Concluding Rites: Sent Out on Mission

These Sundays in Easter we’ve been reflecting on the ways God is at work in the Mass. Even when it doesn’t look or feel like it, there’s so much happening at Mass. God is always working to transform us into the Body of Christ for the world! In the Introductory Rites, God invites, we gather. In the Liturgy of the Word, God speaks, we listen. In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, God gives, we receive. Now, on Ascension Sunday, it’s fitting that we reflect on the Concluding Rites: God sends, we go. 

Mass isn’t a town hall meeting or a seminar or a play. We don’t end Mass with, “Alright, same time next week!” or a round of applause or by just getting up and leaving. “Mass” comes from the Latin root word missio – mission, sending. We’re not meant to just wander back into the “real world.” We’re people on a mission. We are sent out to do something. That’s why Mass concludes with a blessing and a dismissal (there’s that missio word again!). The dismissal usually sounds something like this: Go forth, the Mass is ended … Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord… Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life… Go in peace…

What’s the common thread? A simple, two-letter action verb: Go! Let that word reverberate into your soul at every Mass you attend. You’re not just leaving, you’re not just carrying on with your day… you’re being sent out on a mission! And it’s the same mission the disciples received as Jesus ascended into heaven: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” In other words: Go and do the things that I did! 

Sometimes we think that faith is just about following rules we barely understand. Sometimes we think that faith is just a decoration for our identity. Sometimes we think that all Jesus really wants is for us to be nice. Sometimes we think that our “faith life” should be separated from our “professional life,” “political life,” or “family life.” But that’s not the faith that the Lord equipped the disciples for. Jesus didn’t call His disciples to be private, individualized, or disconnected. He sent them out for much greater things! All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me… Now I give it to YOU! Go out into the world and share my good news! 

Our faith is incomplete if it does not compel us to go outward – out of our comfort zone, out of self-interest and into service, out of isolation and into community, out of complacency and into deeper holiness, out of exclusivity and into greater inclusion. This is what we call evangelization. Sharing the good news: God is real. Hope is real. God is for us. God is with us. God wants us to be truly alive. The Ascension reminds us that, even though He no longer walks on two feet on this earth, Jesus is always with us. Even though His ministry in first-century Galilee is over, Jesus’ mission in the world carries on through us, guided by the Advocate (the Holy Spirit). We go to Mass to participate in this mission. 

United by our gathering, heartened by our listening, and nourished by our receiving, we are sent out into the world to help others encounter the heights and depths of God’s love. God does not call you to be a passive bystander in life. Even now – at whatever stage of life – the Lord is calling YOU to share in Christ’s mission. That’s what the Ascension is all about. That’s what the Concluding Rites are all about. That’s what Mass (missio) is all about. 

Liturgy of the Eucharist: Receiving Transformation

After being fed at the “Table of the Word,” we are fed at the “Table of the Eucharist.” In the Introductory Rites, God invites and we gather. In the Liturgy of the Word, God speaks and we listen. In the Liturgy of the Eucharist: God gives and we receive. 

We begin with the offertory where we offer our gifts to God: bread, wine, money, and thanks (Eucharist means “thanksgiving”). But wait… why all this giving? Isn’t God the one who gives? Aren’t we the ones who are supposed to receive? Here we remember the logic of the Eucharist: 

We give to God what we have already received from God, trusting that God transforms even our simplest of offerings. 

We do a lot of giving during the offertory, but our gifts are really just return-gifts – a meager response to God’s infinite generosity. The priest raises our offering of bread and wine, saying: “Blessed are You, Lord God of all creation, for through Your goodness we have this bread/wine to offer … it will become for us the bread of life/our spiritual drink.” 

So we give our return-gifts: bread, wine, money, and thanks: But what do we receive? We receive Jesus Christ. We receive transformation. We offer bread and wine – already rich with religious symbolism of freedom, unity, and life – and our offering is transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ who actually brings about freedom, unity, and life. We offer money from our hard-earned possessions, and our offering becomes the outward mission of the Church. 

But have you ever noticed that there’s another thing we offer to God in the Eucharist? We don’t just offer external gifts, we offer our whole selves. At the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer we’re invited to “Lift up your hearts.” This means far more than just thinking about God. “Lift up your hearts” is an invitation to offer up your entire self, your whole being, to God whose love is transformative. And just like the bread and wine – offerings that may not seem like much – God transforms our self-offering. All of us, the gathered assembly,  truly become the Body of Christ, broken and shared for the life of the world. 

During this Easter season we celebrate the Resurrection – when God transformed death into new and glorious life! That’s what we participate in each time we gather for Mass. We’re missing the point if we think we’re just there to watch something happen to bread and wine! The Eucharist is truly the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus. But we can’t forget that Christ’s Real Presence is a transforming presence. We believe that our offering of bread and wine is transformed into Christ’s Body and Blood. If that’s true (spoiler: it’s true!), it changes everything. Even us. 

Even if we don’t feel this transformation, it’s happening. Our whole life is a process of transformation – we grow, we learn, we think one way, we think another way, we gain perspective, we mature. And most of the time, we don’t perceive transformation while it’s happening. But it’s happening nonetheless. The same thing occurs every time we celebrate the Eucharist: God is always forming us more and more into the Body of Christ… even if we don’t feel like we’ve been transformed. Even if you leave Mass and still have that same headache you had earlier, even if you still face the same stressful situation, even if you felt bored or rushed or simply nothing at all during Mass… God is still transforming you. 

Our participation in the Eucharist, our reception of the Body and Blood of Christ, is our training ground for becoming Christ for the world. We receive mercy and we become more merciful. We receive healing and we become healers. We receive God’s selflessness and we become selfless. We receive One Body in Christ and we become advocates for unity. We receive the King of Peace and we become peacemakers. We receive the transformative presence of God and we become agents of transformation. We receive the Body of Christ and we become the Body of Christ. 

Liturgy of the Word: The Words We Speak Are Not Our Own

The first time we sit down during Mass begins the Liturgy of the Word. Sometimes this creates the perfect opportunity to tune out: we finally get to sit down and someone else is going to read Scripture passages that we’ve heard before. But we call this part the Liturgy of the Word; we’re missing the point if we think we’re supposed to kick back and zone out! “Liturgy” means “the work of the people” – it’s our active participation in God’s work of salvation. Last week, we explored God’s action and our action during the Introductory Rites: God invites, we gather. So what happens in the Liturgy of the Word? 

When the lector says, “The Word of the Lord,” it can feel like a meaningless formality. We can even forget this happens because we’re so used to it. These seemingly insignificant words actually have profound meaning. We’re claiming: “These are not our words, but God’s words.” In school, we are taught to answer “in our own words.” Artists, musicians, and filmmakers are at their best when they express their ideas “in their own words.” But in the Liturgy of the Word, we’re not speaking our own words, we’re not creating something, we’re not repeating ideas that the church invented… No, Someone is speaking whose words are greater than ours. In the Liturgy of the Word, God speaks to us.

In the Gospel for this Fifth Sunday of Easter, Jesus says: “The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.” Jesus does not speak in finite, human words. Jesus is the Word of God. His words have the power to transform and save! And what is our response? We don’t just hear; we listen. Anyone who is a parent or teacher or spouse of a Bears fan on a Sunday afternoon can tell you that hearing and listening are two different things! We can hear words physiologically and still not be listening. 

Listening involves relationship. At Mass, we’re not just hearing lifeless words of someone from the past. It would be a different thing for us to read the Gettysburg Address during the Liturgy of the Word. In that case, Abraham Lincoln would be “speaking” to us, but he wouldn’t actually be present with us. In the Liturgy of the Word, God is speaking to us – not just in the words of ancient scrolls – but through Jesus, who is the Word of God, living and present in our midst. We are able to listen to God’s Word (written in the Scriptures, embodied in Jesus Christ) because God desires to be in relationship with us. 

Listening also spurs us to action. We actively respond to each reading: “Thanks be to God!” or “Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ!” Too often we say these words like we’re sleeptalking or like we’re responding to someone who’s talking to us during a Bears game. But think about what’s happening: God is speaking to us in the present moment. Christ is present with us in the proclamation of the Word. That’s a big deal! That calls us to respond with gratitude (“Thanks be to God”) and praise (“Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ”). 

Shifting from a passive to an active posture – from hearing to listening – allows us to more fully participate in God’s saving work at Mass. The Scriptures won’t just be ancient artifacts that we hear faintly. We’ll experience the Scriptures for what they are: God’s Word spoken to us in the present moment. The Lord is actively speaking to YOU right now. Will you listen? Next week we enter into the Liturgy of the Eucharist. 

Introductory Rites: Our Response to God’s Invitation

Have you ever noticed that Fr. Mike, Fr. Radley, deacons, lectors, and altar servers begin Mass in the least efficient way possible? In ten steps (maybe five for Fr. Mike), they could go from the sacristy straight to the sanctuary. But instead, they go all the way to the back and walk slowly down the main aisle. Why? Something more is going on that we can’t see. Since we are creatures of soul and body, what we do physically in Mass is meant to express something else spiritually. The procession expresses the theology of journey: we are all pilgrims on a journey that we didn’t map out on our own. This is what the Introductory Rites of Mass are all about.

In Genesis, God calls Abram to leave his home and go “to a land that I will show you.” In the Gospels, Jesus invites the apostles to follow him with no itinerary besides: “Come and see.” God is a God who calls us. Actually, more precisely: God is a God who calls us out. In Greek, the word “church” is “ekklesia” – literally, “called out of.” But God’s call is not condemning like a sibling tattling on their brother or sister. God calls us out of one way of living into a better way. 

On this “Good Shepherd Sunday,” Jesus offers a beautiful image of Himself: “the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” The Lord calls us out – not condemningly, but like a Good Shepherd. He calls us out of harm’s way and into greener pastures. As our movement from Lent to Easter shows us quite dramatically: God also calls us out of darkness to walk in marvelous light (see 1 Peter 2:9). This is why Mass begins the way it does. In the Introductory Rites, each aspect reminds us that God is a God who calls us out. 

What does God do in the Mass? God invites. God invites us to come out of death into life. God invites us to come out of the busyness of our lives into the rhythm of divine life. God invites us to the table of Word and Eucharist. And, if an invitation is true and honest, the host wants their guest to be there. God. Wants. You. 

What do we do in Mass? Well, what do you do when you’re invited to something? You respond! We respond by gathering. The Good Shepherd calls, we follow His voice. Notice that gathering is different than just “showing up.” When we simply show up, we can miss God’s invitation. When we approach Mass as our response to God’s invitation, we open ourselves to transformation. “Showing up” is what we do when we’re going through the motions of life. Gathering is what we do when we want to live intentionally. 

The procession symbolizes our gathering. No longer are we isolated people, loosely united by geographical and religious similarities. God calls us to come together and become the Body of Christ. The Sign of the Cross grounds us in God who is a communion of relations: Father, Son, and Spirit. In the Penitential Act, we honestly acknowledge who we are (“I have greatly sinned”) and – even greater – who God is (“Lord, have mercy”). We sing the Gloria to turn our focus away from ourselves and toward God, the reason we have gathered. And in the Collect prayer (“Let us pray…”), we collect our prayers into one, symbolizing the unity of our gathering. 

Starting today, choose to engage in Mass intentionally. Let your Sunday worship be an intentional act of gathering, in response to the God who calls YOU. Don’t go through the motions, but truly worship and live your life as a response to God’s invitation. And you’ll encounter the God who calls us out of darkness into marvelous light. Next week, we explore the Liturgy of the Word. 

Easter, Emmaus, and Eucharist

Last month I subbed a 5th grade religion class at the School of St. Mary. I had everyone share the last movie they saw in a theater and heard all sorts of answers: Top Gun: Maverick, Black Panther, Spider Man, Jurassic World, Minions. We talked about how  going to the movies and going to Mass can seem like the same thing on the outside: we leave our home, go to a specific location with a bunch of other people, we sit down in rows, and we watch something happen that we’re not actually part of. 

But then we stopped and thought more deeply about it. We discovered that going to Mass is actually so much more than going to the movies. We don’t go to Mass to just sit down and watch something semi-relevant happen. If that’s all we’re doing, it wouldn’t be worth all that much!

So I asked the 5th graders: “What are some things that God does in Mass?” Some of their answers were simple yet profound: “Bless. Watch over us. Guide.” Then I asked: “What are some things that we do in Mass?” More good answers: “Pray. Sing. Worship. Kneel.” We went through each part of the Mass to see what it could teach us about how God is at work in our lives and what God calls us to do in response. They absolutely loved getting this new perspective on Mass! 

Throughout the Easter season, we’ll offer some reflections on the Mass in the bulletin. Like those SOSM 5th graders, we’ll dive deeper into the main Mass parts and gain a new perspective on Mass. Hopefully this new perspective can help all of us encounter the Lord in new and deeper ways as we celebrate the Eucharist week in and week out. 

Easter is the perfect time to refresh and renew our understanding of Mass, because Jesus’ Resurrection is the key that unlocks everything for us! Think about the disciples on their walk to Emmaus (this Sunday’s Gospel). The disciples were returning to their homes deflated and uncertain. They thought they found something meaningful and powerful in Jesus of Nazareth. But then he died on the cross…

As we know, the Risen Christ appears to them on their way. Jesus meets them in their defeatedness and lifts their spirits. He proclaims the Scriptures to them and breaks bread with them. He rejuvenates their hearts with the hope and joy of His Resurrection! We reference the Emmaus story in one of our Eucharistic Prayers: 

“Blessed indeed is your Son, present in our midst when we are gathered by his love and when, as once for the disciples, so now for us, he opens the Scriptures and breaks the bread.” (Eucharistic Prayer for Various Needs IV)

Easter, Emmaus, and the Eucharist remind us: God offers us so much more than we often settle for. Mass is more than going to the movies, checking off a box on our Sunday schedule, sitting back and watching something happen, or even taking a break from “the real world.” 

Mass is our “road to Emmaus.” Like those disciples, Christ is present in our midst, even when we don’t recognize Him. Even when none of the kids want to get ready for Mass, we are still gathered by his love. Even when we are distracted because of stress, disappointment, or uncertainty, Jesus still opens the Scriptures and breaks the bread for us. Stay tuned for next week as we look at the Introductory Rites.