Of all the liturgical reforms that have occurred as a result of the Second Vatican Council, there is one that I believe has not sufficiently taken hold. It is, in fact, the one reform on which all other reforms are based. This area of reform where we still have a great deal of work to do is that of reforming ourselves as we enter into the act of liturgy.
Specifically, we need to reform ourselves to understand what true participation in the liturgy really means. We have done a good job of understanding participation as doing something externally (responding, singing, standing, etc.), but we have not done such a good job of nurturing the interior participation that is the foundation for that exterior participation.
Essentially, this interior participation has to center around the connection we make between our celebration of the Eucharist and our everyday life. The more we make liturgical celebration an act unto itself, disconnected from our everyday life — in other words, the more we keep it in church alone — the less meaningful it will be to us. It is this disconnection that causes us to wrongly lament, “I didn’t get anything out of Mass.” However, when we make the connection between liturgy and life, we correctly understand that it’s never a question of what we get out of it, but rather what we bring to it.
Connecting our celebration of Mass to our everyday life can, of course, be approached from many different angles, but let’s look at it in terms of two key ideas that I will label “offering” and “preparation.”
First, let’s look at “offering.” Whenever we gather for the celebration of the Eucharist, but especially during the praying of the Eucharistic Prayer, we are entering into a profound act of remembrance, whereby the Church recalls the salvation that God has offered to us through the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus. In that remembrance, the actual saving reality of that Paschal Mystery is made present in our midst — or, more correctly, we are made present to it — such that the saving power of what occurred once in history is brought into our time and space and we are brought into it. This saving mystery of Jesus offering Himself to the Father, totally and completely, as Jesus did throughout His entire life and as He did supremely in his death on the cross, and Our Lord’s passage through death into new life, is present to us so that we might join the offering of our life to His offering, and thereby be carried up with Him into new and transformed life.
The General Instruction of the Roman Missal states it beautifully in paragraph 79: “The Church’s intention … is that the faithful … learn to offer themselves, and so day by day to be consummated, through Christ the Mediator, into unity with God and with each other, so that at last God may be all in all.” This, then, is the heart of interior participation at Mass: learning to offer ourselves; being formed in giving ourselves over to God and to others in loving service more and more completely; continually emptying ourselves of all selfishness and egoism so that we might give ourselves to God and to our neighbor. This can only be completely done when it is done in union with Christ and the Church.
Is this how we understand what we are supposed to be “doing” at Mass? Do we understand that participation has less to do with getting up and exercising a visible liturgical ministry such as reader or cantor and more to do with the way one is totally present and attentive at Mass, giving oneself to God with Jesus? Do we understand that what we are called to bring to Mass as part of our offering are the daily joys and struggles we have lived in the past week — the people and events that in one way or another have formed the way we lived the Christian life? Do we make the connection that when we give money in the collection, it is more than just a monetary donation for the support of the Church, but that it is a concrete expression of an offering of oneself as an act of Christian giving in union with the Body of Christ? Do we understand that since the heart of the Eucharistic action is that of offering, then full, conscious and active participation is really centered on our spirituality of giving, and the way it is ritualized and expressed at Mass, rather than on a spirituality of receiving? Holy Communion, then, rather than a passive reception, becomes the culmination of our union with Jesus in offering ourselves to the Father in union with the Body of Christ.
To truly offer oneself as a member of the Body of Christ, however, we must be properly prepared to do so. We’ll look at the idea of preparation next time.