From the Desk of Father Nathan

A Message from Father Nathan

My dearest people who are all close to my heart! Prayers and blessings to you.

What is Holy Mass?

What we do and why do we do this?

Vatican II, bulletin 1324 said the following: –

The Eucharist is “the source and summit of Christian life.” 136 ‘the other sacraments and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented towards it. For in the blessed Eucharisht is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.”137 Then in 1325 ‘The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that commuion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God’s action sancifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit. ‘138 And finally in1326, -by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.

The Importance of Rituals

As Catholics, we know what is going to happen next. One of the basic, distinctive marks of our way of praying is ritual. We do things over and over. When the priest says: “The Lord be with you”, without and without any thought or hesitation the congregation responds: And with you Spirit”. The priest says, “Let us pray”, and the congregation stands up.

Our daily lives have their rituals also: There are set ways of greeting people, eating, responding to a text. When we are accustomed to a certain way of doing things, we seldom ask why we just do it that way.

In the Eucharist, too, we have many ritual actions which we perform asking why? What is the Mass or Liturgy? A good way to describe the Mass is to say that it is Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday made present today and every day in ritual.

It is not merely a meal that reminds us of the Last Supper, or a Passion play which helps recall Good Friday, or a Sunrise Service which celebrated the Lord’s resurrection. The basic “shape” of the ritual of the Mass can be described as a meal. This is not to say it is “just another meal” or that we are ignoring the Mass as a sacrifice. Not at all. The point is, the shape of the Mass even when viewed as a sacrifice, is that of a meal.

When friends gather for a meal, they sit and talk: Eventually they move to the table, say grace, pass the food and eat and drink, and finally take their leave and go home. On our walk through the Masses we will follow this same map: we will see ritual acts

1) gathering

2) storytelling

3)meal sharing and

4) commissioning.

Let us talk about other details in the week to come.

Ever wanting to be faithful to your service,

With love and blessings,

—Fr. Sahayanathan Nathan