Mass Formation

Mass Formation

Resources and sometimes frank commentary regarding His Holy Mass

A Brief Cathechsim on His Holy Mass

  • What is The Holy Mass?
    • The answer to this question is open-ended, as any writing on The Mass must be. As The Mass is the re-presentation of The Sacrifice of Calvary, of The Sacrifice of Jesus offering Himself to The Father for our sins, as It is a participation in the heavenly worship already taking place, the “full answer” to this question is literally infinite (Ps 139:18).
    • Remember the vision given to the great St. Thomas Aquinas:
      • He had written many books, had even received a “compliment” from Our Lord Himself, when He said to Thomas, “Thou hast written well of Me, Thomas.”
      • And yet, towards the end of his life, God gave to Thomas a final vision, during Holy Mass Itself, which then caused Thomas to declare of all of his written works: “It’s all straw…”. The Mass, our foretaste of the life of heavenly glory, is “utterly beyond.”
    • Thus, it goes without saying (or should) that It should be offered with the greatest care, reverence, Faith, sincerity and gratitude that can be given. The careless, trivializing, childish, minimizing manner with which It is offered at most parishes in our day today betrays the loss of Faith, of understanding, of real spiritual fatherhood, and much, much more.
  • How Old is The Mass?
    • As we know, The Holy Mass was instituted by Our Lord Himself, and given to the His holy Apostles to carry on and hand down for the rest of time. Our Lord spoke deeply of His love and great desire to institute His Holy Mass (Lk 22:15).
    • However, Our Blessed Lord did not simply “think up The Mass on the fly,” as it were. The Sacrifice of The Mass and His Eucharistic Presence were always God’s Plan. Jesus is The Lamb, as we know, Who is even now worshipped in Heaven, but also Who has always been “The Lamb slain from the very foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8). Thus, God prepared the way for The Holy Mass throughout all the centuries before the time of Our Lord, even at the very beginning, immediately following the Fall of our first parents.
    • Thus, the reality is, if we include all of the time that God was preparing the way for the Institution of The Mass, by prefiguring the Offering of The Spotless Lamb Himself in all the ways and all the times mentioned in Sacred Scripture, then The Mass does indeed go back to the very beginning, to the acceptable offering of Abel (Gen. 4:4) and even to God’s promise of The Redeemer born of The Woman (Gen. 3:15) immediately after The Fall.
    • Thus, a priest holds all of Salvation History in his hands when he does what he does at The Altar of God during Mass, and proclaims it through his praying of the Canon of The Mass.
  • What is The Meaning of The Mass?
    • Again, the answer to this question is open-ended, can never be “fully answered…
  • Why is The Mass so important?
    • As The Mass is the worship of God, It is one of the most important parts of our lives. Even on weekdays when we do not go to Mass, the saints have been inspired to make the Morning Offering, during which we “connect” everything of the following day to The Mass through Our Lady to The Sacred Heart of Her Divine Son.
    • Additionally, it must be remembered (especially in these days of Relativism, self-centeredness and such) that The Mass is not something we make up ourselves or are able to change in this way or that way (again, this is the Real Vaticaan II! SC 22, 31). It is, rather, Something that is already “going on” outside of ourselves, outside of our parish, outside of our diocese, outside of our country, outside of our world! It is already “going on” in Heaven, The Worship of The Lamb densely, spiritually, mystically described in The Book of Revelation. Our participation in This Heavenly Worship must thus conform to the Heavenly Reality as much as possible
  • What are the many various aspects of The Mass that need to be considered when we are learning about, studying or discussing It?
    • There are many layers, many levels of answers to this question:
    • Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s Book, The Catholic Mass: Steps to Restore the Centrality of God in the Liturgy, describes The Mass in Its aspects of: Prayer, Adoration, Ritual, Sacrifice, Splendor, Sacred Action, Thanksgiving, Listening, The Church’s Life, Salvation’s Source, and The Wedding Feast
    • The great Archbishop Fulton Sheen called The Mass “A Drama” of Three Acts: We offer Ourselves to Him, we die with Him, and we receive new Life from Him; he further said that The Mass is “the continuation of Calvary,” here in our time and place with Him. He also affirmed that “The Mass is an Action,” an action of Christ, of The Holy Spirit, and with the cooperation of His Church.
    • Furthermore, The Mass is mystical, a Mystery – but saying this includes no connotation or notion of an esoteric “way out-there-ness” to it. These realities are concrete! Indeed, there is nothing more concrete than all of the realities of The Mass!
    • The Mass is “almost all, virtually totally” contemplative (ie, NOT ACTIVE, IS NOT OUR ACTION, NOT merely us “DOING STUFF” as so misunderstood and taught snd practiced in most parishes today)
    • The Mass is The Primary Embodiment of Tradition
    • The Mass is The Principle Organ of the Church’s ordinary Magisterium – Pope Pius IX
    • The Mass is The Sum and Summary of the entire Christian Faith (CCC 1327)
    • The Mass is very fast – everything happens very quickly. A few words and It is “over”
    • from a homily – the Physical Presence of Our Lord has passed into His Mysterious Presence in His Sacraments
    • There is Only One Mass
    • It is Unity, achieved in Him, by Him, through Him, for Him
    • All theological systems, liturgical studies, biblical unfoldings lead to This Truth: It is All His, He Is The Eternal High Priest – we are only invited to participate – correctly. NOT to make It ours, NOT to change anything, but only to receive, cooperate, listen, obey
    • The Mass is Jesus, today, in all His Splendor and Fulness of His Reality, across all time, all history pivoting around Him and His Mass…
      • furthermore, It is His Triumphant Victory, the casting out of the prince of this world
      • …thus It is concomitantly His Triumphant Return…The Eschaton
    • The Mass is certainly mysterious, mystical, sacramental, subtle, etc, etc, etc – but It is ALSO at the same time very, very, very CONCRETE
      • getting things “out of order,” or “mixed up,” or “un-centered on Christ” has massive, massive, indescribably deep and wide negative effects upon His Church, His people, and the world He came to redeem
    • Eschatological
    • Cosmic
  • What was Vatican II?
    • Vatican II was the Council of all the bishops of the world held to “usher in a new springtime” in the Church
    • The hoped-for springtime has not happened (yet). Books and libraries can be read about this reality. The saintly archbishop Sheen explains that “whenever there is an outpouring of The Holy Spirit, there is a simultaneous outpouring of effort by the evil spirit as well,” and also that the “spirit of the world” was let in, embraced, followed, with no critical discernment.
    • The results, today, are seen in bishops who do not know, teach, or uphold The Faith, The Mass is offered to “the people,” effectively, and He is unknown and ignored
  • Why is The Mass before Vatican II and after Vatican II so different?
    • In short, the bishops approved minor, organic growth in the liturgy of the Church. But, as proved by the ever-growing body of credible research, evil actors very high up in the Church who held great power and authority subverted the Council, and implemented disastrous changes. Thus, The Mass today, as It is (un)known, (mis)understood, (mal)practiced and “offered” is not what The Church has done for Her previous 2000 years.
  • Did Vatican II totally change The Mass?
    • No. The bishops of the Church authorized minor changes, organic growth, in The Mass and other parts of the liturgy of the Church
    • The huge innovations were introduced by evil men very high in the Church, and stupidly followed by shepherds who should have known better
  • Why is there no more Latin?
    • The bishops of Vatican II voted to continue, in the main, the use of Latin, while permitting the use of the vernacular in places.
    • Again, the wholesale abandonment of the use of Latin was never approved by the bishops of the Council, and should hsve been rejected snd stopped by the shepherds of the Church when it did begin happening.
  • What is the language used during The Mass?
    • Far, far more than childish, irrational arguments from worldly-minded persons speaking against the use of Latin, on the deepest levels the true language of The Mass is what the Church calls “the language of the signs.”2
    • Virtually all of these signs have been removed from The Mass following the Council, although the Council itself said nothing but the very opposite. Hence, there is no more sacred sign of a unifying, spoken, mystical language, signifying the One Voice of our One High Priest; there is no more sacred sign of our focus (of HIS focus! The Mass IS His!) on The Father; there is no more sacred sign of our union and cooperation with the choirs of heavenly angels, as they certainly do not sing cheap, lowest-common-denominator music with profane instruments which casts aside The Word of God; there is no more sacred sign of The Man Christ Jesus in the Sanctuary because now any old person can “be up there” doing as many different “ministries” as can be created; there is no more sacred sign of His Precious Blood being cherished by His people in expensive, worthy sacred vessels as everything is cheap and ugly and mass-produced; there is no more sacred sign of His Church taking painstaking care and concern for His Presence in The Sacred Species as Holy Communion is now distributed under both Forms dangerously and totally unneccessarily; there is no more sacred concrete architectural sign to proclaim to His people and to the world that “This is The House of God, Really and Truly” because our churches are cheap and ugly, are designed by those without the Faith, for a People without the Faith…
  • Why does the priest face towards the people, after so many centuries of facing God with the people?
    • This “direction” which the priest faces during The Mass is known as the “posture” of The Mass. The “ad orientem” posture, where priest and people face the same direction, is virtually 2000 years old and has incredible depth, significance, beauty and much more. The “versus populum” posture is an innovation forced upon the Church after the Council, but which the bishops of the Council did not even consider chaging. The ad orientem posture has a significance, meaning and value that cannot be overstated. Indeed, the saintly, erudite and always trustworthy Cardinal Ratzinger taught that it was essential.
  • Why is the music at Mass today so very, very different? And why so very, very poor and shallow and just plain bad? How can people be paid to produce such bad music for something that is (supposed to be) so very deep, important and meaningful?
  • Why are girls asked to be altar servers in some places, but not in others?
  • Why in some places are they strict about receiving Holy Communion, but in most places very, very easy?
  • Why are so many priests and bishops not credible (especially in the west, and westernized areas)?