Friends
Peace be with you.
What’s the point of Mass for you? I have a friend who I’m pretty sure would say that the point of Mass is to be as brief as possible. When he comes to a Mass I celebrate, he tells me I could have had a shorter homily, used a shorter form of the readings, used a shorter Eucharistic Prayer, had more Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion so it would go faster. He tells me all about how fast his home parish celebrates Mass. Most weekends, our Masses at St. Patrick’s last fifty minutes to an hour. When I talk to my friend, his Mass is always shorter.
On this night, this night that is unlike any other, we celebrate the Institution of the Eucharist and Institution of the Priesthood. We remember that Passover Liturgy that Jesus celebrated with his followers in which he changed two elements, the bread and wine, from being merely symbols of past oppression into being his body, blood, soul, and divinity. This is the tradition that St. Paul hands on to us in our second reading today. Jesus uses a specific term to describe the significance of this altered Passover Liturgy. He says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” The word that is translated “remembrance” is the Greek word Anamnesis or the Hebrew word Zikaron and it means more than just simply a calling to mind or a memory. We, moderns, suffer here because of televisions and smartphones and even the availability of books when it comes to this concept of memory. At the time of Jesus, obviously, there was no technology for recording what happened at an incident, let alone an easy way to transcribe them for posterity. You had to remember it in your mind and then share it with others verbally. They prioritized precision in their remembrance because the retelling of a story was the way the people who were not present not only learned about what happened, but participated in what happened. If you witnessed your mother or father die and other members of your family did not, it was your obligation to tell the story accurately and descriptively so that they can feel a part of what happened. The Mass becomes a way to remember, to bring the members together to be part of a past celebration.
But it’s different from other memorial celebrations, too, because Jesus left himself, his real presence, in the Eucharist. When we share past stories in order for people to be included in a significant event, we normally don’t have something that physically connects us to that past event but; in the Eucharist, we do. That’s why we need a priesthood, not just to confect the Eucharist, but to connect us to Jesus himself. The way we do this is that the priests all have a bishop, to whom we owe our allegiance. That bishop is connected to the 12 apostles through a succession of giving authority in the laying on of hands. Those 12 apostles were, in turn, given authority by Jesus to “do this in memory of me”. That’s why it’s so important that we don’t speak for ourselves in Mass, we don’t just do things intended to make Mass overly personal. It’s not our Mass. It’s Jesus' way of inserting himself into our modern lives by bringing us back to his time through this powerful tool of memory.
That’s why we have to be of service to the Mass and not expect the Mass to be in service to us. In other words, we should never ask what we got out of Mass but what we put into it. For some people, they put in a lot of time and effort as ushers, readers, Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, servers, musicians. They are great and, tonight, we celebrate that service as well and encourage more of you to help in these ministries. But, even as great as that kind of service is, the most important service we can give is to take off our watch or turn off our smartphones so we’re not preoccupied with how long Mass is. Then we can listen to the prayers, perhaps even follow along with them in the Missal if we tend to be more visual learners, and let God speak to us through them. We can sing the antiphons and hymns and truly give thanks to the Lord, our God through them. We can relish in the silences of Mass and not just wish Father would hurry up so we can get back to our lives so often lived in order to get something out of them
Remember my time-conscious friend I talked about at the beginning of this homily? The truth is that it’s really a little voice in the back of my head that worries about how many people are coming to Mass and what people are saying about me or this parish. It’s the voice that worries when I hear about people no longer attending Mass here but attending in another Catholic Church and celebrates when I hear about someone attending Mass here who used to attend Mass elsewhere. I’m not proud of it, just letting you know that, if you struggle to pay attention or struggle to get motivated to come to Mass because you don’t get anything out of it or wish something was different, you’re not alone. The guy in the front with the funny looking robe on is with you. How can we make sure we’re not so worried about how we or others feel at Mass that we miss out on the opportunity to be of loving service to the shared memory by which we are truly present to Christ at his Last Supper?
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