To be Catholic, then, is to have the Mass at the center of one’s whole existence and consciousness. It is to be a “eucharistic” man or woman. It is to see the liturgy as one’s greatest “work”. It is to have taken one’s place at the Lord’s Table.

In just such brief comments as these we come upon a mother lode of significance. The various terms by which the Church has, over the centuries, referred to her worship are themselves rich with meaning. The Mass; the Eucharist; the liturgy; the Lord’s Table; Holy Communion; the sacred mysteries: each of these terms indicates an aspect of Catholic worship.

The Mass, to begin with. The word stems from the Latin words with which the priest dismisses the people at the very end of the liturgy: Ite, missa est, ordinarily translated as meaning, “Go: the Mass is finished.”

Go. That would seem to strike a somewhat peremptory note. Can we not tarry here in the presence of the Divine Love? Must we now go out into the world, back to monotony, routine, stress, and fatigue?

Yes, says the Church (and Yes, says the Divine Love). The whole point of what you have been doing here just now is that you be nourished and thus fortified by the sacrament.

Besides this, by the whole liturgy you have had your vision clarified. That is, every element of the Mass constitutes, in one sense, a touchstone by which you may test all that you do in the hours and days of your ordinary life. For example, the Mass greets you with the Name of the Trinity, as the superscript under which things are now to occur. Are you conscious that this superscript is written over the whole of every day during your week—or, shall we say, that you yourself are to affix it over those days so that all you do will be “in that Name”? In just such small (small?) ways as this, the Mass clarifies for us, and brings to bright focus, that which is (or should be) true of the whole fabric of our lives.

So when we refer to the Church’s worship as the Mass, we remind ourselves that from it we must “go”—out, now, into the routines of the day, fortified by what we have received here and instructed, by every gesture, response, and act, in the ways of that Kingdom of which we are citizens. (One other “small” detail might augment this point for us: we make the sign of the Cross at various points in the liturgy. Does this sign mark all that we think, say, and do during all the hours that are not liturgical? Someone stupidly, I fancy, holds up the line at the post office when I am greatly pressed for time or cynically cuts me off in traffic: The Cross! The Cross! Jesus, Savior, help me to turn from my ire and pique and, through that Cross by which I am crucified with thee, and by which I have signed myself so often, to learn the virtues of patience and charity. The Cross is the gate by which I pass from hell to heaven, both of which are at my elbow hourly.)

This all seems like very big freight to load upon the one syllable of the word Mass, and yet, like all other aspects of Scripture and the whole Catholic faith, this syllable opens through onto immense vistas.

The Eucharist. This, too, is a common designation for Catholic worship. The word comes from the Greek for thanksgiving. Here we find ourselves caught up into the realm of the Divine Love itself, where obedience, even to the length of self-immolation and hence sacrifice, turns out to mingle with the offering of thanks. We see this in every detail of Jesus Christ’s example: “I thank thee, Father. . .” seemed always on his lips. To “make Eucharist” is to offer thanks to the Father in this particular manner, disclosed to us by the Savior’s own self-immolation for us, not merely of uttering the words of gratitude due to the Father for his infinite bounty to us all, but of identifying ourselves with the perfect thanks offered by the Son to the Father—thanks that always rose from his heart to his Father and that was finally revealed for what it was, namely, a total self-offering, at Calvary. It is into these precincts that Eucharist brings us who wish to be configured to Christ.

The liturgy. We have already spoken of this “work of the people”, which is the particular point at which we mortals here on this earth gather to join with the whole company of saints and angels, and of the entire universe, in the only “work” there is, finally, namely, that of offering laud and blessing to God. All work is to participate in this: Adam and Eve’s tasks in Eden were to be a continual act of adoration. Hence there was no liturgy as such in Eden. There did not need to be any special setting-apart of an act to which all the rest of their work might be brought, focused, and made into an oblation. They never ceased to do this.

Sin wrecked this diurnal rhythm, and now work has become drudgery, and we, heirs of that sin, must consciously “re-hallow” our work by bringing it, with our selves and our prayers and our adoration, to this act we call liturgy. This “work of the people” is the act in which we discover and enter into that which is true of all work in Eden, and in the City of God, and in our world, if we will hallow it thus.

The Lord’s Table. “Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back”, wrote George Herbert. All who come to this Table know this salutary hesitancy. “Lord, I am not worthy”—certainly not to sit with the very apostles in this closed room, at table with thee. But the bidding is there. “I am the Bread of life. . . . Ho, every one that thirsteth. . . . Take, eat. . . . Drink you all of it.” Ah, Domine Deus. But speak the word only.

But it is more than the word, fathomlessly gracious as is that word. We have not accepted the invitation until we have actually partaken of the Food with which he has prepared his Table for us.

We would have done well, no doubt, to have hesitated a moment before swallowing the loaves and fishes, if we had been among the five thousand, or the fish baked on that open fire on the beach after the Resurrection. One doesn’t snatch at God’s gifts. But these gifts: my Body; my Blood. How can one do other than fall on one’s face, demurring.

“You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat.” Thus George Herbert. And thus all who wish to be numbered among the Christian faithful.

Holy Communion. This is the mystery into which we enter when we come to the Lord’s Table. Because the food is what it is—the very Body and Blood of our Host—the fellowship that comes into being at this Table is a far more profound thing than the conviviality that sparkles at our own feasts and parties. That conviviality is a thing of great value, to be highly treasured as one of the loveliest attributes of our mortal life. But, like all the attributes of our mortal life, it scarcely hints at the reality that lies at the far end of all conviviality. O Sacrum Convivium. O Holy Banquet. The fellowship at this Table is to be, as St. Paul phrases it, “the fellowship of his sufferings”.

Mysteriously, we the faithful are drawn into that fellowship. It is the deepest sort of fellowship, as we know from our own experience of suffering together with someone we love. But this “Holy Communion” is even more: it is to enter into our Host’s very life, and death. “If you do not eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you”, he says to us. This is the mystery, hidden in God from all eternity, and now revealed to us in the New Covenant—that we should become partakers of the Divine Life.

It is incomprehensible and unimaginable. One is left bemused. We (mortals; sinners; prodigal sons), to share the life of the Most Holy Trinity? Lord: be it far from thee to do this.

If you do not eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. You are dead. And the only life I have to offer, says our Host, is my own life itself. That is what I offer. This is the communion I seek with you—which I sought when I went to my death at Calvary and descended into hell.

Amen. So be it. I wish to be found in this communion, with all who partake of the Divine Life—with Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, with St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse, with Holy John, Holy Peter and Paul, Linus and Cletus, Felicity and Perpetua, and Agatha and Augustine and Benedict and Albert.

All of this is what we refer to when we speak of the Mass, the Eucharist, the Lord’s Table, Holy Communion. These are indeed the sacred mysteries. This is the Holy Sacrifice.

To be Catholic is to find oneself in these precincts.

The Mass may be said to be a diagram of what is true. That is, in each of its elements we find starkly drawn the very pattern of what is true in that region where God is acknowledged as King. We may observe this by touching briefly on those elements.

The first thing specified in the order for Mass is the Entrance Song, or Introit. This is sometimes said by the priest and people just as the priest arrives at the altar; or it may be sung by the choir if there is a procession. In this song we hear a scriptural text that we may take as a sort of ensign over what we are about to do. “He gave them bread to eat”, or “The Lord is in his holy temple”, or “Hear my prayer, O Lord”: the text strikes the note that will be heard reverberating through all that we do in the coming period. This text, of course, speaks something that is true at all times, and we do well to remind ourselves of such texts from time to time as we go about our daily tasks. But we are distracted creatures; and we have many responsibilities that militate against keeping our minds focused at the point articulated by the text. So it is designated for us as we come to this hour that distills all our hours. What gets blurred for us in the confusion of ordinary life (the fact, for instance, that the Lord is in his holy temple) is here brought into stark focus. During this hour, which “carries” all our other hours, we find the truth announced.

We are then greeted by the celebrant in the Name of the Trinity, and we sign ourselves with the Cross of Jesus Christ as he offers this greeting.

It is a most solemn moment. There are a thousand other greetings that might occur to the priest: It’s nice to see you all! Or, Hot weather we’re having these days, eh? Or, Thanks for coming, everybody. But no. It is not now Jack Smith who greets us: it is the priest, who speaks in the stead of Jesus Christ himself in the midst of his Church, which is what we all are now. The solemn occasion finds itself in the presence of the Trinity and proceeds in that trifold Name.

“Amen”, we say. So be it. We assent to being found here.

Then, as though immediately to reassure us who, if we have our wits about us at all, may well have trembled at the august Name, we may hear, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Ah. We are safe. What we find flowing from that ineffable Trinity is grace, love, and fellowship. We are welcomed, and received, and empowered. It is like arriving in heaven. (Indeed it is, says the Church: the liturgy is the clearest picture you will have on earth of how things appear in the City of God. And it is even more than mere picture: it is pledge [sacrament], that is, foretaste.)

“And also with you”, we respond. This answering back and forth between celebrant and people is “antiphonal”. Antiphons are responses, or even cries, we might say, which call back and forth from one to another. Heaven is like this, with the archangelic hosts crying aloud, “Holy!” and finding their cry echoed in myriad voices from the saints. The universe is like this, with day unto day uttering speech, and night unto night showing knowledge, and with fire answering to water, and mountain to valley, and sweet to sour, and silence to song. Antiphons. In the liturgy we are invited in to this state of affairs, which is true in that it is like heaven and the whole universe. God’s glory is such that it evokes these glad cries, which themselves bid from us our own gladsome cry of assent.

So, here in the liturgy, as the celebrant greets us with the grace, love, and fellowship of the Holy Trinity, we find that this charity coming to us from the celebrant calls forth our own fervent wish that he, too, may know this grace, love, and fellowship.

Too much to extract from one little antiphon? No, says the Church. When we are in the presence of the Most High, every syllable is ennobled and glorified and amplified, overflowing with more substance than its tiny stature might seem to suggest.

“To prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries, let us call to mind our sins.”

No. Surely that is too negative a note to strike just here? We have come, and we wish to be uplifted and made happy. Must you regale us with our sins?

Yes. Christian joy is not the flimsy and specious joy of “eat, drink, and be merry”, which huddles all unpleasantness and doom under the rug and capers about in a mad oblivion. Christian joy is, specifically, the joy on the far side of sins forgiven, and there is no notion of us mortals worth a moment’s notice that omits this bleak category of sin. All efforts to affirm ourselves and to gain uplift and to be positive are misbegotten if, in the interest of being “affirmative”, they tiptoe past this mire in which the taproot of our human identity is so deeply rooted. “Against thee and thee only have I sinned” (David), or “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah), or “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Peter)—these are the utterances that launch us on our way toward our true dignity and freedom; and only confusion, vanity, and fatuity await us if we refuse to take our own place among the men and women who from the beginning have approached the Most High with this on their lips.

The thing we approach when we “call to mind our sins”, and confess them, in the presence of God, Blessed Mary ever Virgin, and all the angels and saints, which the Confiteor obliges us to do—that thing, namely, the forgiveness of our sins, is the prize that no friend, no spouse, no father or mother, no counselor, no therapist, and no psychiatrist can offer to us. All human love, earnest and well-meaning though it may be, stops short of this, which only the Divine Love (which is our Host here at the liturgy) can grant us. It was to open up this fount of forgiveness that Christ suffered for us on the Cross. He is the Lamb who taketh away the sins of the world. Not merely the missteps or failings of the world: it was our sins (Scripture uses harsh words: iniquities; transgressions; wickedness) that sent the Son of God to Calvary, not our limitations.

Jansenism? No: Catholic teaching. Recordare, Jesu pie, quod sum causa tuae viae: Remember, merciful Jesus, that I am the cause of thy coming hither. Ingemisco, tamquam reus, Culpa rubet vultus meus: I mourn, like a guilty man, and guilt reddens my face. Such stark words used to be on the lips of our forerunners in the faith, in centuries sturdier and more frank than our own.

Let us call to mind our sins. This is not a neurotic indulgence, the Church would say, nor an exercise in pathological self-loathing. It is the lucid and candid acknowledgment of the mere truth. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”, says St. John; and truth alone is the region where our authentic dignity and freedom lie.

And when we have done so, we hear the words of forgiveness—from Almighty God. It is not Bill, our priest, amiable and good-hearted though he may be, who speaks here. This is the Word of God, sounding through the liturgy, restoring us to our true place as his sons and heirs, “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ”, St. Paul goes so far as to say. By our sins we had forfeited this great inheritance. By the event we celebrate in this liturgy, namely, the life, death, and Resurrection of the Savior, that inheritance is restored to us. To attempt to palliate things by substituting mere “brokenness” or “mistakes” for the thing that occasioned the advent of the Savior is to falsify the entire liturgy and to diminish the gospel itself.

Now: Kyrie eleison! we hear. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

Does this not suddenly plunge us all back into the darkness suffusing heathen temples, with the suppliants cringing and pawing at the sleeve of Moloch or Dagon or Zeus Pater? Surely this is not a Christian cry we hear? Our God has had mercy on us. “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace”, says the holy apostle. Why this uncertain note?

Because, says the Church, it is only by invoking this mercy that we have any standing at all, much less any footing for celebration. All is mercy. All is grace. All is gift. Any other notion is illusory. The liturgy here, as in every one of its elements, brings us into the precincts of stark truth. It is the Divine Mercy we invoke and in which we exult. So it is good for us to speak these words. They place us in the truth. It is not a matter of ruefully trying to placate a haughty deity: rather, in these words we announce, gladly, to heaven and hell, as it were (as it were? it will very likely turn out to have been literally the case), the warrant we have for being found at this liturgy in the first place.

There is another note in this sequence. Kyrie! was the cry in the ancient world with which the populace would greet the emperor. This was taken over by the Church as an acclamation to Christ, thereby testifying that Jesus Christ is Lord. This was very much the note struck in the first apostolic preaching: St. Peter rang the changes on this. This Jesus, whom you crucified, God has made both Lord and Christ. Kyrie!

Then: Gloria in excelsis Deo! What should we say, we might well ask ourselves anxiously as we cross the threshold into the presence of the Most High. Protocol dictated what you said (or did not say) when you approached the khan, the tsar, the sultan, or the king. No foolish talk here. (St. Peter tried to find helpful things to say when the princely glory of Jesus was fleetingly glimpsed on Mt. Tabor and was quickly hushed. No gabble here.)

What shall we say, then? Our own words clatter dismally. Say Gloria! Take your script from the angels’ acclamation to the Infant God at Bethlehem. Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te: we praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee. Quoniam tu solus sanctus, tu solus Dominus: for thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord.

Worship, or adoration, is not an achievement easily gained by us distracted mortals. Our efforts, as often as not, trail off into bathos. The words supplied to us by ancient usage in such canticles as the Gloria (or in the Te Deum, now rarely heard) are an immense gift to us all, since they do for us what our own pitiable resources cannot do. They lift us up, out of the shallow puddle of those resources, and place us with the choirs of angels “who forever laud and magnify Thy glorious Name, evermore praising Thee and saying, Holy, Holy, Holy” (another one of the canticles that the liturgy invites us to join).

It is in such canticles that we encounter true solemnity. Here is how C. S. Lewis explained this rich and misunderstood word for his readers:

[Solemnity] implies the opposite of what is familiar, free, and easy, or ordinary. But it does not suggest gloom, oppression, or austerity. The ball in the first act of Romeo and Juliet was a “solemnity”. . . .A great mass by Mozart or Beethoven is as much a solemnity in its hilarious gloria as in its poignant crucifixus est. Feasts are, in this sense, more solemn than fasts. Easter is solempne, Good Friday is not. The Solempne is the festal which is also the stately and the ceremonial, the proper occasion for pomp—and the very fact that pompous is now used only in a bad sense measures the degree to which we have lost the old idea of “solemnity”. To recover it you must think of a court ball, or a coronation, or a victory march, as these things appear to people who enjoy them; in an age when every one puts on his oldest clothes to be happy in, you must reawake to the simpler state of mind in which people put on gold and scarlet to be happy in.[1]

The Gloria is not always sung or said at Mass. In Advent and during Lent it is omitted, in keeping with the austere, and even penitential, ethos of those seasons. But when it is used, Christian believers are given the occasion to join themselves to the very bliss of heaven.

After the Gloria, the Collect. This is the brief prayer, often consisting of one sentence only, that summons us and our thoughts and forms into a petition the particular theme that characterizes the liturgy for that day. On September 29, for example, when the Church celebrates the feast of the three archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, we hear: “God our Father, in a wonderful way you guide the work of angels and men. May those who serve you constantly in heaven keep our lives safe from all harm on earth.” Or again, on the First Sunday in Advent, which is the beginning of the Church’s year, we pray: “All-powerful God, increase our strength of will for doing good that Christ may find an eager welcome at his coming and call us to his side in the kingdom of heaven. . . .” During “Ordinary Time”, from Pentecost to Advent, and when no special feast or memorial is observed, the Collect may simply petition God for some grace for us or for diligence or faithfulness on our part.

The Collect is a significant element in the liturgy, if one may speak thus, when every element is profoundly significant. This prayer reminds us of the unity that binds us together—all who are here at this Mass, all Christians who are at Mass anywhere in the world today, all Christians who have ever constituted the Church, from Pentecost until now, and all the heavenly host of angels. That is, it is not merely a set of worthy sentiments that occur at the moment to the mind of our excellent pastor (such a prayer would be customary in many places of Christian assembly). Rather, because it is specified for all Masses all over the world on that day, it knits the praying Church together in a global fabric—or better, it acknowledges the seamless cloth into which all of us are joined at our baptism. The Church is not merely an immense aggregate of believing individuals. She is one—the Mystical Body. The Collect reminds us of this.

Now follow the readings from Scripture. On most Sundays we hear a reading from the Old Testament (sometimes it is from Acts), then a psalm, then a reading from one of the epistles or the Apocalypse, and then the Gospel. We hear: a point worth pondering. “Faith cometh by hearing”, says St. Paul. We, literate age that we are, might incline to substitute, “Faith cometh by reading.” And certainly faith can indeed come by reading. But the Bible is most characteristically itself when it appears in that context from which it sprang, namely, the Church. The ancient Church was keenly conscious of this, not simply because there were no printing presses and the faithful could not all have their own copies of Scripture. The matter was somewhat more substantial: the Word of God, written down in the text, comes alive in a unique and fitting way at the liturgy. For here is the whole picture. It is not just the solitary believer with the text in his lap. Here we find the Church, that is, the Body of Christ, gathered under her Head and High Priest, Jesus, attending to his Word. For all the words of Scripture, Old as well as New Testaments, are to be received as the Word of God, in a way not true of the most exalted of human words (Plato, say, or Shakespeare). It was the people of God among whom that Word was spoken and who were chosen to write it down. It was for Israel and for the Church. It was the Church that wrote, recognized, collected, and ratified this Bible. No committee, no publisher, no university, and no institute of scholarly clerics was responsible. The Bible, always the Word of God, is most visibly, or audibly we should say, itself in that Church, that is, at the liturgy.

In the first reading, which is usually taken from the Old Testament, we encounter the Law, the Prophets, the history of Israel, and the Wisdom literature. “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope”, says St. Paul (Rom 15:4). The Church has always received the Hebrew scriptures as the record of God’s purposes in creation and, then, in redemption. “When we fell into evil and death, you sent Jesus”: the Old Testament is big with the anticipation of this event. From the skins prepared by God to cover the guilty Adam and Eve (blood was shed for those garments), on through the patriarchs, the prophets, the kings, and Israel’s exile and return, we may see the preparatio for the Incarnation. So the Church usually offers us readings from this Testament at the liturgy. During the season of Easter this reading is from the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke’s account of what happened in the early days of the infant Church.

Then the “Responsorial Psalm”. The psalms are the songs of Zion. In them we find the most acute probing of the human spirit ever achieved. The poetry of Goethe or Keats or Yeats, noble record of the human spirit though we may find there, seems obtuse next to the psalms. Here the depths of the human spirit are laid open. Every utterance is spoken to God or in the presence of God. Hence the “truth” of the psalms: utterance finds the purity toward which it strains when it is thus spoken. Joy, perplexity, fear, rage, melancholy, despair, trust, exultation, dereliction: every chamber of the human heart is probed. Nothing is lacking. There is no cry of mortal man that does not find itself perfectly articulated here.

The Church, very early on, saw that insofar as she kept herself daily suffused with psalmody, she would remain in the courts of the Most High. This is the reason for the monastic Office: all the psalms recited, in their entirety, day by day, in behalf of us all, by cloistered men and women who had consecrated themselves wholly to such service, at the cost of their entire lives. Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion: Unto thee shall songs be sung in Zion, O God. It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty and Ever-living God: these “all times and all places” are distilled in religious houses and also made present to us here in the liturgy. When we join ourselves to the psalm by responding antiphonally at this point in the liturgy, we find ourselves in the actuality of this ceaseless offering of song that ascends to God from the whole creation. These psalms are our cries, aspirations, and votive offerings to him. (Even the dismaying “imprecatory” psalms are true, not in the sense of recommending to us such attitudes, but rather of probing to the bottom our mortal, even hateful, capacity for resentment and vengefulness.)

The reading from one of the New Testament books other than the Gospels now follows, on Sundays and feast days at least (on other days there are only two readings, one from either the Old Testament or the New, and then the Gospel).

Here we find apostolic teaching that accords in some thematic way with what has been adumbrated in the first reading. We do well to attend here with all possible attention: these are our instructions or examples for our edification. We will be judged one fine day on the extent to which the word we have heard has “become flesh” in our own selves. For example, we hear the word, “Be ye kind, one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.” Those are words. Have they—or rather, has it: it is the Word of God—been received into my innermost being in faith and obedience, so that what is read from the ambo now becomes actual (incarnate) in my flesh, by my behavior toward everyone else? Et verbum caro factum est: we say those words referring to the Word that came to the Virgin and that became flesh in her flesh. Do all the words of God thus find in my soul that same “Be it done unto me according to thy word” that must precede any fructifying of word into tangible actuality in my being?

At the end of each of the readings so far, the liturgy asks us to respond, “Thanks be to God.”

A crux. Gratitude may be the farthest thing from me upon hearing words as troublesome, say, as “Be ye kind.” I might incline, rather, to pass it off with “Lovely sentiments to be sure”, or, “Well, there are limits. Let’s be realistic”, or “Anon, anon.”

Alas. “Thanks be to God” is what the liturgy waits to hear from me. It is not the mere shell of a formula. It is meaty, and I must bite down hard upon it. The “thanks be to God” may well have to be spoken from my will before it flowers in my feelings. Once again, I find myself hailed by sheer truth in the liturgy, the truth that illumines the whole City of God, whose citizen I hope one day to have learned how to be by thus thankfully receiving the Word.

So: whether the reading has held consolation for me, or encouragement or challenge or instruction or rebuke, I am to say (and mean—or at least fully intend to mean), “Thanks be to God.”

The reading of the Gospel is set apart with a certain amount of ceremony. In some churches and on some festal occasions, the Gospel Book is carried in procession down from the altar into the center aisle, with lights and incense. The point here is that we have Jesus Christ himself taking his place in the midst of his own people. The Gospel takes us directly into his life on earth and speaks directly to us with his words. We are, at this point, as close to the center as Scripture can bring us. If there is no procession, we will nonetheless still be awakened by what leads up to the reading. Alleluia/ is repeated, and then a sentence from the Bible (the “Gradual”), with Alleluia/ again, and “A reading from the Holy Gospel according to ———”, at which point we all make the sign of the Cross on forehead, lips, and breast. Let my whole mind and my speech and all my affections be illumined and bound by this Gospel. Let all in me that is not “gospel” be crucified.

A solemn transaction, easily missed in its brevity, either because my mind has wandered for a moment or because I have grown used to responding with these small gestures. But if every hair of our head is numbered, and no sparrow falls without our Father knowing it, we may reckon that such gestures, too, are entered in the ledger that the recording angel keeps for us. Liber scriptus proferetur, In quo totum continetur: A book will be brought out, in which everything is contained: all these gestures by which I said I wanted to live the gospel as well as every cup of water I may have offered to some thirsty man.

When the Gospel is announced, we say, “Glory to you, Lord”, and when it is finished, “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.” We thus place ourselves with that company, the Virgin being foremost, who have only Glory! and Praise! on their lips and in their hearts, for all the Savior’s words and doings.

The homily follows the Gospel. Here the Church appears, in the person of the preacher (usually it is the celebrant), opening up the Scripture and reflecting on it. If the homilist is able to link all three readings from Scripture by some theme, we are reminded of the seamlessness of revelation. No Levitical law, no skirmish with the Philistines, and no widow’s last drop of oil but finds its place in the mighty plan of salvation. In the Catholic tradition, the homily is of one piece with the entire liturgy, unlike more recent Christian traditions, which have abandoned the ancient liturgy and have made the homily, or sermon, into the principal reason for coming to church. Catholics are often puzzled by this turn of events in the history of worship among various Christian groups.

At the conclusion of the homily, the congregation stands and repeats the Creed, usually the so-called Nicene Creed. On the surface of things, this might well appear to be a somewhat inert moment in the liturgy. We are asking for nothing particular here, and this iteration of events and beliefs, one after the other with almost triphammer-like rhythm, does not sound much like worship, and after all everyone present already knows all of this anyway. Why, exactly, does the Church wish us to repeat it all week by week, year after year?

The Creed, or “symbol” of faith, was incorporated into the liturgy very early in the Church. It has, for one thing, what we might call a pedagogical aspect to it. That is, we Christians are those who believe, for example, that the Almighty is the Creator of heaven and earth. Out the window at once flies all gnosticism and Manichaeism, which, in the interest of a lofty spirituality, abhors the solidity of the material world and hence attributes the material creation to a “demiurge”—some lesser, and probably filthy, deity who is not to be confused with the Spirit whom we invoke. That material world is good, says the Church, made as it was by God himself and pronounced good by him. This is the God we Christians acclaim in our gathering here.

“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God. . . . Suddenly we are aloft in the ether of high theology: surely this is quite remote from us householders, plumbers, and clerks? These phrases were wrought from the struggle (and even politics) of councils in the fourth and fifth centuries. We don’t need these salvos now, surely?

This is where we find the Creed carrying us farther than mere pedagogy. To be sure, each one of the phrases that refer to Jesus (even single words—“Lord” and “Christ”) teems with meaning and stands over against some error about him that had gained currency in the ranks of believers in those early years of the Church. But taken into the liturgy, these lines assume the character of acclamation. We exult, the Church seems to shout, in this God and his Christ, who for us men and for our salvation. . . .

The very iteration of the words takes us deeply into the mysteries we have gathered to mark. And in their very simplicity—monotony, even—they echo the simplicity, even monotony, that cloaked the coming of the Savior and all that he did for us. No fanfare. No triumphal arches, processions, and palms (well, yes, actually—palms once—but proffered by the ragtag and bobtail of the populace).

This distilling of the whole of redemption, from creation to Last Judgment and heaven, takes on the character of acclamation in the liturgy and echoes, as does the entire liturgy, the voices of heaven. (An awesome note is struck when we recall that when we mortals say “for us men”, the seraphim themselves must fall silent; they cannot sing that part of the song. We find ourselves caparisoned with dread dignity when we recite the Creed.)

Then follow the Intercessions. We pray for the Church and for the world. In so doing, we unite ourselves with our High Priest, who gave himself for the Church and for the world and who “ever lives to make intercession” now. We take on corporately here in the liturgy the priestly ministry that each of us exercises in his private daily prayers, interceding for all men. And once again, what exists as a “form” turns out to be brimming with reality. To be Catholic is to believe that the Church’s prayers—far from being exercises in futility, with pain and war and horror grinding on implacably in spite of our prayers*—really are,* literally, taken into the mystery of the Divine Mercy and put to work, so to speak. On the Catholic view, the prayers of the Church are joined with the mystery of Christ’s intercession for us, which itself culminates in his total oblation of himself for us to the Father; and all of this is caught up into the region where the Mercy and Providence of God well up in their eternal superabundance and overflow, inundating the world with redemption.

This region is still impenetrable by us mortals. “We see not yet all things put under thee.” How the Mercy and Providence of God will turn out to have been unfailingly sovereign in this world of sorrow, blight, cruelty, and disfranchisement is unimaginable to us. Just here is the sorest test to faith. The old dilemma, so often flung at Christian believers down through the ages, still leers: either God is good but not all-powerful; or he is all-powerful but cruel. That is, he either can’t or won’t set things straight here. So runs this conundrum. To be Catholic is to be obliged to take one’s place with all the men and women of faith from the beginning. It has rarely seemed otherwise than that God is very absent. Joseph is sold into Egypt, and years of wrong go unredressed, it seems. The Philistines seize the very Ark of God, and fire does not strike them. Hannah lives, forlorn, crying out for a son. The widow of Zarepta reaches her last handful of meal, and no help is in sight. Jerusalem itself, finally, is sacked, and the Chosen People are bundled off to slavery under an Eastern tyrant. Domine! Exaudi orationem meam! How long, O Lord?

To be Catholic, we say, is to take one’s place with the men and women of faith from the beginning. All of them had to wait. The salvation of the Lord did not come, and did not come. Nevertheless they presented themselves at his altar, day by day, year after bone-wearying year. Simeon and Anna would be the archetypes here, wrinkled and old and faithful. But heaven does not open. No divine thunder terrorizes God’s enemies.

Only a penurious young woman and her husband, bringing an infant to be presented in the temple one fine day—and Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people.

What? What? Where? Do but tell us where.

Here.

But we want Herod toppled, and Caesar overthrown, and our chains sundered, and Israel’s dignity and liberty restored.

Indeed. And it is all of that which faith sees in this Infant.

This is the vision at work in the Church’s intercessions. We pray for the world, and famine, war, disease, and injustice crawl on their implacable way. We pray for the Church, and disaffected religious, discontented priests, unfaithful bishops, and baleful theologians drown out the voice of the Magisterium. We pray for the sick and they die. Let us give over this farcical business.

But faith—the faith of the Church it is, not simply my own attempts to soldier on—takes its place with Simeon and Anna, and with the psalms, which are sure, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that God is the champion of widows, orphans, and all the dispossessed and enfeebled.

In what sense is God such a champion, we want to demand of the tribunal.

It is all “eschatological”, says the Church, meaning by that arcane word that the mystery of prayer, with its confidence in God’s promises to all widows and orphans, pierces the scrim of all that seems present and obvious and stubborn (pain and death and injustice), and carries us, not merely to some future where all will be set right (that, too, of course: it is the dearest hope of Christians), but into the darkness of God himself, who did not vouchsafe any helpful equation to Job but simply pressed Job to fix his gaze on God. It is faith, not common sense or calculation or weighing of the evidence, that speaks in the Church’s intercessions.

And yet once more we find that the liturgy has caught us into the precincts where the servants of God, angelic as well as human, attend at his throne. Attend: it is the expectant, obedient mind presiding among all this holy court.

So ends the first part of the liturgy, the so-called synaxis (“gathering”), or the Liturgy of the Word. Now we approach the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Bread and wine are taken and made ready by offering them to the Lord, from whom we have received them in the first place. Water is mingled with the wine, signifying the mingling of Godhood and manhood in the Savior—and adumbrating the great mystery, hidden in God and now disclosed to us in Christ, that we, in truth, are to share in the Divine Nature, as he shared in ours. Such immensities at stake in such a small rite.

The priest ritually washes his hands. “Lord, wash away my iniquity; cleanse me from my sin.” The words, and the rite, take us back to the Tabernacle in the wilderness, where the priests attending on the altar had to be scrupulously clean for that service. We who now serve at the Altar of which that Jewish altar was only the foreshadowing are to be equally scrupulous. With the celebrant we can only serve here washed with the water of baptism and daily cleansed by the Holy Spirit. As he makes his ablutions we may join our own petition to the celebrant’s: it is a salutary reminder that no sin*—no sin*—may appear in the holy place. I may not come to this Table stained with vanity or egoism or slovenliness, or with peevishness, greed, envy, lust, calumny, or anything else in the very long list of my own dispositions. Alas, how am I ever to gain admittance?

Lord, wash away my iniquity; cleanse me from my sin. That is how I, and you, my brothers and sisters, and the priest are to gain admittance.

Orate, fratres. Pray, brethren (or, as we may say now, brothers and sisters), that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the Almighty Father.

“May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands.” Once again we find that the antiphonal calling back and forth of these matters is the very mode that speech in these precincts yearns for. It is the lively, even eager, attitude of Amen! Amen! So be it. We echo, with the gladness and generosity of the Divine Charity itself, what you ask.

Then follows the Sanctus et Benedictus, with its Preface. Here we are bidden to join the everlasting chorus of worship offered to the Father, in the light of the particular event brought to our attention in the Preface: Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter; or, as is the case during most of Ordinary Time, in the light of our Lord’s offering of himself for us. It is in the light of this, and in the strength of this, that we may sing Holy!

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna!”

Surely this is all wrong? That song belongs to the rabble who hailed the Lord thus on Palm Sunday but who were to be found, fickle as we all are, calling for his blood five days later.

No doubt many of the same people were to be found in the crowd on both days. But, says the liturgy, in spite of themselves, or at least scarcely beknownst to them in their zeal, they were absolutely correct to hail the Son of David with Hosanna! It is the shout of faith; and which of us, joining as we so habitually do in all sorts of acclamations to the Son of David in our liturgy, which of us does not quickly belie what we have said by “crucifying to ourselves afresh the Son of God”, within minutes of our hosanna, by riding roughshod over someone’s tender sensibilities, or by snapping at someone with a testy reply to a stupid question, or in a thousand other ways?

So: Holy, holy, holy. Hosanna. We are neither better nor worse, we hope, than the multitudes who from the beginning have wished, perhaps with only a fugitive and impulsive wish, to greet God.

There now follows what has traditionally been known as the Canon of the Mass. This is the great Eucharistic Prayer, and it shows up, in substance, in the earliest writings from the apostolic Church. Several forms of this prayer, of greater or lesser length, are offered to us by the Church in our own time. The prayer is addressed to the Father, and it “rehearses” what he has done for us in sending his Christ for our salvation. Presently it comes to the Consecration, which is the very focal point of the entire Christian liturgy. Here we are taken into the Upper Room and hear the words of the Lord himself as he takes bread and wine and offers it to his disciples with the calamitous words, “This is my Body. . . . This is my Blood.”

Calamitous? Yes. Not in the sense of being disastrous: the words are salvific. But calamitous in the sense that all other reality flees away from them, as heaven and earth are said to do at the final coming of the Son of God.

To be Catholic is to understand this moment in a profoundly sacramental way. Here is no mere mnemonic device to assist us in recalling a long past event (many churches thus vitiate the Supper). Rather, we are, literally (the word does not help much here: it is too pale), to feed upon the Body and Blood of the Lord. To be Catholic is to take the Lord’s words in John chapter 6 most solemnly. We can no more “sense” what is occurring than could the shepherds at the manger. No connection at all can be sustained by our senses, or by our reason, between the wafer and the cup, on the one hand, and the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, any more than the Infant in the manger could be “imagined” to be the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.

At this moment, all the words we canvassed at the beginning of this chapter loom upon us: Mass; Eucharist; Lord’s Table; Holy Communion; liturgy; the sacred mysteries. All is present here. It is a point of intensity not unlike the moment on Mt. Tabor when the Lord was transfigured, or when there was darkness over the whole land at the Crucifixion, or when in St. John’s vision there was silence in heaven. Who is equal to the mystery?

For this reason, it has been traditional for centuries for the people to be kneeling during the Canon: What other posture is apt? On the other hand, it was the case in the early Church, and again in many places now, that the people stood. This posture is one of attentive and obedient readiness, as it were. If we wished to reproduce exactly the posture of the disciples when the Lord distributed the bread and wine to them, we would have to recline, and at this point the literal would clash with the liturgical, which is, we may remind ourselves, not an attempt to “reproduce” things literally, such as we find in drama, with realistic stage sets and actors recreating things with the greatest possible verisimilitude, but rather a patent “stylizing” of reality under the austere demands of ceremony attuned to the timeless rather than to the ephemeral.

The people are then bidden to voice the Church’s faith, in the Memorial Acclamation. Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again! Hear, O earth! Hear, ye heavens! Let hell itself take note! Christ has died, is risen, and will come again. It is where we Christians take our stand. We exult in this; or, it may be, we hang for dear life on this when doubt and fatigue and adversity shout at us that it is all a farce! Or: Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life: Lord Jesus, come in glory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? In the liturgy Catholics are, line by line, moment by moment, wholly in the presence of the mighty acts of God our Savior.

The Eucharistic Prayer continues now, recalling the whole Gospel and praying for the faithful, living and departed. It concludes “through him, with him, and in him. . . .” Three prepositions in which are contained the whole scope of redemption.

The Communion Rite follows now, as we are bidden to pray the prayer Jesus taught us. It is the very paradigm of all prayer. All aspirations, all worship, and all petition and intercession are gathered up in this prayer. Hence the Church has kept this prayer immediately before our eyes from the beginning, strongly recommending it for solitary as well as liturgical use. If any Christian is ever at a loss as to how to frame his prayers, he may straightaway resort to this prayer and find that all that is in his heart has been borne to the Throne in its words. But it is also a liturgical prayer: it is for the whole Church when she assembles at Mass. In its seven petitions, and in its concluding words of acclamation, the Church speaks with perfect confidence, since the words are a gift from the Lord himself.

Then the Peace. The Pax. Only a brief action in the Mass. Yes, certainly—the peace of the Lord be with everybody—but we may, on some occasions, find ourselves asked to offer this peace to everybody in the persons of those immediately around us at the liturgy. Here is where our charity find itself tested. I would prefer to pick attractive specimens to greet with peace; but here is this bore next to me and that henwife behind me and that bugbear in front. Yes, says the liturgy (which is to say, the Divine Charity): to be at this Table is in very truth to greet all souls with peace. It is the very rehearsal for heaven. Hell slinks away with its luggage of snobbery, grudge, and malice.

At the Agnus Dei, which follows now, the Church joins St. John the Baptist in his acclamation to Jesus. It is faith that sees in him the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The priest now takes the Host, breaks it in the sight of all, and places a small piece of it in the chalice with the words, “May this mingling of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it.” (The Church teaches that the whole Christ is received in either species, the Body of Christ or the Precious Blood of Christ. Hence no one need feel disfranchised if only the Host is offered to the people, which is the practice in many parishes.) Then the priest raises the broken Host with the words “This is the Lamb of God. . . . Happy are those who are called to his supper.” We respond with the words of the centurion when he found that the Lord was actually going to come all the way to his house: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.”

It is an exquisite protest, deeply moving in its aptness. How had this centurion’s soul been schooled, that he perceived so accurately what was so profoundly true? We are not told: but from this man we may learn true pietas—the clarity of vision that results in a hesitation, even self-effacement, in the presence of a greater majesty. The Greeks called it aidos. To have learned it is to have taken great strides toward the true dignity with which the Most High crowns us and to have abandoned the strutting refusal to bow that marks the vain man.

There is another element in this response that may claim our attention. The centurion was correct: a mere word from Jesus would indeed have sufficed to heal. It was the centurion’s servant in the particular instance recorded in the Gospel; but what he believed, correctly, about the power of a word from Jesus may be applied to us all: only a word will do. But the God who is invoked in the Christian liturgy is not a God of mere edicts. It is not sola Scriptura. He waits to give us his very flesh. He comes to us, as he came to the centurion’s house, in his complete Godhood and Manhood. To be Catholic is to believe that his Presence is here. His Word alone would do: but his Mercy, in its superabundance, gives that Word Incarnate. Islam is the religion of the book: Christianity is the religion of the Word Incarnate.

It is with this realization that the faithful now make their Communion. To eat the Body of Jesus Christ and to drink his Blood—all that is reasonable, and all that is fastidious in us, resists. It is primitive, someone might venture. It is far more than primitive, says the Church: it is eternal. This is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Primitive rites, insofar as they acknowledge the necessity of such a participation in the being of the god, are to that extent correct. It is modern man who has fumigated and tidied the holy precincts, rinsing the flesh and blood away and illumining all with the pallid fluorescence of mere Reason.

There is recited now the Communion Antiphon—once again, a text that stresses the mystery of what we have done here.

Then all of a sudden it is over. A brief prayer, then the blessing, and then Go.

But it is Go in peace. What peace? The euphoria that may hover about us from our having stolen away from the hurly-burly for an hour in this cool, quiet place? Or that may linger in us in the wake of noble sentiments? Or that may have flowed over us in the strains of the music?

Not really, says the Church. If any of that is the case, thank God. But the Church’s peace is Christ’s peace; it is that peace that was made “through the blood of his cross”, as St. Paul phrases it (Col 1:20). It comes to us from the river of Life, not the drowsy current of Lethe. It is the true Peace that awakens us, not the false peace that lulls us.

And—Thanks be to God, we say. That is the word on our lips as we emerge into the world. Thanks. Eucharist.