The Most
Holy Sacrifice
of
the Mass
A Primer
for
Clueless Catholics
Part IV
The Road to Golgotha
We
had just said that,
“With
us, that new world of
unspeakable life and beauty will
be revealed — when we close our
eyes. “As the eyes of the body
close, the eyes of faith open.
And what they will see, discover
to us, reveal, will touch the
fiber of our being — and more than touch it, transform
it!”
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How so?
Once you begin to understand where
you are — really and truly — a change,
a profound change, will begin to occur within
you. You will be unable to prevent it. Initially
— even necessarily – it will come to you through
your understanding, and as you enter more deeply
into the realization of where you are,
your understanding itself will begin to be eclipsed
by something deeper still, by something more
vital.
Understanding will
“tell”
you where you are
— but faith will take you beyond the
appearances, to the the realities beneath them.
The change that will come will occur within
you — not in the appearances
of things about you.
You will have changed.
But as we had also said, before any of this
occurs, you must first understand what
is happening before you – and it is this,
and nothing less than this:
Jesus Christ is being crucified before
you. He is on the Cross! And
you are witnessing it. You are even taking part
in it!
It is not another Sacrifice, but the
same Sacrifice that
He enacted 2000 years ago. It is not a
“re-enactment”
much as great battles are re-enacted for
theatrical effect. It is an “enactment”, the
“same”
enactment, re-presented
to us (not represented to us, but “re-presented”)
to us ... enacted again while not being a second
or another sacrifice. It is the same Sacrifice,
with one exception: it is unbloody ... just
as it was unbloody when He gathered His Apostles
around Him at the very first Mass on
the night He was betrayed and before He was
crucified:
“The day before He suffered he took
bread in His sacred hands and looking
up to heaven, to you, His almighty
Father, He gave you thanks and praise.
He broke the bread, gave it to His
disciples and said: Take this, all
of you and eat it: this
is My body which will
be given up for you. When supper
was ended, He took the cup. Again
He gave you thanks and praise, gave
the cup to his disciples, and said:
Take this, all of you, and drink
from it: this is the
cup of My blood, the
blood of the new and everlasting
covenant.” |
But now you witness it before you,
take part in it ... see the unspeakable value
of your life (in His love for you
Christ suffered and died) ... and the consequences
of your choices (the sins by which
and for which He suffered, was crucified,
and died) ... right before you!
Time, we told you, had been left in the vestibule
as we entered the Church. It no longer divides
us from that day.
We have entered into something sacred, and everything
sacred is invested with the eternal, for it
pertains to God Who IS
eternal; Whose Son is eternal; the Son of God,
now here before us on that Cross of agony hewn
from our sins.
How then will you enter?
Everything that leads up to the
Canon of the Mass (that most
sacred part of the Mass in which the Consecration
occurs, when the bread becomes Jesus’
Body,
the wine His Blood) is a prologue to that epic
moment when He will be sacrificed before you.
When you passed the doors leading into the Church
and toward the Sanctuary, you began to wend
your way through the road that leads to Golgotha,
the Place of the Skull, the Mount of Crucifixion
— the Altar of Sacrifice.
Not unlike 2000 years ago, the people that line
the way, the voices, the talking, the laughing,
together with all the other things that compete
for your attention as you walk that road to
your pew – one and all, they will call you aside,
distract you as though to call you away from
a false prophet on a road well worn and ultimately
tiresome ...
Something has changed, however. This day is
unlike other days. You have begun to understand
...
How, then, will you enter?
-
What we have learned
today:
-
The Mass is the enactment, really
and truly present before you, of
Jesus’
Sacrifice on Calvary,
-
and you
have a very real part in it.
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