Understanding our Faith

Why go to Mass?

This is a question that many people ask.  And it is an important question because through all the length of our Catholic tradition it has been seen as central to being a Catholic Christian. 

It all begins with those words of the New Testament: “Do this in memory of me.”  And his followers from the earliest days of the new People of God, gathered to do what he did at the Last Supper in memory of him.  And as they did that, they began to discover the depths of meaning that this action had to it.  They began to discover that he was most particularly with them in the doing again of what he did and said at the Last Supper and that in that same action, he drew them into communion with himself.

As time went along, ‘going to Mass’ on Sunday became a law of the Church.  This was more and more insisted on when the people’s understanding of the Mass faded which happened very often due to the mass conversions of the peoples of Europe without there being sufficient understanding of the meaning of the Mass and indeed of Christianity generally.

It is part of the required renewal of the Church in our day, to be clearer about the deeper meaning of the Mass.  This is necessary if people of new generations, in particular, are to see the Eucharist’s importance.  Just obeying a rule of the Church is generally not going to have an impact in our times.

Added to this, we cannot have an understanding of the Mass unless we have an understanding of Jesus and the meaning of his gift of himself to us.  And again, it is crucial that we understand better just what we ourselves are doing at Mass, that is what the role of the whole community of faith is.  As proposed in the last two week’s input in this series of articles, the role of the whole people of God has slipped out of proper focus.  This is not just in terms of doing ministries, but in terms of the spirituality that we bring to the Mass and the spirituality that it evokes and develops in us.  More of this to come…..

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin