By Bob Sullivan
Editor's Note: The first part of this column was published April 4.
If I spend all week praying, sacrificing, reading Scripture, and stuff like that, will I get more out of Mass? Yes. But there is more to it.
Well-known podcaster Father Mike Schmitz has a talk about “not getting anything out of the Mass.” There is a very short version on Ascension Press, and he will sometimes give a longer talk at conferences. I heard the longer version last year at Steubenville of the Rockies.
The talk goes something like this: “We have all said, ‘I don’t get anything out of the Mass.’ I’m fine with that. But if you say this around some people, they will try to help you by saying something like, ‘you get out of the Mass, what you put into it.’”
Humor me with a brief intellectual exercise here. Think about that last phrase for a few seconds. Is that good encouragement? Are we supposed to receive according to what we put into Mass?
Another very important question to ponder: What is the heart, or the purpose of the Mass? Stop reading for a few seconds. Ponder that question and see what you form as your answer....
Pray for people who misunderstand the purpose of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, whether they are Catholic or non-Catholic. Try to share Father Schmitz’s explanation with them in any way you can.
The heart of the Mass, according to Father Schmitz (and hopefully it was your answer just a few seconds ago), is the worship of God.
Hold it! So I am not supposed to get anything out of Mass?
According to Father Schmitz, that is correct. Christ did not die on the cross so I could feel inspired by Father’s homily. Our role at Mass is to worship, not to get something.
Father Schmitz clarifies that, due to God’s infinite love and mercy, we do get a lot out of Mass. We hear the word of God. The word of God is usually explained or discussed in the homily. We receive the flesh, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. We receive the grace from the prayers of the Church, including all others attending Mass everywhere in the world. We also receive the blessing of the priest or bishop celebrating the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as well as many other graces and blessings.
Then he says this is not the “point” (i.e. the heart) of Holy Mass. The point of the Mass is our worship of God. He explains: “Worship is not what I get. Worship is what I can give. We think it is about us… no, no, no… we are [at Holy Mass] for worship.”
One of the key points he makes is that if we do not understand that Mass is not about us, we will never understand the point of the Mass. And if we don’t understand this, we will never be able to do what we are supposed to be doing in the Mass, which is “right worship.”
This is why people have challenged this reality in the past: they believe that Mass is about us. “Here I am, Lord. Let us build a house where love can dwell. Let us build the city of God. God will provide for all that we need here at the table of plenty.”
Father Schmitz says that we are at Mass to “…join our prayers, our hearts, our everything, with the ministerial priest, offering up the great sacrifice of the Son to the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit.... This is the heart of the Mass.... If Mass is about worship, what is worship all about? Worship is all about sacrifice.... The once-for-all offering of Jesus Christ on the cross.... We re-present that offering in an unbloody way. That’s worship.”
He adds: “If I walk away saying, ‘I didn’t get anything out of that,’ maybe that means you were doing it right.” He says this doesn’t mean you should be bored or disengaged at Mass; it means that you should know your purpose for going to Mass. Our purpose is the worship of God with a priestly heart (not as an ordained priest, but as kingdom priests due to our baptism) to join in the offer of sacrifice.
In other variations of this talk, he makes it clear, in a powerful way, that when we come to Mass with a priestly heart, we bring all of our gifts, burdens, victories, sufferings, blessings, defeats, joys, sorrows and everything else (our everything), and we place all of it on the altar with the bread and wine, so that when the celebrant prays, “Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice AND YOURS may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father, “we can truly join our everything with Christ’s sacrifice in the liturgy of the Eucharist, where we pray that they may be, “a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim,” or that they “become the Body and Blood of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ….”
If you are committed to practicing your faith for more than just one hour on Sunday each week, such as encouraged by the commitment card we discussed in the last column, you are much more likely to enter the church with a priestly heart, offering your “everything,” all borne by the hands of God’s holy angel to the altar on high during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, so you can be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.
What else could you want?
