24.Why Catholics Attend Mass so Frequently

You may have wondered at times why Catholics attend Church so frequently. On Sunday mornings from early morning until noon, a Catholic Church may be filled with worshippers not once but several times. Its doors remain open not only on Sunday but on each day of the week. Mass is said each morning and each morning many of the faithful are present. There must be a weighty motive impelling the Catholic to attend Church so often. It is true that the Catholic religion obliges the faithful to be present at Mass on Sunday. But though the sense of obligation has its effect in church attendance, the sense of fulfilling an obligation alone would not account for the great numbers that attend Mass on Sundays and on all days of the week were there not something there awaiting them, something that is eminently soul-satisfying, something that satisfies the yearning of the human soul for the communion with its God.

The Catholic hurrying toward his Church on a cold, dark wintry morning knows that the living Christ is there waiting for him. He knows that it will be his great privilege to be present at the august and divine sacrifice of Calvary itself. If it had been possible, would you have been present beneath the Cross on Calvary? Would you have been eager to take your place there beside His Mother Mary, the Apostle John and Mary Magdalene? Would you have been happy to share with them the sorrows of your crucified Savior? Undoubtedly you would. Well, you can have this great privilege once you come back home. You can stand again with all your forefathers before God’s altar while the sacrifice of Calvary is again consummated. You can experience that nearness to God, the same you would have experienced on Calvary with the eyes of the dying Christ upon you. You can lift up your gaze as the priest elevates the Sacred Host and see God, as surely as when the eyes of His Mother saw God as she looked into the eyes of her dying Son. “It is the Mass that matters,” said a notable English Protestant. He meant that it is the Sacrifice of the Mass that makes all the difference in the world between the Catholic Church and those other churches that call themselves Christian, but whose altars know no longer the Sacrifice of the Living God.

I do not fully understand the Mass, you may say. And that may be true now. But you would have understood the Sacrifice of Christ on Calvary had you been there. And once you have returned home, when you have pondered over the meaning of the Mass and have assisted the priest in offering up the Sacrifice of Christ, you will know that the Sacrifice of the Mass is but the renewal of the Sacrifice of Christ on Calvary. You will be overwhelmed with joy, again to be united with Christ, your Savior, as He offers Himself up to His heavenly Father for the Redemption of mankind.

23.The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

 

What other blessing can I look forward to if I return to the Catholic Church? You can expect to obtain this blessing. You will be enabled to go back again to the heights of Calvary and to take your stand with your forefathers beneath the Cross of Christ, side by side with Christ’s own Mother Mary and the beloved Apostle John. In other words, you will be able again to assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Previously we have spoken of that moment in the Mass when the priest utters the words of consecration. At this moment through the power God has given him, the bread and wine in the hands of the priest become the living Body and Blood of our Lord. This is the most essential part of the Mass. “For this is My Body,” said Christ. The priest says the same. “For this is the chalice of My Blood, which shall be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins,” said Christ. The priest says the same. For Christ and the priest are performing the same function. The night before He died, with His Apostles gathered around Him, Christ, the eternal High Priest, offered up His Body and Blood in an unbloody manner. It was the same Body and Blood that He was to offer up in a bloody manner the following day on the Cross. The priest today, and all days since the Sacrifice of the Son of God on Calvary, offers up the same sacrifice in the name of Christ and by the command of Christ.

This was the sacrifice foretold by the prophet Malachias in the Old Testament. God used this holy man to announce that the time would come when He would no longer be pleased with the sacrifices of the Old Law. The sacrifices of the Old Law would be succeeded and replaced, he said, by a clean victim. This new victim would be offered up as a sacrifice to God not only in Jerusalem upon a single altar but also in every part of the world. When Christ came, He sent His Apostles to all the world, and over all the world, the clean sacrifice of which He Himself would be the Victim, would follow their footsteps. “I have no pleasure in you,” said God through the mouth of His prophet, “and I will not receive a gift of your hand. For, from the rising of the sun, even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered up to my Name a clean oblation; for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of Hosts.” Upon but one altar in all the world is that prophecy fulfilled today. That is the altar whereon Jesus Himself is the clean Victim, where under the appearances of bread and wine through the hands of the priest, He offers His own Body and Blood again to His heavenly Father, as He had offered it that first Good Friday on the heights of Calvary.