The Mass Explained: Why It Matters and How to Participate More Fully
A practical and insightful look at the meaning of the Mass, explaining why it is the most important thing we do each week and how to participate with greater reverence and understanding.
MC: Adam Hohn
Presenter: Joseph Gruber
Deacon: Rick Freedberg
Brought to you By: The Knights of Columbus
Jackson Michigan & Surrounding Area Catholic Parishes
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All right. Shall we pray
again in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit? Amen, direct, O Lord, our actions by thy holy inspiration and carry them on by thy gracious assistance, that every word and work of ours may begin in thee and by thee be happily ended. Amen, name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen,
Good morning, gentlemen, I am here to talk to you today about some pretty basic things about the mass. Last week, we heard about confession, and we were given a run through of how to go to confession. We also had sheets available with all the confession times for Lent, and all of the times generally
did anyone avail themselves of that sacrament since then? All right, round of applause.
I can't clap for the microphone.
Remember, every time a repentant sinner returns is reconciled to our Lord, there's reason for a party was that,
no, that's what a bell rings.
We all know this,
all right. And today I wanted to talk a little bit about the mass and some very basic things about what we do at mass. So I'll go over five sort of actions around the mass that are easy to overlook or easy to misunderstand,
and they're basic, which means it's always good to return to them. The first thing to go to is why we actually go to Mass at all?
And to approach this, I'm going to ask you a question. I want you to think of the best thing that you did this past week.
What is the best thing that you did this past week?
Everyone? Everybody thought of something that was their best. Okay, good. Now, I
don't want anyone to feel like they have to brag or anything, but maybe get a couple of people saying generally what kind of thing they did that was so good.
Anyone? What was that confession? Okay, awesome.
Let's check. Did anybody think the best thing they did this past week was that they went to work or that they worked longer or they worked harder?
Deacon Rick thought that, yeah, okay, I went to work at the school mass of private That does sound like a labor of love there.
Yeah, John,
yeah, okay,
yeah, we all know where I'm headed with this. So it's a little just, it's just like an exercise. We know that the best thing that we do isn't necessarily the work that we're doing right, like if we work longer hours or more intensely, we know that's good, but we know there's something better. And if we're married, we can say, well, something better would be doing something for my wife or for my children. Or if we're not married, we would say for my family, for my friends, and then we might say, well, but we could, we could do something, make a gift, right? Like, the world of work is a world of transactions. The world of marriage and family is a world of gift. We're like, okay, in the world of gift, that's better than the world of transaction. There's something better about making a gift than been doing something and earning something. Okay, then you can build that up. Well, could I make a bigger gift of myself? Could I could I do something more? Could I serve the city? Could I serve the state of Michigan? Could I serve the country? There would be something better. Could I serve the world, the whole world? Could I, you know, in some sort of near apocalyptic scenario, be the guy who saves the world, like, Oh, that would be the best thing that I could do in a week,
because it would be a gift of self for something more. And they'd say, Okay, what's the best thing possible that I could give to you could say, okay, the source of the world, the creator of the world. If I could do something for him, that would be the best of all,
okay,
but what if we realize that we're not very good ourselves, like the gift of us. We're doing all right, but we're not the best we could be, and we're not the best possible person.
Don't realize, we realize, okay, the gift of myself
could be better if I was actually helping someone else, if I was participating in.
Someone else's gift. Like, I could make a gift to somebody at the office, but if I went in together with other people, wealthier people at the office, it would be a better gift if we all chipped in. And so my little gift goes a lot further when it's joined with a larger gift.
Then you work the logic through and you're like, Okay, so if I could participate in the best possible giver to make the best possible gift to the most deserving of the gift, that would be, by definition, the best thing that I could possibly do with my week, and that is the mass. That is what we're doing in mass, is we are making a gift of our self
in participation with the
ultimate giver, Jesus Christ, who is giving himself to the Father. So through the Holy Spirit, we are united to Christ, making gift of ourselves to the Father alongside Christ.
So that's that's literally the best possible thing imaginable for any human being to do. That's
what we're talking about with the mass. So when the Church says to go to Mass every Sunday, the church is saying, you have an opportunity to do the best imaginable thing,
and we're asking you to do that at least once a week.
And so when we say that, it is of grave matter to skip mass unnecessarily, like there are legitimate reasons to miss mass. There are reasons for sickness. There are reasons
out of some emergent situations. But to say, I would rather not do the best possible, imaginable thing
for something that is by definition, much less than
the Church says that there's something off about that.
And another way of saying something off about that is to say that that is actually sinful when we are willfully skipping mass for something that we judge to be better than mass. Again, the mass is the best imaginable use of our time.
And to skip mass on a Sunday
is grave matter. A lot of guys, I don't think know this. I don't think it's taught very often. I don't think priests like to say it because it sounds very negative, like, well, you have to go to mass or you're going to go to hell.
But the reality is, if we say we're not going to go to Mass for a dumb reason, we are putting ourselves in a hellish position. That's what it means that we're choosing a more hellish reality than the heavenly reality of mass.
Okay, so that's the first thing. The first thing about the mass is that we get to go and do the best imaginable thing at least once a week, more often, if we can.
So that's context. That's
the rest. I'm going to go through some some motions of the mass that are worth explaining. So one thing is the overarching mass, best possible, imaginable thing.
And then let's talk a little bit about some of the motions when we enter the church. We often make the sign of the cross, dipping our fingers in holy water. It's a reminder of our baptism. Most of us know this. And then we we genuflect to the to the tabernacle, genuflect. It's very simple. It's two Latin words, genu, meaning knee and flecked, which is to bend. We bend the knee to the tabernacle.
We are part of the Western Catholic Church. There are Eastern Rites, and then there's the Western rite, the Roman right
and the Western right is very much influenced by courtly behavior, how men and women behaved in royal courts in Western Europe. And kneeling and bending the knee is a very courtly thing. It's what we do before a king. It's what we do before a lord. It's a way of saying that this person that we're kneeling to has authority over us. In the east, kneeling has a different connotation. In the east, everybody has seen Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade, yes, that's the right thing for it, right? The last one, yeah, the last one, yes, right.
And one of the puzzles that he has to go through to get to the holy grail has this line that.
Is written down only the penitent man may pass. It's repeated many times penitent man, the penitent man may pass. And then Indiana Jones has this realization that the penitent man humbles himself before God, and then he works out the logic that that means he has to kneel. And so he kneels really quickly before he's decapitated. Maybe does a forward somersault, because apparently it's also part of penitence.
But in the east, kneeling is is related only to being penitential. It is the repentant posture. In the West, it is both a repentant posture and just a sign of submission. So we genuflect down on the right knee whenever we enter the church or leave the church, to show that Christ is our king. And we often also will do this before we sit down and appeal, we will genuflect. And anytime that we pass in front of the tabernacle, we would genuflect.
Now, something weird happens after the mass starts. If we have to get up for any reason, if we have a baby or some other kind of emergency, we actually don't genuflect during mass to the tabernacle, because the focus changes during the mass, to the altar. And to the altar we bow. It's a sign of reverence, because that location is where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is going to be represented to us.
So altars are for sacrifice.
We are we are turning our attention to the sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary being made present to us on the altar. So we bow to the altar. If you were an altar server ever, this would have been part of your training. This is uppermost in mind for me, because my eldest just said that he's interested in becoming an altar server. So I was explaining it, yeah. So I was explaining to them that this is, this is the custom, at least in the United States, at least in the year of our Lord 2026 that during mass, we bow to the altar.
It's also why, when lecterns go up, they'll bow to the altar as they enter the sanctuary. And
this is important, because the Sacrifice of the Mass is a big deal. Protestant churches, most of them, don't have altars. They might have a table,
but it's not an altar. An altar is where a sacrifice takes place. And the Catholic Church, we have altars because Jesus is our sacrificial lamb, and he wants to make a gift of himself to the Father and to us at every mass.
All right,
so that's one motion, another motion that we do in mass that maybe people don't realize. And I've seen my kids do this sort of sloppily, and I've seen other people do it
before the gospel. So we stand up, and right before the gospel is proclaimed, we make this motion in front of our forehead and mouth and chest. And unless you've had this explained to you, you probably don't know what's going on. And this is to make the sign of the cross on our forehead and on our lips and on our heart, and we're supposed to pray silently, may the words of the Gospel be on our minds, on our lips and on our hearts,
which is an amazing thing. It is
to say, I actually want to hear the deacon or the priest proclaim these words so powerfully that it will change how I think, that it will change how I love, and it will change how I speak.
That I want the words of the gospel to be on my lips when people hear me. I want them to hear the gospel. That is the prayer that we make before we hear the Gospel. Every time it is the prayer of the evangelist, may the words of the Gospel be on my minds, be on my mind, my lips and on my heart is the prayer of an evangelist. And
I think a lot of us, we just go through the motion, and we're not actually thinking about what we're doing or what we're saying. We're saying, Lord, may your words sanctify my mind. I don't know about you guys, but my mind and my heart still means they still need purification. They still need to be made set right. They still need to be set ablaze more brightly by the glory of God so that I can actually speak the words of the gospel
to the people that I meet.
So the next time you go to Mass, tonight, tomorrow,
this morning, if you have an opportunity to just just take a moment and actually just just really.
Be, be in that moment, and to pray may the Lord, may the words of the Gospel be on my mind, on my lips and on my heart,
and just generally, to let the words of the mass transform our minds and our hearts so we might speak with charity and clarity.
Okay, so one motion, the going in, genuflecting or bowing, the three fold cross the gospel.
Another thing about mass that I don't think it's said very often for communion, we in the United States have this weird habit of forming single file lines and everybody going up and everybody receiving our Lord, and everybody filing back to their pews.
And this is this is not normal. This is not how the Catholic church actually practices the reception of communion in most countries of the world. It's just like a very American, maybe even a very Germanic thing. I don't know
it appeals to me. I'm Germanic. I like it.
So a couple of things about the reception of communion.
You don't have to receive Communion for mass to count.
Your reception of communion is not what makes or breaks the validity of the mass. The priest receiving Communion that affects the validity of the mass, sure, but you
you don't have to receive. Nobody is saying you have to. There's a kind of weird social pressure to receive, but nobody should be forced to receive. This is important for a few reasons. One,
if you haven't fasted before Mass, you shouldn't receive.
Two, if you're really distracted
and you feel like you're not in a good place, you don't have to receive. But three, if you're in a state of mortal sin, you should not receive. I think this is this something we don't talk about very often. We had confession. I talked on confession last week, because confession should precede receiving Communion, very often,
because we want to be reconciled with God before we're united with Him. Like if we understood the gravity of sin, if we understood how bad it is that we sin,
it would make no sense to us that we would then receive our Lord in Holy Communion, like if we commit a mortal sin, we are saying to God, I don't actually want to follow you,
and then to say that to him, and then to go up and receive him is a very mixed Message. It's like getting into a fight with your spouse and then still expecting to be able to cuddle in bed that night or whatever.
It's like getting into a fight with a co worker and never saying anything to reconcile it, and still pretending as if life is normal and work should just continue as usual.
It doesn't make any sense. It's a it's a weird thing, and I think people are conditioned to just receive Communion unthinkingly, because
people aren't talking about about this reality, like we don't have to receive Communion when we go to Mass,
we hopefully should receive Communion, in a sense, like I hope we all become reconciled more and more closely to our Lord, and I hope we all have a greater desire to receive him in the Blessed Sacrament. But if that's not where you're at, don't pretend like you're somewhere else. If that's not where I'm at, I shouldn't pretend that I'm somewhere else where like it is, it's embarrassing enough to go to confession and to admit that we've sinned, but we also need to confess if we've committed moral sins and received communion, that's also an additional mortal sin. That's an additional thing to confess
and to say I didn't I didn't want to skip communion because I didn't want people to judge me.
It's such a weird thing to say out loud,
because we're receiving the
we're saying we don't want people to judge us, so we're going to offend our final judge. It's like it doesn't make sense the people around us. One, they're not judging you. And two, if they are, that's on them.
So
receiving Communion, you don't have to do it. You don't have to go in a line. If you do go in the line.
You can go in a line with a priest or a deacon and ask for a blessing. That's something that's more customary in the United States right now.
Don't do that in other countries. That's not accustomed pretty much anywhere else that I know of.
And then as far as reception of communion, this should be this is worth mentioning, the
United States was given a dispensation to receive on the hand, and some people argue that receiving on the hand is a more ancient tradition than receiving on the tongue. I'm
not here to get into any like liturgical war right now. I do want to point out that if we receive on the tongue,
two things become less possible.
One,
the possibility of fragments of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament falling to the ground go down considerably because we're not handling our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. So by accident, by an unintentional oversight, we're not going to do anything disrespectful to our Lord if we receive on the tongue. And then two, if there's a habit of receiving on the tongue, the
possibility of intentional sacrilege goes down right like
satanic black masses. They need a consecrated host. They need Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament to commit their sacrilege, and it's so much easier for them to get it when people are receiving on the hand, there was a time that I found a host and a hymnal at a church, like somebody had received our Lord in the hand, didn't know what to do with him, and then just tucked him into a hymnal. Like, that's accidental, that's unintentional. That wouldn't have happened if they'd received on the tongue. But
then there are people who are actually going to go to Mass in order to desecrate Our Blessed Sacrament.
So I'm not saying you have to receive on the tongue. The church in the United States was given a dispensation to receive on the hand. So it's not
for me to say which way people do it. It is to say that there are reasons to receive on the tongue and
there there are reasons,
probably over and above those two. But I wanted to point out those two, because I don't think people ever talk about it. It's worth talking about it's worth saying, why are we doing what we're doing, and what would be the best possible thing? Like, if we're already trying to do the best possible imaginable thing, why wouldn't we want to do the best possible imaginable thing in the best possible way?
Like, why would we want to do anything that would be some part if we're trying to do the best thing anyway.
All right, that's the fourth thing, the reception of communion. Why or why not? And the mode in which you're receiving, again, you can receive on the hand. You're allowed to. It's permitted. I just wanted to point out the receiving on the tongue is a motion that you can do. It feels awkward if you Has anyone ever been to a Byzantine liturgy or any of the Eastern rite liturgies, right? Like they don't call it the mass because that's a Latinate name. They call it the Divine Liturgy. And how do you receive communion with them,
Body and Blood, spoon in your mouth, spooned into the mouth. Like you cannot receive Communion in the hand in the East, because it's literally like a little
it's like a bowl of wine and bread that had been consecrated to be the body and blood of Christ, and they spoon it into your mouth. So like you can receive in the hand in the east, and only in the United States and Canada, I think, are you allowed to receive in the hand in the West?
So
just a note for going to Mass, things that we don't talk about, motions that we go through without really thinking,
yeah, and I know, apparently there's a line from St Augustine or someone about receiving in the hand and how it's like making a little throne for our Lord. I'm sure he did say that. I'm sure that is a thing that isn't actually the custom
in most of the Catholic world. And
this is a this is also a cool thing, right? Like the Catholic faith that we live here in Jackson is a universal faith. It is a church that spans the globe. And if you've done any traveling and you've gotten to mass in other countries, you realize, oh.
We actually do things a little bit differently in the United States, and maybe the different things aren't always better. I'm not
trying to get into a big liturgical war on this one. I am just pointing out there are things that we do and there are reasons for doing them that are worth talking about.
And then the last thing I want to talk about, about going to Mass,
is after mass. So mass, the liturgy, is the public work of the people of God. It is a public work of the Body of Christ.
So the mass begins, you know, the opening prayer, the the closing prayer,
it's all it's all part of the liturgy. It's all the public devotion of the church, and the public devotion of the church has pride of place over any private devotion.
So I wanted to suggest that there is a bridge between the public devotion of the church and our private devotion, and that is after mass. So mass has ended, we can go in peace
to take a few more minutes of private devotional time, to just make a prayer of thanksgiving, to sit with our Lord and just be with Him privately. The whole of mass is us saying we are willing to be part of the body of Christ. We're letting go and letting the church form us, and letting the church guide us in the right worship of God,
and in these moments after mass, to extend that into our private devotional life for a time of Thanksgiving. I think people are very accustomed to be excited about the people that they see in mass. It's their friends, it's their family. I get that I like people at Mass too. I really do.
And it's it can be difficult to just take a few minutes at the end of mass and to just kneel there and just be with our Lord, to be thankful to Him, to reflect on the graces, to reflect on the gospel, to reflect on the words of Scripture.
But Sure. May I recommend that we do that, that we make a habit of that? I think if we as men are more committed to bridging this, this divide between the public devotion and the private devotion, by spending a few more minutes in thanksgiving, I think that will have a tremendous impact, personally for each of us, but I think it will also be a good example for the rest of the people at church. And then one of the things that I do with my sons is I take them up and we kneel before the sanctuary and we pray a prayer of thanksgiving for the deacons and the priests and the bishop
and any priests that we are related to.
Three of my brothers are priests, and one of my uncles is a priest. So we pray for them, and we pray for God to raise up you deacons, priests and bishops. At the end of every mass, I take my boys up, we kneel at the sanctuary and we make that prayer.
So it's worthwhile also to pray for our priests and our deacons. These are men who have set aside
everything right to become a priest is to give up to give up property to a certain extent, to give up family, to lay down their entire life so that we can go to Mass. If men didn't lay down their life,
we wouldn't have mass. And so it's worth taking time to be grateful. Instead of the first thing we say about a priest be a complaint about the length of the homily or the quality of the homily, let the first thing that we say about the priest be Thank You, Lord for father. Tim, thank you Lord for father. Tim, thank you Lord for father. Chas Thank you Lord for father. Randy, thank you Lord for is it father? Dominic for Father Dominic, like these men, didn't have to say yes to becoming priests. They did it anyway,
and so to have gratitude for them, and then to pray for more priests and deacons and bishops who are willing to follow the will of God and to build up the people of God, worthwhile thing.
So
there were a lot of ways we could have done a how to of the mass. I thought maybe just talking about five things would be worthwhile, because these are five things that seem significant, five things that I don't think most guys know, and five things that have really made a difference for me and understanding what I'm going when I enter a church and realize
that when I bend My knee before the tabernacle. This is this is me saying, This is my king. I'm following him. That's what that motion means in the west,
to know that when I'm making these signs of the cross, I'm literally praying to be transformed by the words I'm about to hear. And.
It?
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
