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|  | The Mass (also called the Eucharist or the Divine Liturgy) has two main parts, the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. |
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| | Church teaching reiterates what Scripture states very clearly: there is no other sacrifice except the one offered by Jesus on Calvary. |
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| | Mass, therefore, is not a repetition; it is a re-presentation of that sacrifice. |
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| | He was a human being, so it was an act that took place in history and is therefore past. He is God, who is outside of time: past and future are always present to Him. |
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| | His death and resurrection are eternal acts that can be made present by the power of the Spirit. |
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| | power of Calvary — the sacrifice that takes away sins, heals, and transforms — becomes present and available to us. |
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| | Resurrection, too, is made present every time the Eucharist is celebrated. |
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| | Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice in order to bring us salvation and give us His Spirit. |
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| | Pentecost is the fruit of the sacrifice of the Cross and the victory of the Resurrection. |
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| | every Mass is a new Pentecost, a new opportunity to receive the Spirit afresh |
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| | Mass is Christ’s sacrifice made present again. It’s not recalled, as if it had been absent or were merely a past event. It’s re-presented. |
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| | the Eucharist is our sacrifice too. The New Testament calls us "priests," and priests are those who offer sacrifice. |
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| | If there is only one sacrifice, then somehow our priesthood associates us with Christ’s act of self-offering to the Father. |
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| | The Mass is also our sacrifice in that we join our own offerings to Christ’s. |
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| | "Eucharist means first of all ‘thanksgiving |
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| | In the Eucharistic Prayer, a long prayer of thanks to the Father uttered toward the middle of every Mass |
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| | Animals were very precious to the Israelites, and only the best were considered worthy for offering to God. These unblemished, perfect, animals represented — even substituted for — the life of the person who offered them. Sacrificing them was a sign of the worshiper’s complete gift of self to the Lord |
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| | The laity at Mass should not be silent spectators. Offering the Immaculate Victim [that is, Christ] not only through the hands of the priest but also together with him, they should learn to offer themselves |
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| | In the Eucharist the Church enters into this total self-giving of Christ, and we individually attempt to enter into it as fully as possible. Merely to go through the motions of the Mass without this serious and complete gift of self would simply be hypocrisy |
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| | Offering thanks to the Lord and giving our whole selves to the Father together with Christ is what the Eucharistic sacrifice is about. |
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| | during the preparation of the gifts, we should be putting everything important to us on the altar. This includes our precious treasures of time, ambitions, desires, relationships, work accomplishments, family matters, trials, and temptations. |
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| | Our offerings are added, then, to the personal sacrifice of Christ our head, giving us the privilege of sharing in His sacrifice to the Father. This is symbolized beautifully just before the consecration, when the priest mixes a small amount of water with the wine. |
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| | The paltry sacrifice that is our life is like the water that is absorbed into the rich sacrifice of Christ, which is symbolized by the wine. |
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| | the Church teaches that Christ is really present in the Eucharist |
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| | People may arrive distracted and preoccupied, but as they enter that church they’re no longer just scattered individuals, but members of Christ’s body. |
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| | At Mass we deepen our communion with the whole Church, as well as with the Lord. That’s what the sign of peace is about. |
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| | The sign of peace is not so much intended as a opportunity for back-slapping fellowship as a sign that we hold nothing against anyone. It means we renounce all bitterness, resentment, and jealousy as we come as one body to receive the Lord together. |
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| | Christ is present in our fellow worshipers at Mass, and what we do or don’t do to the least of them, we do or don’t do to Christ |
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| | Christ is present at Mass in the person of the priest. |
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| | Many of our priests are in fact inspiring in holiness and powerful in their preaching. Others are not. But the good news is that Christ’s presence doesn’t depend on the priest’s personal virtue. |
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| | Christ makes Himself present through the charism that the priest has been given through ordination. |
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| | Catholic priest wears vestments when he celebrates the Eucharist: it signifies that he’s acting in the person of Christ, not in his own person. |
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| | Jesus is the only priest. Thomas Aquinas put it straightforwardly: “Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers” |
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| | The ordained priest is an icon or image of Christ. Through him, Jesus makes His priesthood present in a very special way. |
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| | Francis always thanked God for being able to receive the sacred Body and Blood from the hands of a priest, whether worthy or unworthy. |
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| | the first part of the Mass centers on readings from scripture: one passage, a psalm response, sometimes another passage, and then a reading from one of the Gospels. |
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| | Through the readings, the Lord wants to speak to us personally, cutting through all our defenses and penetrating to the depths of our hearts with a nourishing, challenging word leading us to conversion. This has happened time and time again in the Church’s history. |
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| | The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since from the table of both the word of God and of the body of Christ she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life, especially in the sacred liturgy |
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| | We read the Scriptures first because they build up our faith. Christ is present in them, preparing us to discern the Real Presence of His Body and Blood under the signs of bread and wine. |
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| | In addition to the readings, the word of God comes to us through the prayers of Mass. |
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| | Take the greeting that the priest usually gives us when he walks in: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” That’s a direct quote from St. Paul: 2 Corinthians 13:14. |
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| | the Gloria that we pray on most Sundays: “Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth.” That’s Luke 2:14. |
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| | we sing “Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might.” That’s Isaiah 6:3 |
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| | What about “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world”? That’s what John the Baptist said (Jn 1:29) |
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| | centurion who told the Lord he wasn’t worthy to welcome him under his roof (cf. Mt 8:8); we quote him every time we pray, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you....” |
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| | The final and most special way that the Lord is present in the Eucharist is in His Body and Blood, present to us under the signs of bread and wine. |
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| | Jesus is God, and so He is omnipresent. But Jesus is man as well as God; His humanity can’t be present everywhere in the same way as His divinity. |
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| | Jesus’ glorified humanity is at the right hand of the Father. In the Eucharist and only in the Eucharist, though, He makes His Body and Blood present to us in a totally real way. |
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| | This is why the sacramental presence of Christ’s Body and Blood is so extraordinary. |
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| | In all of the other sacraments Jesus gives us His grace, says St. Thomas Aquinas, while in the Eucharist, the “sacrament of sacraments,” He gives us His whole self, His divinity and His humanity. |
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| | the transformation of bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood happens the same way Mary’s virginal conception did: through the power of the Word and the power of the Spirit. |
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| | God spoke and the world was made out of nothing through the power of the Word and the Spirit. |
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| | n the Eucharist, the One who said “let there be light” says “this is My Body” and “this is My Blood.” Through the power of the Spirit invoked upon the gifts, an awesome change takes place. |
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| | In theology, though, substance means something that underlies what you can see and touch; it’s the unchanging essence of the thing that resides under its appearances. |
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| | Transubstantiation, therefore, means that while everything looks the same on the surface, the underlying essence of a thing is changed. |
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| | In the Eucharist, though, the underlying, invisible substance is transformed from bread and wine to Christ’s Body and Blood. Everything looks the same as before. |
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| | in the Eucharist, Christ is as truly present in His Body, Blood, soul, and divinity as when He walked the roads of Galilee, healing and preaching. |
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| | The Eucharist is a meal. It’s the Lord’s Supper, as well as a holy sacrifice. |
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| | Christ becomes present so that we can not only see Him under the appearances of bread and wine, but also receive Him into ourselves. |
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| | The Our Father’s “give us this day our daily bread” is a petition for all our needs and necessities. The Fathers of the Church also understood it as a prayer for the spiritual nourishment we need on a daily basis — the Eucharist and the word of God. |
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| | Jesus tells the crowd, “I am the bread of life,” presenting Himself as the bread “which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world” |
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| | His words connect the Eucharist with the manna that God rained down from heaven to sustain the people of Israel on their Exodus journey. |
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| | Bread, then, is the sign of our daily nourishment, both physical and spiritual. |
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| | Wine is the blood of the grape, obtainable only by crushing the grape. It symbolizes the cup of suffering, the price Jesus paid for us so that we might be free. |
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| | Wine also symbolizes the cup of joy. In both Old Testament and New Testament times, wine was associated with festivity and special celebrations. |
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| | By evoking suffering, wine points back to Jesus’ death on the cross; by evoking joy, it points forward to the messianic banquet in heaven. |
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| | symbol of wine — the blood of the grape that becomes the Blood of Jesus — is even richer in light of the Old Testament. There, blood is equated with life. It’s not seen as sustaining life; rather, for the Jew, blood is life, and it belongs to God alone. |
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| | In the Eucharist, Jesus gives us a share in God’s divine life by giving us His own blood. |
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| | What is this divine nature? Essentially, it’s the inner life of the Trinity: three Persons eternally pouring themselves out in self-giving love for each other. This is agape, or charity, and drinking Jesus’ Blood gives us an opportunity to share in it. |
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| | In order for us to stay alive, every cell in our body needs to be bathed with the blood that nourishes, cleanses, and purifies our system. Similarly, taking the Blood of Christ in Communion will bring us to full spiritual vitality. It will strengthen and cleanse our entire being — spiritually and even physically, if it be God’s will. |
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| | The One we take upon our lips and into our bodies in the Eucharist is the same Jesus who raised Lazarus and healed the man born blind. |
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| | At Communion we receive Jesus, the risen Lord who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. |
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| | sharing a meal with someone is a way of expressing and deepening a relational bond. The Eucharist does this in a way no other meal can. We eat with God, He gives Himself as our food, and we’re transformed into Him. When we receive Him and consume Him under these signs of bread and wine, we become Him. |
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| | We come forward, put our humble gifts on the altar — our little sacrifices, imperfect good works, our need and brokenness — and what do we get back in return? We receive the Lord’s own life, bursting with power to heal and transform us. |
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