So, You think that Mass is Boring?
If we only knew how God regards this Sacrifice, we would risk our lives to be present at a single Mass. (Saint Padre Pio)
If you think Mass is boring, it’s probably because you don’t know what you’re experiencing! Many of us think of Church as that place you have to go on Sunday as a duty or obligation to God. That’s not wrong, but it’s not the whole story. God created us, and just as we have duties to our own parents and families, we have duties to God. We owe God reverence and we have to thank Him for creating us and creating the world. But there is so much more than this!
God wants us to be free from sin, sorrow, and death, and the liturgy is the way that those things are overcome. Just like a father wants his child to grow up happy and healthy, God the Father through the Son wants us to grow up to be holy and perfect, just as He is perfect.
The Second Vatican Council summed it up this way: “The liturgy… is rightly seen as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ”1. What does that even mean?
Two thousand years ago, if you were living in Galilee, you could have met Jesus in the flesh. He was walking around, teaching people, healing the sick, washing away sin, lifting up the fallen. And today, two thousand years after His death and resurrection, He is still doing those things–and He is doing them through the sacraments.
The liturgy is nothing less than the saving work of Jesus Christ continuing in the world to the present day. The liturgy is the ongoing work of redemption. It is how Christ through physical signs and symbols glorifies the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit and sanctifies all humankind.
But as amazing as that is, that’s not all! When we participate in the liturgy on earth, we are also participating in a certain way in the Heavenly liturgy. The Heavenly liturgy is celebrated by the angels, the saints, and the “great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues”2. In the sacraments, heaven truly comes to earth. When we sing sanctus, sanctus, sanctus we’re singing the song that Saint John heard the heavenly choirs singing3. Whenever we celebrate the sacred liturgy, we touch eternity.
When the Priest raises up the precious body and precious blood, that is Christ at the last supper prefiguring His own sacrifice–instituting the Eucharist for His disciples while He still walks the earth.
And at the same time, during the sacrifice of the Mass, that is Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary. For just the briefest moment, time and space don’t matter–and we are there, kneeling at the foot of the Cross with the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint John. We are witnesses and participants with all the heavenly hosts and with all the faithful past, present, and future. We transcend the mere bounds of time and space to kiss eternity.
You can’t get more exciting than that!
(excerpt from The Altar Server Training Manual, a work in progress)