Everyone Welcome!
Inner Life of a Catholic

The Profession of Faith 

CHAPTER THREE

Life In The Church

I. The Sacrifice Of The Mass

It would be impossible to form an idea of the Catholic mind without understanding in some degree at least, what the Catholic thinks of that which he calls the Holy Mass. It is to him far more than a religious ceremony or practice of devotion; it is a rite at which he is present, as if it were the center of all that he calls religion. He goes to Mass, and the essential of his duty is looked upon as done; no other service can take its place, nor any number of them. All that has been said in the preceding chapters has led up to this; indeed it has been difficult to exclude it from much that has been hitherto explained.

Looking at Catholics in actual life, we have only to watch them in our streets about us to realize that for them all the Mass is the focus of their faith. On any morning in the year, not on Sundays only, in any church that is open to the people, they are to be found in groups before the altar, rich and poor alike, hearing Mass before the day's work begins; go into a truly Catholic country, and you will imagine, at Mass-time, that every day is Sunday. When we look back in history we find the same has been characteristic of the Church's children in all times; of kings in their palaces—many of our English kings would not begin their day till they had attended Mass; of soldiers in their tents,—who would hear Mass before they went into battle; of the rich at their shrines, of the poor in their village churches, of the working classes at their guild assemblies, of universities and centers of learning. Before the age called the Reformation, the Mass was the common bond of Christendom; since that age it has still remained the bond of union above every other for all the Catholic world.

In these islands in particular Catholics have reason to make much of Holy Mass, for to them it has been in a special way their sacrifice. Their forefathers have died for it in hundreds; when the day of destruction came, their destroyers knew that "it was the Mass that mattered," and therefore did all they could to be rid of it. To say Mass was visited with death, nay even to claim the power to say it; our English gentry were penalized to penury for hearing it, our poor were often put to death, for this and nothing else. This is a tradition not to be forgotten; if for the Mass our forefathers sacrificed so much, we too, are prepared to make constant and great sacrifices both for its preservation and to do it honor. Out of our poverty we build church after church, and when they are built we spare no pains that they may grow in beauty; nothing is counted waste that is bestowed upon a shrine where the Mass is offered.

What, then, does the Mass mean to the Catholic? This is no place for a theological discussion, nor for an analysis of the Mass itself; though for a full understanding of what it means, even to the Catholic who pretends to no learning, both of these would need to be considered. It must be enough to state in brief what the Mass stands for in the Catholic mind, what the Catholic believes about it. To make what is essential clear from the first, the Catholic believes with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that Jesus Christ our Lord, the Great High Priest of the Christian Dispensation, has reconciled sinful man to God, and God to sinful man, by a solemn sacrifice of Himself to His Father in heaven. This sacrifice was completed on the altar of the Cross on Calvary; when completed it was sufficient, and more than sufficient, to atone for all the sins of all the world. There is now no need of any other; the debt of man to God has been fully canceled. The full price has been paid that may win again for man the life of union with his Creator; the homage due to God from His creature has been, in that sacrifice, fully rendered. Love has been requited; equal love has been returned for equal love; the flow of love between God and man has been renewed.

But the Catholic also believes that this one sacrifice, though completed on Calvary, is renewed every day on the altar, and will be renewed to the end of time. He believes that Jesus Christ our Lord, on the night before He suffered, instituted a means by which the sacrifice should be, not commemorated only, but mystically yet really enacted, wherever His Gospel should be preached, wherever His kingdom should be spread.

This daily renewal of the actual sacrifice of Calvary, is the Sacrifice of the Mass. As Jesus Christ our Lord offered Himself a bleeding Victim to His Father on the Cross, so, the Catholic believes, He comes down upon our altars every day, and renews that same offering of Himself to His Father by the hands of the priest. The Mass, in other words, is the sacrifice of Calvary itself, mystically yet truly renewed through all time. He who offers the sacrifice is the same, even Jesus Christ our Lord Himself. The Victim offered is the same; as He offered Himself then, so He offers Himself now. It is offered to the same Supreme Lord of heaven and earth, and for the same purpose. In the Holy Mass the prophecy has been fulfilled:

"From the rising of the sun even to the going down thereof, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation. For my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts" (Mal. i, 11).

Obviously much more than this would need to be said if we would state the position of the Mass in the order of Catholic belief and practice. But the grounds for our belief belong to another place; here we are concerned with it only in its practical side. Looked at in this light alone, three things are emphasized by the Council of Trent, which explain clearly enough the influence of the Holy Mass over the Catholic mind and the Catholic heart. The Mass, so the Council teaches, summing up all that has gone before it, was instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord Himself, was left by Him as a parting gift to His well-beloved Spouse, the Church, as a visible sacrifice to be ever in her hands, for three objects:

First, as a perpetual and living memorial of Himself. Second, that there might remain among His own a living representation, and not a commemoration only, of the greatest proof of His love, the sacrifice of Calvary. Lastly, that by this means there might be secured the most intimate communion between the human soul and Himself that even He could devise.

Let us consider these three aspects apart. First the Mass is a perpetual and living memorial of Jesus Christ our Lord Himself. When at the Last Supper our Lord and our God had by His word converted the bread into His own Body and the wine into His own Blood, He added these words: "Do this in commemoration of me." By those words He gave to His Apostles the power to do as He had done, to convert the bread and the wine into His own Body and Blood. In what special sense and to what special purpose, this is to be understood, St. Paul explains to us when, after repeating the story of the institution of the Mass, he adds: "As often as you shall eat this bread, and drink this chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord until He come" (I Cor. xi, 26). Therefore, before all else, the Holy Mass was intended to be for His faithful followers a perpetual commemoration of His Passion and Death, and that with the real Body and the real Person of Jesus Himself present. When His faithful assist at Mass, they assist in spirit at that scene on Calvary; they have before their eyes above all else, Jesus Christ their Lord crucified, Jesus Christ in His agony, Jesus making for them the great and final sacrifice.

But secondly, and more important still, the Mass is not only a commemoration, it is a living representation of the sacrifice of the Cross. Thus says the Council of Trent: "In this divine sacrifice which takes place at the Mass is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner, the same Christ that was offered once for all in blood upon the Cross.... It is one and the same victim, one and the same high priest, who makes the offering through the ministry of His priests today, after having offered Himself upon the Cross yesterday; only the manner of the oblation is different" (Session xxii, e. 2).

It is the same High Priest. As we have already seen, the Sovereign High Priest of the New Law, indeed the only Priest in the strictest sense, is Jesus Christ our Lord. It is true that in the Holy Mass He offers Himself by the ministry of priests who are but men, but He could not well to otherwise. Nevertheless it is to be noted that of himself the priest can do nothing, of himself he makes no sacrifice; he acts only by the free will and appointment of Jesus Christ, he is His vicegerent and no more, he provides but the hands and the voice by means of which Jesus Christ his Lord may act. Christ has willed, in His infinite condescension, to make His presence on the altar conditional upon the will and word of a mere man. The priest is a priest only in dependence on Jesus Christ; he cannot make himself, no man can make him, no power on earth can consecrate him; his power comes from Jesus Christ alone, and he acts only as His representative. On the other hand, once he has been duly ordained, as soon as the words of consecration have been spoken, and the act of transubstantiation has been performed, Jesus Christ Himself is there upon the altar, offering Himself to the Father; and the oblation made by the priest, and by the universal Church along with him, though it is united with the offering of Jesus, yet in itself is a thing apart. In the Holy Mass it is Jesus Christ Himself who first makes the oblation; the priest makes it only "through Him, and with Him, and in Him," <per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso.>" As on Calvary, as in the sacrifice of the Mass, Jesus Christ our Lord is the Sovereign Priest.

He also remains the same Victim. By the mere fact of the priest pronouncing the words of consecration, our Lord is present on the altar, hidden beneath the veil of the sacred species, the appearances of bread and wine; He is there the same Christ, with the same affections, the same aspirations, the same dispositions, as He had on Calvary. He is there bowed down in adoration before the Father, acknowledging before Him His entire dependence on Him as man, asking pardon for the sins of all mankind, ready again, if that were needed, to be "obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross." Since then we have upon the altar the same Victim, with the same dispositions, as on Calvary, we have the same sacrifice. For it is not the manner of the act, it is the act itself which is of first importance. If the immolation in blood on Calvary stirs us most, nevertheless, in the eyes of God, it is not the mere blood-shedding which is to be most considered. Rather it is the filial love with which that sacrifice was made, the deep sense of religious obligation which led the Son of God, made man, to accept such a sacrifice that His Father's glory might-be honored. That the will of Jesus Christ might be satisfied, that His love might give itself to the full, a visible oblation, and that an oblation of tremendous outpouring, was without doubt necessary; He would be content only with some sensible surrender that would correspond with the depths of His own devotedness. And certainly nothing could better express all this,—His desire to give all to the Father and to man, His love unbounded for both, His willingness to pay any price that they might be reconciled and made one,—than the immolation of Himself, wholly and entirely, on Calvary. Still, as we have just said, it was not the blood-shedding, nor the extent of the torture endured, that made the chief value of the sacrifice; it was rather the love that prompted the paying of such a price, and the sense of duty to the Father which carried the oblation to its last extreme. And it is this same love, and this same sense of duty, which has found the means to make the oblation perpetual. Jesus Christ, on Calvary and on the altar, is one and the same, and the same, also, is the sacrifice, His heart is there the same, with the same love, for God and for man, the same sense of justice due towards the offended Father, the same desire to give His all for man. In that same spirit the sacrifice is continued; in the Mass He has only found the way to make that continuance possible, on this earth, where it was first enacted, as well as in heaven, where He is "ever living to make intercession for us."

Lastly, as the Council of Trent teaches, the Holy Mass is a means of communion between Jesus Christ our Lord and the human soul. This third aspect of the Mass is not, perhaps, in itself the most important, but it is most important for our present purpose.

The Holy Mass is a means of communion between man and Jesus Christ, between man and God. It has already been pointed out how, in the ancient sacrifices, eating of a part of the victim symbolized a communion both with the victim and with God Himself. On this account what the Catholic affectionately calls Holy Communion is an integral, and indeed an essential part of Holy Mass, at least for the priest who offers it. And the Council of Trent urges that the faithful who assist at Holy Mass should do the same, in order that they, too, may share, more intimately and physically, in the spirit and life of Jesus Christ their Lord. For the object of the Holy Eucharist, as we have seen elsewhere, is our greater incorporation in Him, so that "through Him, and in Him and with Him" we may the better give glory to God, and be the more united with the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity.

First, then, Holy Communion incorporates the recipient in Jesus Christ our Lord.—For this reason, we may well believe, it has been instituted under the form of bread and wine. Under that form He feeds us with His Body, His Blood, His Soul, His Divinity, His whole Self. By so doing His life flows into us, and that is incorporation. He gives us the right to make His very heart our own, so that, as St. Paul and the saints are fond of repeating, there is between us but one heart and one soul. It is indeed a close union, closer can scarcely be imagined while we still remain ourselves, and it is union that is lasting. "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him" (John vi, 56).

It is also a sanctifying union; it transforms ever more and more the soul of the recipient into another Christ. Little by little, nay, sometimes by great bounds, its thoughts and its judgments are altered, its perspective and outlook are reversed; there grows within a consciousness of truth and of beauty which creates almost another understanding of all things. It ceases to consider life and the things of life from its own angle, from the angle of man and the world, it leaps to the other side, it looks back upon this world as if it had already passed beyond it, almost unconsciously it learns to judge of life from the point of view of God. More and more, as it comes to see with the eyes of Jesus Christ, and to feel with His own feelings, the will is conformed to the will of Him who alone is the Master. It sees and understands that He alone is the truth, He alone is the eternal Wisdom; it comes to will only what He wills, and in the way that He wills it. It learns easily, nay, spontaneously, to repeat with Him: "Father, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven "; and in the fulfillment of that will it finds that "peace on earth" which is promised to "men of good will." By renewed union and intimacy with Him the heart is drawn away more and more from anything of its own; in comparison with Him other things are of small account. More and more it learns to love Him who alone is worthy of all love; more and more it is led to look out on the world with His eyes, and to love it, and all in it, not less than before but more; for it is with His love that it now loves, and for the reason that He loves it, and in His self-sacrificing way.

After this manner does Holy Communion complete the sacrifice. It draws the soul of the communicant to enter into the soul and heart of the Divine Victim, its life into His life. It makes the very human body and human soul of him who partakes of it truly victims themselves; for it unites them to the Victim of all victims, in His work of glorifying God, of making satisfaction for mankind, of winning for men the graces that may lift them beyond themselves. No wonder St. Paul breaks out, in one of those many exclamations which seem to find their full significance only in the doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament:

"I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and the acceptable and the perfect will of God" (Rom. xii, 1, 2).

But in thus uniting the living man to the living Jesus Christ his Lord, Holy Communion also unites him to the Godhead, that is, to all the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity.

For in Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God, the Word Incarnate, are found the two other Persons of the Trinity, the Father and the Holy Ghost; They are inseparable, They are one God, They live one in the other. Therefore when the Son of God comes into the soul that receives Him He does not come alone. He comes with the Father of whom He is being ever born, from all eternity unto all eternity: "I and the Father are one." He comes with the Holy Ghost who, from eternity unto eternity, proceeds by love from the Father and the Son. Incorporated into Christ by Baptism, we are made by that act the adopted sons of God, we enter into His family; fed by the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, that sonship becomes ever more real and absorbing, the family tie ever more close, since it is no longer we that live, but He lives in us. Thus is realized, every day more and more, by every Holy Mass said, by every Holy Communion received, the whole aim and object of man's creation, the purpose of God Himself in making man, union ever more intimate between created man and God.

This must suffice to explain why, to the Catholic, the sacrifice of the Mass, with Holy Communion as a part of it, is the crowning act of all Christian worship and devotion, why it is the center of all that he means by religion, both in its teaching and in its practice, why it is looked upon as the most fruitful source and the surest preserver of the supernatural life within him, why he considers the loss of the Mass to be the greatest-of misfortunes, why so many have died for it, both priests and layfolk. It is a Memorial of the Passion, and as such it takes us to the foot of Calvary, there to contemplate, with time and space removed from between us, in sorrow, in love, in sympathy of fellow-suffering, that crucified Lord who has so loved us, who has given His life for that love, suffering, agonizing, dying, at the hands of those He loved, and for their sakes. It is a real and living representation of the drama of Calvary; as such it places in our hands all the virtue, all the grace, all the fruits and merit of the sacrifice which was consummated on the hill of Golgotha. In the Mass and through the Mass we are united with Jesus Christ our Lord, the Lamb of God, the Victim without spot or stain; united with Him, we, too, in spite of all our nothingness and evil, are able to glorify God as He deserves; we, too, are able by supplication and atonement of our own, to obtain pardon for our sins, no matter how great they may be; we are able to plead, with the assurance that we shall be heard, for all the helps and graces we may need for our salvation and sanctification. For Jesus Christ pleads with us, with unspeakable groanings, and His prayer cannot be denied; the Holy Spirit interprets our hearts for us and His voice is true. Holy Mass is an intimate communion between ourselves and Jesus Christ, and through Him with God Himself; a communion which transforms us into other christs, which makes us ever more and more like to the divine Model, and which draws us ever nearer to that perfection of the Father, held out to us as the Ideal of man.

For these reasons, and there are more, it may be shown why it is that to the Catholic the Holy Mass is the greatest of all his devotions, if indeed it may be given that name. It is the culminating point of his religious faith, the most efficacious of all his forms of prayer, to which he has recourse without ceasing. It has its own intrinsic value. It does not depend for its efficacy on the man who says it, or on him who hears it, or on the one who makes use of it; it depends on Him who is the one High Priest and the one Victim, Jesus Christ our Lord Himself. Its value is objective, that is, it contains the self-oblation and the prayer of Him who offered Himself once for all, and of all His universal Church made one with Him in her oblation and prayer. It is a perpetual memorial of Him, a perpetual reminder that He is with us still, "Yesterday, today, and the same for ever." It is an ever-living re-enactment of that one sacrifice by which He proved His love, greater than which not even He could have shown. It is a bond of union between Him and His own, a means of communion between the two, in love, in sacrifice, in life itself, such as only God Himself could have devised.

Thus does the Holy Mass far surpass every other offering, oblation, sacrifice that man of himself can make, every other form of prayer that he can utter. It is the continued oblation of Calvary; not a commemoration only, not a reminder only, but, since both Priest and Victim are the same, it is one with that first sacrifice. In the Holy Mass time and space are eliminated; the eyes of God look through the blood of Jesus Christ His Son, and in that blood all is blended into one. The pierced Heart on Calvary is still open, it is still the source from which pour down unceasingly all the wonderful graces by which God enriches His Church, by which He blesses the whole human race. It is the treasure beyond all others, the pearl of great price, for which all else is given, even, if it need be, life itself. There is nothing too good for the place in which it is established, nothing too rich to adorn it; the Mass has inspired the noblest of the works of all the arts, it has lifted mankind to the highest point of man's ideals and has brought it together as no concordat has ever done, or can ever hope to do.

Above all, and in the first place, it is the treasure of the Catholic priest. For it he may be said to live, and from it, in return, he receives both support in the life that is his and its recompense. He claims nothing for himself because of his high dignity; he is what he is, not for anything of his own, but only because of Him who has said "you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," and who has chosen "whom he would himself." He has received an anointing and a command; in accordance with that command, by virtue of the power given to him, he speaks and acts, not in his own person, but in the person, as the instrument, the voice, of Jesus Christ, who has given him the commission. He uses no words of his own, he uses only the words which Christ Himself used: "This is my body, this is my blood"; and by those words, as if Christ our Lord Himself were speaking, the bread is changed into the body of Christ, the wine is changed into His blood, Jesus Christ is brought by him upon the altar.

This is the priest's first function in life; it is its own reward, its own sufficient explanation and completion of his being. It is also his sufficient strength. By the Mass and from the Mass, there comes to him every morning the help that he may need in his daily round. From the Mass he draws the means by which he may sanctify himself and others, the souls that have been entrusted to him; the zeal of the priest will inevitably lead him to love of his morning Mass and, conversely, love of his morning Mass is a sure guarantee of his burning zeal for souls. For the same reason he is set in a place apart by his Catholic people. The reverence they pay him is a different thing from that given to others in high places; it is given to him for nothing of his own, nor is it ever taken from him, for he is "a priest forever." Wherever he may be, of whatever nationality, an ally or an enemy, however wanting he may show himself in many ways, he is for them a man apart. He has been specially chosen by God for God's own work; his hands have been specially consecrated to perform this special function; the whole man is now different from other men. He may fail and prove himself unworthy; human weakness may appear in him no less than in others, still the Catholic never can forget that he is what he is, a priest for ever without any undoing, marked, however great his sin and shame, with that which will distinguish him, for better or for worse, for all eternity, a vicegerent of Jesus Christ our Lord Himself in the most solemn function in the world.

It is the Mass, again, which wins the notice of the unbeliever as does nothing else. He cannot pass it by unnoticed, as its history has shown; though he may not understand, yet will he be either the friend of its mysterious fascination or its implacable enemy. It is the Mass again, that draws the sinner to the feet of Christ, to receive upon himself the cleansing blood that flows down upon his head. It is the Mass which gives the superhuman strength to win through every trial, whether from without or from within; by it and for it confessors have lived and martyrs have died, it has peopled alike the monastery and the home. By the aid of the Mass the meanest of the poor and the least instructed rises to the full height of his dignity, as the priest of the poor has proof every day of his life. On the other hand the highest amongst men learns in the Mass the duty of his place; nowhere more than before the altar of God are all men truly equal, and one, and free, and independent, and considerate of mutual rights. By it all alike are given a new vision of life, ignorant and learned, foolish and wise, great and little; from it they are stirred to new courage, to accept the very truth rather than appearance, or spurious word, or convention, to practice a life of realities, higher than those of this world, a life in itself seemingly simple but in fact heroic. The Mass, with the infinite horizon it opens out, lifts up generous souls to the heights of mystic union; in a word it is through the Mass, more than through any other channel, that the waters of Redemption are poured out and spread throughout the world.