gifts of your servant Abel the just, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.”
So it calls back to these sacrifices that God was especially pleased with: Abel’s sacrifice of the best that he had to offer, the sacrifice of Abraham being willing to offer his son Isaac, and the offering of Melchizedek — this priest of God, the king of Salem, who offers the bread and wine there in the Old Testament.
“In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God, command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high…”
And the priest bows during this part. These gifts — everything we’ve offered. Not just the Eucharist, but the things we’ve brought: our sufferings, our good deeds, whatever it is you’ve brought as an offering to God. Let these be borne by the hands of your holy angel to your altar on high, to that divine liturgy, the Mass that’s going on in heaven.
The Book of Revelation shows us this. It’s one of those books that’s really confusing — there’s the dragon and all these weird symbolic things — but if you’re able to pull out the details, it’s about the Mass. Scott Hahn has a book called The Lamb’s Supper where he talks about the Book of Revelation as talking about the Mass. It’s a great book.
So: take these gifts we’ve offered on this altar and bring them up to your altar in heaven,
“…so that all of us who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.”
Let our offerings be joined to the offering in heaven so that we can be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing, so that we can have the grace we need to be holy, to live a holy life.
“Remember also, Lord, your servants who have gone before us with the sign of faith and rest in the sleep of peace.”
And then there’s a pause, and this is where you pray for the dead. Whoever’s died already that you want to pray for, list their name, or “the list of the dead people that I’m praying for.” This is where you do that, and there’s a pause that lets you insert your own names.
“Grant them, O Lord, we pray, and all who sleep in Christ, a place of refreshment, light, and peace.”
Let them — the people we’ve named or thought of, and everybody who’s passed away — let them have eternal rest in heaven.
“To us, also, your servants, who, though sinners…”
At this point the priest brings his hands together and strikes his chest, like we do in the penitential rite. We’re sinners.
“…hope in your abundant mercies…”
Jesus promises that he’s merciful, so we can hope in that.
“…graciously grant some share and fellowship with your holy Apostles and Martyrs: with John the Baptist, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas…”
And it goes through a bunch of martyrs. We can hope in your mercy, and grant that we can join these saints in heaven. We want to be with them.
“…admit us, we beseech you, into their company, not weighing our merits, but granting us your pardon, through Christ our Lord.”
Not weighing our merits. It’s not about us earning heaven. Salvation is a gift. It’s a gift we have to accept, but it’s a gift. It’s not by our merits that we reach heaven. Not weighing our merits, but granting us your pardon — granting us your forgiveness.
“Through whom you continue to make all these good things, O Lord; you sanctify them, fill them with life, bless them, and bestow them upon us.”
And then the elevation of both the chalice and the paten:
“Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, forever and ever.”
That’s the offering to the Father of all of our gifts, all those prayers that have been laid out in the Eucharistic prayer, the prayers before, all offered to the Father. And then we go into the Our Father, and we’re back into the rest of Mass.
Questions After the Eucharistic Prayer
Does anybody have any other questions about that?
Q: I remember that during the Marian year here in 1966, [a speaker] mentioned that we receive living flesh. I don’t know why it’s sticking in my mind. I believe what the person said about it — but living flesh?
Yeah, living flesh. It’s the living flesh of Jesus. If it were dead flesh, we’d be cannibals. That’s weird. We’re not cannibals. It’s the living, resurrected flesh of Jesus. Jesus is alive. He’s not dead anymore. He’s alive. And it’s his living flesh that we receive.
If you look at the Eucharistic miracles, this is really cool — when they put it under a microscope, it’s living flesh that they see. It’s one of those things where we believe it, but our eyes don’t see it, and that’s hard. It’s part of that trust in God’s goodness and his promise.
Q: You were talking about the corporal, and it seems like I’ve seen you lay out two corporals. Is that because there’s so much?
Yeah, we use two. We use two because at Sunday Mass here we’ll have twelve ciboria spread out around the church, and you don’t want to cram all of those onto one corporal. And since we do it on Sunday, we just do it for daily Mass too, to have extra space. So that’s why we lay out two. Good eyes.
Q: Before the offertory, when you say that prayer where you’re blessing the hosts — why do some priests say it quietly to themselves and others say it out loud?
Why “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness” — why do some priests say it out loud and some say it quietly? It’s just whatever they feel like that day. I don’t know. For me there’s not a reason. Other priests might have a reason.
On Sunday we don’t say it out loud, because there’s singing. That’d be weird, trying to do two things at once with the congregation. For me, honestly, if I gave a really bad homily at daily Mass, I’m probably going to say it out loud so we move people on and they don’t think about the bad homily. If I thought the homily was halfway decent, I’ll probably do it quietly, to give people a little bit more time to think about it. That’s honestly where I’m at.
Q: How come the church has stained glass windows instead of normal windows?
Ooh, good question. Why does the church have stained glass windows instead of normal windows?
For a long time in the Church’s history, most people didn’t know how to read. It was only very few people who learned how to read. So they would put Bible stories and pictures of the saints in the windows to teach people the Scriptures, to teach people the Bible. So that’s partly where the tradition started.
And partly we still do it because we get distracted easily. I know sometimes I get distracted at Mass too, and it’s good if we’re distracted by holy things that help us think about God.
Also, they’re beautiful. Stained glass windows are a lot more beautiful than plain glass windows, and they make the church a beautiful place. The church is supposed to look different from every other place, because what happens here is more important than what happens anywhere else. So making it a beautiful place that’s different from everywhere else is a good thing to do.
So those are a couple of reasons why we still use stained glass windows. They remind us of all the saints, all the different saints. They remind us that all the saints are here. They remind us of Jesus’s death on the cross, the Last Supper, all sorts of things — whatever the picture is.
[Comment: And I love the idea that Jesus is shining through us so that people can see him. Because if you look at that stained glass window where the light comes through, without the light it doesn’t look like anything.]
Yeah. It’s Jesus shining through us that makes us beautiful. When we’re just ourselves, it’s kind of boring.
Q: Last time you shared a quote from St. Anselm about salvation, and I tried to look it up afterwards and I couldn’t find it. He made some analogy, and I just don’t have the reference.
Yeah. Probably what I was talking about was St. Anselm’s theory of atonement, or — shoot, I’m forgetting exactly what they call it. It’s explaining how salvation works.
It’s not that the Father is mad and vents his wrath on Jesus instead of on us. It’s about understanding what is going on in Jesus’s sacrifice.
God loves us infinitely. When we sin, we reject that infinite love, which is an infinite offense. The love that’s rejected causes an offense in proportion to the love that’s rejected. God loves us infinitely; we rejected an infinite love through sin, and so caused an infinite offense. We’re finite creatures. We cannot make an infinite gift of recompense. So we are unable on our own to achieve salvation.
Jesus, then — the Son, second person of the Holy Trinity — takes on human nature. So he’s the infinite divine person who has taken on human nature. He’s infinite, but he has also taken on human nature. So on behalf of human nature, he can make an infinite gift of himself. He’s the one who’s able to make that infinite gift of love. If he hadn’t become man, he could have made an infinite gift of love, but it wouldn’t have been on behalf of humanity. He wouldn’t have been able to do it as man, which is how he chose to do it. Then he makes that infinite gift and is able to make recompense on behalf of all of us, to restore that relationship we ended through our infinite rejection, that infinite offense.
Does that make sense? There’s a lot to it. I spent several lectures in seminary on that. That’s the SparkNotes edition. So, St. Anselm’s theory of salvation, or something like that. If you Google it, you’ll be able to find it, I think. Hopefully.
Q: [Unclear — approximately:] At what point would you pray for other people?
Oh. “Remember, Lord, your servants” — and then there’s a pause. The priest will pause. He’s doing this, going through the Eucharistic prayer, and then he pauses. The first one is for living people, the second one is for the dead.
[Follow-up: The second one. Okay. So I can just sit there and do that?]
Yeah.
Q: What were you saying the second one was?
Let me see. I forget. “Remember also, Lord, your servants who have gone before us with the sign of faith and rest in the sleep of peace.” Those are the words we use to talk about the dead.
Q: Is there a recommendation about whether we’re supposed to look up when we’re praying?
If you want to. If you don’t want to, up to you. Do what you want. Whatever helps you pray better. If looking up is going to make you distracted, don’t. If looking up at the Eucharist is going to help you pray, do. It’s up to you. However you pray better.
Q: Are there more than just four Eucharistic prayers? Because I know I’ve heard—
That’s a great question. There are the four main Eucharistic prayers, and then there are — how many? One, two, three, four, five, six. There are six other ones.
The ones for children’s Masses you’re not allowed to use anymore. Those got shot down. They were disgusting, to be honest. They weren’t reverent in any way. They made the Mass kind of a joke. And you could only use them for a very short amount of time. So those aren’t used anymore.
But there are six other ones. Two focus on reconciliation, forgiveness of sins, all that, and then four others have different themes. I’ve never used any of them. I’ve only ever used one, two, and three.
[Comment: I think I’ve heard the Reconciliation one before. I think Fr. Charles used it.]
Yeah, that sounds probably right. And they’re good. Those other Eucharistic prayers are also good. I’ve never really read through them. I don’t know where they came from. The four main ones are what most people use.
Q: You touched on it last time about the Lectionary — is that the thing that you guys are reading from up there?
The Missal and the Lectionary.
Q: So the Missal is like — what do I see people come in with? The Magnificat?
The Daily Roman Missal has both.
Q: Then this has both also?
Yes, but it doesn’t have the full everything. Those, I think, only have the readings for Sunday Mass. The Lectionary has all of them. And that probably doesn’t have all the prayers that are in the Missal.
Q: Does the Lectionary have what the priest is saying, too?
The Lectionary only has the readings. So it has the first reading, the psalm, the second reading, and the Gospel. It has the readings.
There’s a really thick book, about that thick, with really thin, Bible-thin pages, that has everything. You can get it at Generations. You probably can get it at our gift shop. It’s called the Daily Roman Missal. It’s usually leather-bound. That has pretty much everything.
Q: Even what the priest is saying?
Yeah. That’s so the priest can travel and say Mass. You don’t have to pack the big one on the airplane. When I travel, I’ll take a Magnificat, because that has everything you need in it. It’s not going to have all the options for all the prefaces, but it’ll have one that will work. So it’ll have what you need, and it’s a lot smaller to pack.
Q: I was going to say, I know there are different versions, but the one that has a lot of prefaces in it is Living With Christ. In every month’s booklet — this month they had both apostolic prefaces, and they have the Marian ones, and they have one for the rural and suburban. And then when there’s a special one for Sunday because of whatever the feast is, they’ll actually have that one in for Sunday. So if you have a preference about your prefaces, I’ve found that this one is the best of what I’ve seen.
Oh, okay. Can I see one? So Living With Christ is another one of those Magnificat-type things. It’s got all the prefaces in it, if you want to see them.
We’re going to go ahead and close out with a Glory Be.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Thanks for sticking around. Thank you.