New Roman Missal: May our lives be eucharistic

The column below concludes reflections adapted from Bishop Conley’s homily at the archdiocese’s St. Cecilia Mass held last month. [read full text]

Every Catholic Mass is a cosmic liturgy. The liturgy we celebrate here on earth is always a participation in the everlasting liturgy of heaven, in which all creation glorifies the Creator. This truth was too often obscured in the years after the Second Vatican Council. But with the new Roman Missal scheduled to take effect a year from now, in Advent 2011, we have a great chance to reclaim it.

To cite one among many examples, the new Mass translation will replace the mundane words — “Happy are those who are called to his supper” — with a confession of faith worthy of the cosmic character of our celebration.

We are not “happy.” We are blessed. We have not been called to any ordinary meal. We have been invited to the great banquet of our heavenly King, the wedding feast of his Son, our Redeemer.

Accordingly, we will now pray: “Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb.”  The language is an almost literal quotation from the revelation of the heavenly liturgy given to St. John in the book of Revelation.

In the Mass, heaven reaches down to earth, and earth reaches up to heaven. We are worshipping not only in our local church, but in the precincts of Mount Zion, “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and (with) innumerable angels in festal gathering, and (with) the Church of first-born who are enrolled in heaven” (Heb 12:22-23).

That is how the early Christians understood their worship. And it’s time for us to reclaim that same consciousness. We need to come to our worship filled with this same awe for the mystery of God’s love and his covenant.

St. Thomas Aquinas said that worship is essentially thanksgiving for the beneficium creationis, “the gift of being created.”  We worship God because the world he has given us is good, and because it is good for us to be alive. We worship God because everything we have, we have from God; and because everything we hope for is his alone to give.

That’s a glorious way for us to think about the Eucharist. We know that the word “Eucharist” comes from the Greek word that means “thanksgiving.” In the Eucharist, we give thanks for the gift of creation, but also for the gifts of the new creation — the victory over death made possible by Christ’s sacrifice.  But why does our worship take the form of sacrifice? And what does sacrifice really mean?

Here the changes in the new Roman Missal’s Eucharistic Rite help us to penetrate more deeply into the meaning of the liturgy. The Mass is our participation in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ. In our worship we join our self-offering to the redemptive self-offering of Christ on the cross. This sacrificial character is vital to our Catholic worship, and we need to consciously reclaim and articulate it.

To underline this, in the new edition of the missal, the priest will say different words at the Preparation of the Gifts. His prayer will go like this:

“With humble spirit and contrite heart may we be accepted by you, O Lord, and may our sacrifice in your sight this day be pleasing to you, Lord God.”

This prayer is not new. It has been in the liturgy all along. It comes from the book of Daniel.  But now more faithfully translated, it contains for us the sum of the biblical doctrine of sacrifice. The Old Testament prophets and psalmists had reached the conclusion that God does not desire animal sacrifices. What God desires is a humble and contrite heart.  And he wants us dedicated wholly to doing his will for our lives.

This is what we are promising when we lift up our hearts to the Lord in the Mass. And this is what the new Roman Missal will proclaim in a powerfully beautiful way.  We are called to make our own lives “eucharistic” — a spiritual offering to our Creator, a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

Most Rev. James D. Conley is auxiliary bishop of the Denver Archdiocese.

Related Reading:

• www.usccb.org/romanmissal
• www.archden.org/newromanmissal