Participation in the Mystery

Mass of the Lord’s Supper

Sometimes you just need to mix things up a bit.  Usually, I preach on the readings, because the Word of God should be preached; St. Paul says, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.”  However, tonight, to mix things up, I thought I’d preach on one of the prayers that will be said soon, what we call the Prayer over the Offerings.  This is the prayer that is said after I have prepared the bread and the wine on the altar, and have washed my hands in preparation.  

The prayer says, “Grant us, O Lord, we pray, that we may participate worthily in these mysteries, for whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is accomplished.  Through Christ our Lord.”  Maybe it sounds to you like any other prayer in the Mass, a little wordy, some unique words.  But this one in particular is very full of meaning that, if we are not paying attention, can gloss over us.  

We start out by asking God the Father to help us “participate worthily in these mysteries…”  Right now, we are participants in something.  We are not spectators (at least we are not supposed to be).  We are engaged in something.  So often the Church uses the phrase “active participation” when it comes to what we should be doing in the Mass, and because we are an active society, we tend to take it as doing something, like being a lector or an extraordinary minister or a choir member.  But active participation is always united to us giving ourselves, first and foremost interiorly, to the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit, in what is being celebrated.  Tonight, on Holy Thursday, we participate in the Lord’s Supper in a mystical way.  We do not simply remember it.  A lot of Protestant music will talk about remembering what our Lord did at the Last Supper, remembering His saving life, Death, and Resurrection.  But we don’t only remember.  We participate.  Simply remembering is for museums, which is what some churches have become.  If people understood that they participate in what we celebrate, churches would not be so empty.  

But it is not any participation.  It is a worthy participation.  And how do we worthily participate?  We respond to the prayers with the voice, we listen to the prayers with our ears, we focus our attention on what is being done, on the smoke of the incense, on the precious nature of the vessels.  And hopefully, we also come with pure souls, free from any grave sins that hinder us from being present with Jesus, just as Judas left the Upper Room.  He could not worthily participate because his heart did not belong to God.  Shortly after this prayer we are invited to lift up our hearts, to leave behind the worries and anxieties of the day, and to focus on what God is doing for us.  We say, “We lift them up to the Lord,” but do we?

The Upper Room, where Jesus celebrated the
Last Supper

In what do we participate?  Yes, I have said the Last Supper, but we participate in the mystery of the Last Supper.  This is not a Sherlock Holmes mystery.  This mystery is something which is infinite, but which breaks into our finite time and minds.  We often will mentally chide St. Peter for not understanding what was going on when Jesus tried to wash St. Peter’s feet, or the apostles who fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane.  But do we understand what is going on?  Do we understand that the mystery of Jesus’ Body and Blood in the Eucharist is a gift beyond description, beyond riches, beyond understanding.  St. John Vianney said that if we truly understood what happened in the Mass, then they would die of joy.  

This mystery is so great that angels themselves bow down in worship, and shield their faces from the miracle that takes place when ordinary bread and wine become the Body of Blood of Jesus.  The God whom the universe cannot contain humbles Himself and makes Himself present in the ciborium and in the chalice.  The saints, who worship with us tonight and at every Mass, join their prayers to the perfect prayer of the Mass, the perfect prayer of Jesus offering Himself to the Father.  

The place in Jerusalem where Jesus was
nailed to the cross

And the Eucharist, every Eucharist, is not simply the Last Supper, but is what the Last Supper points to, what only one of the Apostles would actually experience, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.  Tonight only makes sense–and every Mass only makes sense–in the light of the crucifixion of Jesus on Calvary.  Jesus gave His Church, His bride, a way that His once for all sacrifice on the cross could be accessible, not only in memory, but in reality, to every member of the Church throughout the ages.  And that is why the prayer continues, “for whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is accomplished.”  Every time Mass is celebrated, Christ’s saving work continues.  That’s why we offer Masses for people, that Christ’s saving work can be applied for this person or that person, living or deceased.  Each and every day that the Mass is celebrated, salvation is achieved by Christ.  And it’s achieved here, where we get to participate in it, not watch it as spectators.  

Of course tonight we use many of our signs and symbols to impress what the prayers say.  But it’s the same at a Papal Mass, and at Mass in the gym at Powers, and at Mass here at St. Pius X Church.  Tonight, as we enter into the three intense days of our Lord’s saving action of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter, let us set aside all earthly cares, lift up our hearts to the heavenly things, and focus our spirit, mind, and body on the great mystery of our salvation, accomplished by Christ, and made present for us in the Mass.  “Grant us, O Lord, we pray, that we may participate worthily in these mysteries, for whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is accomplished.  Through Christ our Lord.”

Wonder & Awe in the Presence of God

Nativity of Our Lord

            What can we say on this holy day?  What words measure up to the mystery that is celebrated in this holy Mass?  What rhetoric could match the truly awesome gift that we celebrate tonight: Emmanuel, God-with-us, a God who loves us so much that He sends His Only-Begotten Son?  There are no words.  There is but silent adoration.

            Not even the Gloria, the song of angels, quite does this celebration justice.  Their words, while fitting praise of God, pale in comparison to the mystery of the Word-made-flesh who dwelt among us.  That God should marry to Himself a human nature, never to divorce it from Him for all eternity, is a gift which can only be properly praised with silence.

            How struck with awe the shepherds must have been when they approached the Christ Child!  After taking in wonderment about the angels singing in the heavens, I can see them approach the Blessed Virgin Mary and Joseph, and the little child, and just stop and kneel down and look with love on the Face of Love Himself.  Words fail in the presence of the Divine Word.  Who could have guessed, though it was foretold by all the prophets, that God, from whom the Israelites shrank back when He appeared to them in fire on Mount Sinai, would reveal His presence in our human nature? 

            This silence in the awesome presence of God is not a vacuum of sound.  It is, instead, the active presence of the raising of hearts to the Lord in a way that not even the human voice can make known, but only our souls can share in the power of the Holy Spirit, with inexpressible groanings, love for Love Himself.  This silence is not an absence, but is a presence.  It is a power that is expressed as the union of God and His People is achieved in a marvelous new way.

            In this active silence nothing else matters, only Him.  All the cares of the world are irrelevant not because they have no importance, but because all things that are important are only important in Him. 

            And in this Mass, as in every Mass, Jesus Christ, the Divine Word, Son of the Eternal Father, chooses to become flesh, and give that flesh to us in the Eucharist.  In this Mass, as in every Mass, we have the chance to come before our ever-living God, who, “in times past, spoke in partial and various ways, but in these last days he spoken to us through the Son.”  Not in a pillar of fire, or trumpets, or thunder, as on Mount Sinai, but under the appearance of a host.  And as that mystery takes place, we, like the shepherds, kneel down in adoration.  We respond to the Mystery of Faith, but our words do not fully express what just happened, as Christ is made present for us again in the angelic bread, the panis angelicus, a food though which is not for angels, but in which Jesus joins Himself to us humans in one of the most intimate unions that exists in all the universe.

            And because of this, and especially on this holy night/day, in order to honor the mystery made present, there are special vestments, a precious chalice, smoke rises before God as the sign of our prayers, and the spoken word does not even seem quite fitting so those words are sung as an expression of our joy.  All of these are ways, including your presence here, that the holiness of the mystery is expressed.

            But this mystery is not meant to be kept to ourselves.  After kneeling in adoration we are meant to fulfill the words of the prophet Isaiah, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings.”  The mystery is not a secret, but a proclamation of joy to a sorrowful world; a proclamation of hope to people in despair; a proclamation of light to the people who walk in darkness.  This mystery of Christmas begs us to conform our lives to it, and to spread it to others.  If God loves us so much that He would join a human nature to Himself in Jesus, then what should we not give in return for that love?  What part of our lives is off-limits to the God who spared nothing for us?

            Let us keep our hearts silent and focused only on Jesus in adoration as we celebrate these sacred mysteries.  For in the Eucharist, as when Jesus was born, Christ our God to earth descends now, our full homage to demand.