The Mass

01The letter

What Justin told the emperor

“And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen”

Readings. A sermon. Everyone standing to pray. Bread and wine. A long thanksgiving. A room saying “Amen.” If you have ever been to a Mass, the Catholic Sunday service, you just felt the jolt. That is next Sunday, written down almost nineteen centuries ago.

The Catechism quotes this letter and says its basic lines “have stayed the same until our own day for all the great liturgical families.”¹

Which raises the real question. Why keep doing the same thing, every week, for nearly nineteen hundred years?

02The stakes

Why this is not just a nice tradition

Be honest. For many people, “Mass” means an hour of standing, sitting and kneeling, always half a second behind everyone else.

The Church calls the Eucharist “the source and summit of the Christian life.” Why? Because in it “is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself.”¹⁰

If the Church is right, the most important thing in the world happens every Sunday, a short walk from your front door. If she is wrong, this is the strangest habit in history. There is no comfortable middle.

It started in one room in Jerusalem, on the night Jesus was betrayed.

03The night it started

This is my body

Jesus sent Peter and John ahead to prepare the Passover meal.¹¹ They were shown “a large dining room, furnished.”¹²

ImagineLamps. A crowded table. A meal these men knew by heart. Then Jesus changes the script.

“And taking bread, he gave thanks and brake and gave to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me. In like manner, the chalice also, after he had supped, saying: This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you.”

Notice what he does not say. Not “this is like my body.” Not “this stands for it.”

He says, “This is my body.” Then an order: “Do this for a commemoration of me.”¹⁴

That night, the Church teaches, Jesus instituted the Eucharist to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross until he comes again.¹⁵ Christians have obeyed ever since, in a form whose substance has not changed.¹⁶

Did the first Christians really take him at his word? We do not have to guess. We have their letters.

04The evidence

What a bishop wrote in AD 107

Around AD 107, Bishop Ignatius of Antioch warned the Christians of Smyrna about a group of heretics. His charge is precise: “They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again.”¹⁷

Less than a century after the crucifixion, the dividing line was already this one. Is it really his flesh, or not?

Half a century later Justin tells the emperor the same thing: “not as common bread and common drink do we receive these,” but as “the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.”¹⁸

Jesus himself had put it bluntly.

“Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say unto you: except you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.”

The Church teaches the same today: in the Eucharist “the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.”²⁰ The whole substance of the bread and wine becomes his body and blood, a change called transubstantiation.²¹

That leaves the word that makes many people wince. Sacrifice.

05The objection

Once for all, and here

You may have heard it: “Catholics think they sacrifice Jesus over and over.”

They do not. The Church teaches that “the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice.” The same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the cross is offered in the Mass in an unbloody manner.²²

The Mass makes present the sacrifice of the cross, is its memorial, and applies its fruit.²³ Not a second Calvary.²² The same one, made present.²³

Which is why Catholics are so stubborn about Sunday.

06The day

Why every Sunday

Sunday is the day of the Resurrection, kept “by a tradition handed down from the apostles.”²⁴

The Church calls the Sunday Eucharist “the foundation and confirmation of all Christian practice,” and asks Catholics to be there on Sundays and holy days unless excused for a serious reason, such as illness or the care of infants.^25,26

Not Catholic yet? You are welcome at any Mass. Sit, watch, take it in. When others go up for Communion, simply stay in your seat.

One last line from Justin. Most people skip it. It is the best part.

07The ending

It ends at the door

Justin’s Sunday does not end at the altar: “to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.” Then a collection goes to the one presiding, “who succours the orphans and widows.”³

That is the whole shape of it. You gather. You listen. You give thanks. Then it goes out the door, to the people who could not be in the room.

Sunday is one hour of your week. That leaves a hundred and sixty-seven.