Understanding our Faith

What happened to the people at Mass?

The description of the Mass in the Missal, quoted in this column the week before last and mentioned again last week, would have made complete sense to the Christians of the first few centuries. 

In the fourth century, the Church gained its freedom in Roman society under the influence of the emperor Constantine and his successors. This must have been a huge relief to them. But it also meant that gradually the whole Roman world became Christian. But this becoming Christian worked on the principle that if you created a Christian society, the members of that society would gradually become Christian. This worked in some ways and not in others. It meant that people lost a sense of their Christian dignity and the laity came to see themselves and be seen by the clergy as sort of ‘second class’ Christians!

It came to be that the clergy were seen to be those who celebrated the Mass and the people attended it. But what the people did at Mass had little to do with the actual liturgy of the Mass. They said their own prayers which were not those of the liturgy and really thought that the prayer that really mattered was that of the clergy. The people were by and large illiterate and did not know the Latin in which the liturgy was celebrated. 

This began to change slowly from the late Middle Ages on, and of course picked up momentum over the last century or so.  The study of ancient sources and the instinct that the People of God was more important than they were seen to be, helped people to see that things needed to change. This understanding was picked up by the Second Vatican Council and the Popes following it. It has been given renewed strength and emphasis by Pope Francis. 

It is crucial, I believe, that people see the Mass as theirs, that they understand that it is something which defines the nature of their Christian lives, something that expresses their profound relationship with God in Christ. Just to be at Mass is not enough, we all need to see that we are ‘on the inside’ of the Eucharist that Christ calls us to ‘do in his memory’. It is ours and it defines us!

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin