Bound in Love

Most of you have used a hammer. If you think about a hammer, you realize that the purpose of a hammer is to reach an outcome through the hammer. You don’t just have a hammer; the hammer is for something. The hammer is for nails being driven into wood.

Today, St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians offers us a chance to consider the question of why we are here at Mass. It offers us a chance to think of what Mass is for:

And even when you were dead in transgressions…he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us,…he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross.

Colossians 2:13-14

What is Mass for? It is for our salvation. Why are we here? We are here because of the Cross. 

The sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross is the key to our religion. Google’s AI, says the purpose of the Catholic religion is “to lead believers to salvation and union with God.” Google ignores the Cross, but at least AI understands that Catholics are concerned with much more than simply being nice to others, as good as that is.

The Second Vatican Council described the Mass as the “source and summit” of our faith. We come to Mass to adore our God, for adoration is the fundamental act of religion. We come to Mass in an act of deep love and reverence to not only acknowledge but revel in our dependence on God, the supreme being. We come to Mass to praise God and thank him for his sacrifice – the self-gift that redeems every sinner who will accept it.

So, Mass is for us to adore God, to praise God, and to participate in thanksgiving for his self-sacrifice.

The Mass is two experiences drawn from the heritage of the Israelites. In the first half, we have the synagogue experience. We read the scriptures and then talk about them for understanding. In the second half, which starts with the offertory, we have the Temple experience, in which offerings are brought to the priest who in turn sacrifices them to God for his glory in praise and thanksgiving. We come to Mass to hear the Word of God and then participate in the Sacrifice on the Cross.

The liturgy of the Eucharist is done through an intermediary rather than direct action. The priest takes gifts and with them offers a sacrifice. This is what the priests of Israel did: they took the pigeons and the goats and sacrificed them on the temple altars. Priests in every ancient religion made sacrifices of living beings to their gods. From the Israelites to the Incas, the pattern is universal.

St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians reminds us that the sacrifice we make at Mass is completely unlike what the Incas and even the Israelites were doing. The Incas thought their sacrifice would appease the anger of their gods. The Israelites knew God did not need their sacrifices but they offered them anyway to adore and glorify him and to acknowledge their own dependency on him. It was the highest expression of their religion.

In the Mass, we Christians go back mysteriously through time to Mount Calvary, and we are there as Jesus Christ makes the eternal sacrifice, the one that “obliterates the bond against us” as St. Paul put it. This is the sacrifice that leads to salvation and union with God. The sacrifice that Father offers in the liturgy of the Eucharist is a participation in the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, and Father can do that for us because through his ordination he can be “another Christ” for us or stand “in the person of Christ.” Through the mediation of this “alter Christus,” our sacrifice does find favor with God and we do have the chance to grow closer in union with him through Holy Communion.

Adoration is critical to growing closer in union with God. When we are willing to be like Mary from last week’s gospel and do nothing but be quiet in the presence of God, we have chosen the better thing. In our adoration, we actively participate in the sacrificial offering that the priest is making on the altar. Just like Mother Mary standing at the foot of the Cross, we may look like we are doing nothing, but we are doing something profoundly important.

We can do things to improve the environment, but there will always be distractions. It’s easy to complain about people making noise at Mass, but we know there was a lot of noise on Good Friday. People were jeering at Jesus. They were taunting him while he hung upon the Cross.

We see the priest offering the sacrifice. But the priest is not the focus of the Mass; only God is the focus. So another distraction can be the fact that we see the priest’s face while he is making the prayer of sacrifice.

It can require some discipline. The Church is asking you to see the Cross on Calvary and Jesus making the one glorious sacrifice while your senses are telling you that nothing special is going on. You know the first name of the man standing behind the table. He is looking at you and you are looking at him, and he is speaking prayers to God in your everyday language. So much of what is going on could seem to be recalling the Last Supper, for there is a table and a dish and a cup of wine. It looks more like a memorial meal than a representation of a sacrifice. We do celebrate the Lord’s Supper every year on Holy Thursday, but Sundays are about using what Jesus instituted at the Last Supper as a memorial of what he did on Good Friday.

Our use of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in Mass is a help to transport us away from our everyday world to something transcendent. In this parish, we pray in all three languages at Mass. Alleluia? That’s a Hebrew word. Kyrie eleison? That’s Greek. Agnus dei is Latin. All three languages were represented on the title that Pontius Pilate had nailed above the Cross. He wanted all who passed by to know that Jesus was the King of the Jews. Christ died for all nations, so having those three languages in the memorial of his sacrifice makes a lot of sense for the universal Church. And you don’t hear a lot of Latin, Hebrew, or Greek in your everyday life, so when you do you know something special is going on. The difference actually helps you focus on the reality of Mass.

How many of you kneel to eat your dinner? Yet many of you kneel to consume the precious body at Holy Communion. By adopting this unusual posture at Mass, you may more easily discern the difference between a memorial meal and the memorial Jesus instituted at the Last Supper. The Mass is so much more than an updated Seder meal; it is a true sacrifice.

We give thanks at Mass, and we adore Christ at Mass because of the love that his sacrifice represents. St. Teresa of Avila encouraged her sisters to think about what happens as Mass:

“If we paused for a moment to really consider what takes place in this Sacrament of the Eucharist, I am sure that the thought of Christ’s love for us would transform the coldness of our hearts into a fire of love and gratitude.”

What is the purpose of Mass? What is it for? It is for the transformation of our hearts. It is for us to admit that He is God and we are not. It is for us to admit that his sacrifice is the one that fixes our problems. It is for us to acknowledge him as Lord and Savior, and to thank him for the gift of the Cross. It is to do what he told us to do because he is our Lord and we adore him.