Teaching Mass
When we come together for Eucharist whether daily or Sunday at our church, we come as a community of the faithful to join in an act of worship. Sunday Mass is an act of worship. We come to praise and thank God for all God has done and is doing in our lives and our world. Mass is a ritual action. We all live by ritual, doing familiar actions in the same way each time. Ritual actions often express meaning deeper and more profound than what appears on the surface. More importantly ritual gives stability to our lives which is why the disturbance of our rituals shakes us so deeply.
Ritual is important to our worship it allows us to easily enter into the worship experience without needing to think about what we will say or do.Our standing, sitting, kneeling and speaking are quite familiar. Ritual gives us structure, security and familiarity as we come to God at Mass to give thanks for all that God has done for us and our world.
Additionally the Mass is an experience of mystery. Worship in the Catholic Church unlike other churches intends to do more than offer an immediate experience. The Mass strives to enable our engaging with the mystery of God. Of its very nature a mystery cannot be understood. So the Mass of its essence is not instructional. It is worship. It is worship of God. It is a ritual (set or series of familiar actions) by which we open ourselves to the presence of God. The liturgy of the Catholic Church presumes the divine presence in three places at Mass, the assembly (God’s people baptized and gathered), the Word (the scripture proclaimed and broken open) and the Sacrament (the Body and Blood of Christ) made present through the prayer of the priest and people gathered at the table. Our role in the ritual is to participate through song, word and action. By doing so the familiarity of the ritual and the action of the liturgy enables us to enter into the mystery of God present to us. Experiencing God’s presence comforts, challenges and enables us to go out from here and transform the world.
