As we saw last post, the Mass we celebrate today is (pretty much) the same as what was celebrated only 100 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is our first WRITTEN account of what was happening around the year 155. However, chances are that what St. Justin Martyr wrote about in his letter to Emperor Antoninus Pius explaining how Christians regularly worshipped was happening well before that letter was written. So most likely the Mass as we know it today existed in its original form within a century of Jesus’ resurrection. Pretty amazing that we still celebrate it today, nearly 2,000 years later. Show me another Christian church that can claim nearly 2,000 years of a fundamentally unchanged style of worship and I’ll…well, it doesn’t matter what I’d do, because there IS no other Christian church with that solid and long of a steady history. The next oldest form of Christianity is less than 500 years old (the Protestant Reformation began on October 31, 1517), so we’ve got almost 1,500 years on them.
Anyway, as we’ve said before, one of the most awesome things about the Mass is that it’s celebrated the same all over. That’s because everywhere you go, the main priest celebrating the Mass (called the celebrant) follows the same instructions for how to carry the Mass out. When you go to Mass this weekend, you’ll probably notice the priest following a red book called the Sacramentary, which contains all the prayers for that particular Mass, the order in which to do things, and even the actions needed to be taken at different points of the celebration. However, beginning with the first Sunday of Advent this year, things are going to change slightly. See, every so often (whenever the Pope feels it’s time to “regroup” and make sure that the way we worship in Mass is the way we best understand our role as children of God to be) the Pope will call for an update of what’s called the Missale Romanum, or Roman Missal, which is the overall understanding, explanation, and directions for celebrating the Eucharist. One such update has just occurred, and we will be implementing these changes this Advent. So as we discuss the Mass here on TRC, we’ll talk about both what we do now and what will change in November.
Now I’m not too sure the best way to tackle an explanation of the Mass is, because there’s a lot of “back-story” and “additional information” and “words in quotes” that need to be understood on their own before we try to (as best as we can) understand why we do the things we do at Mass. So I think I’ll take my direction from Lewis Carroll from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland where he says, “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.”
We begin Mass with the Introductory Rites, which immediately brings us, excitingly (or "expectedly") enough, to our first tangent of the Mass conversation.
The Mass is broken up into four parts: (1) the Introductory Rites, (2) the Liturgy of the Word, (3) the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and (4) the Concluding Rites. Some people are of the mindset that the Introductory Rites are considered to be part of the Liturgy of the Word, while the Concluding Rites can be lumped in with the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Either way, the structure of the Mass is unchanged, and these two thoughts just change the categorization of the parts of the Mass, which in the long run really isn't that pivotal (unless you try to demonstrate how the two parts of the Mass can be likened to the two natures of Jesus--fully human and fully divine...but that could be a bit of a stretch).
The Introductory Rites are to ensure that the faithful who come together create communion and prepare themselves to listen to God’s word and celebrate the Eucharist worthily and are subdivided even further:
1. The Entrance
2. The Greeting of the Altar & the People
3. The Penitential Rite
4. The Gloria
5. The Collect
Today, we’ll just talk about the Entrance, and continue through the rest of the Introductory Rites in our next post. At the Entrance, the people who have all gathered at the church all stand and join in singing a hymn (liturgical song) together while the ministers and servers at the Mass all process in toward the Sanctuary.
Now, let’s stop for a moment and talk about singing. There is typically some sort of choir, or at least an individual playing music and leading the whole congregation in singing at Mass. Let me say that again, JUST to be clear: “…LEADING the whole congregation in singing….” We don’t go to Mass for Jesus and happen to luck out by getting to attend a cool little concert at the same time. The music ministers are there to LEAD THE WHOLE CHURCH in singing. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (published in 2001) explains the importance of singing pretty well, I think:
39. The Christian faithful who gather together as one to await the Lord’s coming are instructed by the Apostle Paul to sing together psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Letter of St. Paul to the Colossians 3:16). Singing is the sign of the heart’s joy (Acts of the Apostles 2:46). Thus St. Augustine says rightly, “Singing is for one who loves.” There is also the ancient proverb: “One who sings well prays twice.”
—By the way, St. Augustine is pronounced uh-GUS-tihn and NOT AW-gus-teen…just had to throw that in there…Ok, back to your regularly scheduled blog post:
So you see, the Bible, itself, tells us of the importance of singing. Don’t worry about how good or bad your voice is. Just sing. Now, your singing (or any other action at Mass) should never be done in a way that distracts others around you from being able to keep their hearts focused on the Mass, so if you have a really bad voice, don’t over-do it and sing with the volume and mannerisms like you’d have if you’d be jamming out alone in your car to any number of hits made famous by someone like international pop superstar sensation Ricky Martin, because chances are that would be distracting to someone. On the other hand—and this one might make you raise one eyebrow and gingerly touch your index finger to your chin—if you have been blessed with a very nice voice, you should be very careful that you do not sing in a way that makes you seem like you are TRYING to be heard. This can also distract people, because it can make you seem like you’re trying to give a performance for those “lucky” enough to sit around you. So sing, but do it respectfully to both God and your neighbors.
So that’s the Entrance and the start of the Introductory Rites. Tomorrow we’ll continue the Introductory Rites and talk about a few more related topics along our way.
Peace out, world…
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