By JAMES MONTI
For every Catholic, there can be no more important event in one’s spiritual life than Holy Mass. For in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist we encounter our God in a more intimate manner than in any other sacrament, sacramental, or form of prayer.
I recall hearing of a modern writer who has claimed that for those who have reached the highest states of prayer the Holy Eucharist is of lesser importance; this is utter and arrogant nonsense. The presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is a presence par excellence surpassing any other experience of the presence of God that we can have in this life.
If you really want to ascend Mount Carmel as St. John of the Cross did, if you truly want to journey along the way of perfection as St. Teresa of Avila taught, or if you sincerely want to walk in the Little Way of St. Therese of Lisieux, then make a fruitful participation in Holy Mass and Holy Communion your top priority.
To make our participation in the Mass as fruitful as we can, we need to predispose ourselves for it in a fitting manner, to approach it with a sense of the sacred. Preparing for Mass involves a few practical points as well, in particular getting to church early enough to settle and quiet the mind and formulate one’s petitions before the Mass begins.
The advice in this regard from an 18th-century manual of piety for lay Catholics first published in 1740 by Bishop Richard Challoner (1691-1781) is as valid now as it was when it was written over 250 years ago:
“When you are going to hear Mass, let your first care be to endeavor to recollect yourself, as well as you can, by calling home your wandering thoughts, and taking them off from all other businesses and concerns. . . .
“In your way to the church or chapel, put yourself in spirit in the company of the Blessed Virgin, and the other pious women going to Mount Calvary, to be present at the Passion and death of our Lord. . . .
“When you enter the church or chapel, humble yourself profoundly in the presence of God, whose house you come into; and if the Blessed Sacrament be kept there, adore your Saviour upon your bended knees. . . .
“Choose, as much as you can, a place to kneel in, where you may be most recollected, and least disturbed. There represent to yourself by a lively faith the majesty of God, and humbly beg His mercy and grace, that you may assist at this tremendous sacrifice in the manner you ought” (The Garden of the Soul, or, a Manual of Spiritual Exercises and Instructions for Christians who (living in the World) aspire to Devotion, London, 1764, pp. 65-66).
In nineteenth-century English Catholic books of devotion from 1811 onward, among the prayers provided in preparation for Mass there appears a unique adaptation of Psalm 95, the psalm with which the Church’s Office of Matins has begun for centuries. The psalm is prefaced by the following words that cast it as an invitation to Mass:
“The King of heaven invites us and graciously calls us into His sacred presence; to Him we owe all the days of our lives; let us give, at least, this one to His service. Antiphon: Let us adore the Lord of glory.
“Always are the angels assembled in their choirs above; always are the saints ready with their hymns; behold now the Church also prepares her solemn offices, and summons all her children to bring in their tribute of prayer and praise. Antiphon: Let us adore the God of our salvation” (A Manual of Prayers, before, during, and after Mass, on Sundays and Holydays, chiefly intended for the Use of Poor Schools, London, 1857, p. 3).
Reflection upon the “Passion dimension” of the Mass, that it is a re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary, is one of the best ways to predispose our hearts and minds for the Holy Eucharist. In a prayer to the Holy Trinity for the beginning of Mass, an Irish devotional manual entitled The Key of Heaven (c. 1929) implores, “…give me the sentiments I ought to have had on Mount Calvary, had I been a witness of that bloody sacrifice” (The Key of Heaven, compiled from Approved Sources, Dublin, Anthonian Press, c. 1929, pp. 51-52).
A book of meditations for priests dating from 1694 authored by the Oratorian Fr. Charles Edme Cloyseault (1645-1728) provides the following reflection as a prelude to the celebration of Mass:
“Consider that this Sacrament is the figure and the memorial of the Passion and of the death of Jesus Christ, according to these words that He said to His Apostles and in their persons to all priests: ‘As often as you will have done these things, do them in memory of me’ (Roman Canon); and for this purpose there is not an ornament of the priest nor a ceremony of the Mass, that does not signify some circumstance of the Passion. What a powerful motive to oblige us to treat both with the utmost respect and attention” (Meditations des Pretres, devant et apres la Sainte Messe, Lyons, 1694, pp. 7-8).
Likewise key to our preparation for Mass is the contemplation of just Who it is that we are to love, serve, and adore in this sacrament, as Fr. Cloyseault observes in another of his meditations:
“Ponder Jesus as God in all His infinite and incomprehensible grandeurs, in His eternity, His immensity, His majesty, His might, His wisdom, His power, His beatitude, His beauty, His bounty, His riches, His holiness, His patience, His justice, His mercy, and that He is contained with all that in the Eucharist” (ibid., pp. 25-26).
The sixteenth-century missals of Spain provide a rich fare of prayers and actions to prepare a priest for Mass; with their emphasis upon the purification of the soul, these texts have much to offer for reflection by the laity as well. Drawing upon the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the 1554 missal for the Dioceses of Calahorra and La Calzada-Logrono provides the following responsory for the priest to say in preparation for Mass:
“Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee: I am not worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. Verse: How many hired servants in my father’s house abound with bread, and I here perish with hunger? I will arise, and will go to my father, and say to him. [Repeat:] Make me as one of thy hired servants. Glory be to the Father. . . . [Repeat:] Father I have sinned. . . .” (Missale secundum consuetudinem Calagurritanae et Calciatensis ecclesiarum, Lyons, 1554, sig. +3v).
This same missal also provides a beautiful text for the priest to formulate his intention of celebrating Mass according to the mind of the Church:
“I intend to celebrate that most holy Mass and to do that which Christ did at the Last Supper, and the Church does daily, namely to transubstantiate bread into His body and wine into His blood according to the intention of Christ Himself and of the Church unto the praise and glory of God and to the honor of the Virgin Mary and of Saint [Name] in whose honor the feast is celebrated this day for the salvation of me and of all the faithful, living and dead; that it may profit all according to what God knows them to be fit for, thus that God may be the dispenser and distributor of their worth.
“And I [His] unworthy minister and cooperator desire moreover that the venerable Sacrament should be the refection of my soul, conforming me in every good action of the virtues and other holy exercises both spiritual and corporal, as well as unto the resistance of vices and temptations of the flesh, the world and the devil. Lastly I desire that that venerable Sacrament should profit unto the increase of the love of God and of neighbor, also unto an inseparability of union with God and a hastening of the vision of Him after this miserable and transitory life. Amen. I wish to do in reading, offering, consecrating and consuming that which God and Holy Mother Church wills” (ibid., sig. +3v).
The 1554 missal of Placentia, Spain, provides a prayer for the priest to say kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament or a crucifix prior to vesting for Mass wherein he prays by name for those for whom the Mass is to be offered as well as for those who are remembering him in their own prayers, for his enemies, and for “those who are in a state of mortal sin, that you may lead them back to your grace” (Missale secundum consuetudinem almae ecclesiae Placentinae, Venice, 1554, fol. 8r-v).
Newfound Hope
Each celebration of Holy Mass brings with it newfound hope that whatever petitions we bring to it within our hearts will someday be granted: “. . . his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. . . .” (Lam. 3:22-23).
This is even true with prayers for the conversion of a person resisting God’s grace, for as Fr. Paul de Jaegher, SJ, observes, “. . . if the ill-will of souls be at times an insurmountable barrier to grace, my reiterated and importunate prayers on behalf of them will gather in an abundant harvest of love, whether in this earthly sphere or another” (The Virtue of Trust: Meditations, London, Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1932, p. 56).
In preparing for Mass, and in all our daily supplications, let us make it our business in this life “to knock at heaven’s high door” (Key of Heaven, p. 180) until at long last, in God’s good time, we are admitted to the Heavenly Jerusalem.
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