After the High Mass today, the building site was blessed and the first footings of the new accommodation building dug. The site manager from Stepnell, Dave Taylor, was on hand to supervise the digging.

As you can see, the Fathers are taking Health and Safety very seriously! We pray that all will proceed without incident, and that by August we will raise the necessary funds to bring this project to its completion.

Stepnell Ltd begin work on Monday 12th March. This work will add five new rooms for the Oratorian community, a new parish office, bar and kitchen, and the new library and G K Chesterton archive.

Photographs courtesy of the Latin Mass Society

Here is the last of the series of sermons on the Mass – preached by Fr Joseph Welch on Sunday 20th November, the feast of Christ the King.

“Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

And so we come to the last in our series of twelve sermons on the Mass, and indeed to the last part of the Mass: the blessing and the dismissal.

The Mass, of course, begins with the Sign of the Cross, a gesture we make so often that we become, perhaps, somewhat blasé about it, making the sign hurriedly without thought or devotion, forgetting that the Sign of the Cross is not merely a perfunctory gesture to introduce and conclude other prayers; it is a prayer in itself and a very profound one at that.

Firstly, when we make the Sign of the Cross, we are acknowledging that we believe that there is but One God, yet three Persons in this One God; three Persons who share the same divine nature, and between whom there is no essential difference, only the distinction of their relationship one to another. It was in the name of this One God, these three Persons, that we were baptized. By being baptized we came to share the very life of that One God; and that share of God’s life, given to us in the form of sanctifying grace, is the fundamental principle, the very basis and the moving force, of our entire life as Christians. God’s grace was infused into our souls, and at the same time we entered into His life.

Secondly, when we make the Sign of the Cross, we are acknowledging the Cross on which the second Person of that Trinity died. Our Lord offered Himself to the Father, on our behalf, and within the bond of the love of the Holy Spirit. The Cross is the deepest and most admirable expression of what Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, has done for us. It is the very means by which our sins are forgiven, by which we are redeemed from the consequences of those sins, and by which we are saved from the grasp of the devil whose disorder and deceit is conquered, and whose power, in the shape of death, is overcome. With the Cross a new order was established, the Kingdom of God, and with it the universal kingship of Christ, a kingdom for the coming of which we pray every time we say the Our Father. Because God created the world in which we live, He and He alone has the right to hold sway over the nations; His laws, and His alone, may rightfully govern the societies in which we live. Any law passed by man that contradicts the Law of the Creator is offensive to God and serves to interrupt the coming of God’s Kingdom here on earth.

Thirdly, each time we trace the Sign of the Cross on ourselves, we place ourselves very firmly under the Cross by which divine order was restored; we acknowledge God’s right to govern our lives; and we submit with a humble and generous heart to His will, asking Him to order our lives for the sake of the salvation of our souls as well as for the building up of His kingdom of peace here on earth. And when we make the Sign of the Cross together within our families at home, or when we have our homes blessed, we are placing our families under the protection of that same Cross, and asking Our Lord to guide our every thought, word, and deed.

But the Sign of the Cross within the Church’s liturgy does more than this. The two Signs of the Cross, at the beginning and at the end of the Mass, encompass within their embrace the whole sacrificial action which they signify. Lifting our minds and hearts to God at the start of the Mass, the Sign of the Cross serves to help us meditate on the beloved Trinity from whom all life comes; and the blessing at the end of Mass summarizes the fullness of Our Lord’s sacrifice of love, the shedding of His blood in expiation and propitiation for our sins. During the Mass, God pours grace upon grace into the hearts of those present and of those for whom the Mass is being offered. With the final blessing, those graces are sealed within our hearts, as it were, by the Sign of the Cross, the Cross from which those graces flow, and we are blessed “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph 1:3).

The word blessing comes from the Latin word benedicere, to speak well or to speak good things. When we speak good things to someone we might be simply wishing them well; but because “the Word of God is living and active” (Heb 4:12) then any word spoken by God actually brings about what that word signifies. So when we receive God’s blessing from the hands of a priest, all the goodness of the heavenly places are truly heaped upon us, and we are made sharers in the spiritual blessings of the Mass, sharers in the blessings of Christ’s great act of redeeming love.

Then comes the dismissal: in Latin, Ite, missa est. “Go, this is the dismissal.” In English, to be dismissed sounds rather as though we are being disposed of somewhat summarily. But, of course, the word comes from the Latin, mitto, “I send”. Having received grace upon grace, and having had blessings heaped upon us, Our Lord sends us forth, just as He did His first disciples, to bear those graces and blessings out into the whole world in order to help with His divine mission of converting the world, of bringing sinners to repentance, and of establishing His universal kingship here on earth and in the hearts of every man, woman, and child, so that both heaven and earth may be governed by His law of love, so that the will of God may be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Here is the penultimate sermon in the series on the Mass, preached by Fr Jerome Bertram on Sunday 13th November:

“Do this in Remembrance of Me”.

It is in Holy Communion that we are made one with Our Lord, and through Him, we are one with everyone else who is united to Him; thus we are united to those who have died, and brought into communion with those we lament. That it why we celebrate Mass and receive Communion for the dead.

Immediately before we receive Holy Communion we reap the most obvious benefit of the new translation: the brief exchange turns out to consist of direct quotations from Scripture: “Behold, the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the World”, words in which St John the Baptist first pointed out Our Lord (John 1:29). We have been calling on the Lamb of God to have mercy on us, and grant us peace, and now He is here, we can see Him! Then we hear, “Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb”, from near the end of St John’s Apocalypse (19:9), for our Holy Communion is a “Pledge of future Glory” (St Thomas Aquinas, antiphon for Vespers of Corpus Christi). And we reply in the words of the Centurion in the Gospel, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my servant shall be healed.” (Matth. 8:8) Yes, there is one word different: we pray for my soul to be healed. Holy Communion is a remedy for the soul, the heart, the mind – it is not primarily a remedy for the body, we have another Sacrament for that. We come to Holy Communion to be cleansed from sin, to be strengthened in virtue, to be united with each other into the One Body of Christ which is His Church.

But how should we receive Communion? Here we enter delicate ground, for there is nothing so divisive as the Sacrament which unites us. We must tread carefully, saying nothing more than the truth, and invoking charity and understanding as we try to avoid the peril on either side. The peril, that is, of breaching Charity.

When we approach the Altar rails, we come in procession up the centre of the church, to express our respect for the Altar and the Sacrifice, and we return by the side-aisles, so that those approaching and those returning do not obstruct each other. As we all know, there are two modes of receiving Holy Communion in the Western Church. Recently the Holy See renewed permission for Catholics in England to receive Communion in their hands, and standing, while reminding us that everyone is free to kneel along the altar-rail, and to receive on the tongue. As the Instruction prefaced to the new Altar Missal says, “individual members of the faithful may choose to receive communion while kneeling. However, when they communicate standing, it is recommended that the faithful bow in reverence before receiving the Sacrament.” (General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), §160, English /Scots version, CTS Altar Missal 2011, p. 69. In Australia the faithful must bow.) The Instruction continues to state that the Faithful communicate “either on the tongue, or, where this is allowed, in the hand, the choice lying with the communicant.” (GIRM, §161)

For nearly the whole history of the Latin Church, receiving on the tongue, and kneeling, has been the only authorised posture, with obvious exceptions such as those ill in bed. (Standing Communion has long been the tradition of the Greek Church, although the laity never receive in the hand, but open their mouths wide for the deacon to pour in the leavened Host soaked in the Precious Blood.) There is one single reference in the writings of the Church Fathers to the manner of receiving Communion in the hand, and it is worth quoting in full:

“Approaching therefore, come not with thy wrists extended, or thy fingers open; but make thy left hand as if a throne for thy right, which is on the eve of receiving the King. And having hollowed thy palm, receive the Body of CHRIST, saying after it, Amen. Then after thou hast with carefulness hallowed thine eyes by the touch of the Holy Body, partake thereof; giving heed lest thou lose any of it; for what thou losest, is a loss to thee, as if it were from one of thy own members. For tell me, if anyone gave thee gold dust, wouldest thou not with all precaution keep it fast, being on thy guard against losing any of it, and suffering loss? How much more cautiously then wilt thou observe that not a crumb falls from thee, of what is more precious than gold and precious stones?”

Thus far St Cyril of Jerusalem, writing in 347or 348 AD. (Catechetical Lectures, lect. xxiii, 21, from A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church[translated by J.H. Newman], Oxford 1838, p. 279.) It is obvious that St Cyril believed and taught that what we receive truly is the Body of the Lord, and must be welcomed with enormous respect: we can hardly do less, though his curious instruction on touching the Host to our eyes should, I think, be quietly forgotten. We receive the Host in both hands, we do not “take” it. In many cultures it is important always to use both hands when accepting a gift – and we should not forget that it is often considered offensive to receive something in the left hand. When visiting other countries we should be aware of that!

The Instruction concludes, “As soon as the communicant receives the Host, he or she consumes the whole of it.” (GIRM, §161) We do not wander away clutching the Body of Christ, but receive Him eagerly into ourselves, under the roof of our mouth.

Many prefer the ancient tradition of receiving the Host directly into the mouth, as Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta did: “Her adoring attitude, gestures such as genuflections – even on both knees in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament exposed, and that well into old age – her postures such as kneeling and joining hands, her preference for receiving Holy Communion on the tongue all bespoke her faith in the Eucharist.” (Mother Teresa, Come be my Light, New York 2007, p. 213) We should open our mouth, and bring the tongue forward onto the lower lip (not sticking right out!) and allow the Priest or Deacon to place the Host gently on the tongue. The earliest unmistakeable allusion to receiving Communion on the tongue is in the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, an African document dated 203 AD, a good bit earlier than St Cyril, showing that practice varied in different regions. (Passio Sanctarum Martyrum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, §4, in A. Gallandus, Cong. Orat., Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum, Venice 1766, Vol. II, p. 175.) It has certainly been the universal custom in the Latin Church for well over a thousand years, possibly longer, and is still, of course, the norm at the Old Mass (the “Extraordinary Form”). When the Bishops after Vatican II considered changing the custom, they voted overwhelmingly against it (597 in favour of Communion in the hand, 1,233 against it). The Pope afterwards decided to permit it – this is called “collegiality”. (Austin Flannery, Vatican Council II, the Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, Leominster 1981, p. 151) In some countries it is not permitted: common courtesy demands that we should observe the local practice and not try to impose our own preference. But in the same way common courtesy demands that we should not be aggressive in demanding the right to kneel and receive on the tongue in a church where everyone else is standing and receiving on the hand: it is never a good thing to be “singular” or to draw attention to ourselves!

The other choice we have to make is whether to receive Communion also from the Chalice. This again is something new in the Western Church: from the very beginning we know that Christians often received in one Kind only (Luke 24:30, Acts. 2:46, 20:7). From the beginning they knew that Our Lord is received whole and entire, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, whether we receive only the Host, or (in case of sickness) only the Precious Blood. It is only the sign that is more complete when we receive in both Kinds, and only for that reason that it is recommended in the new Instruction. (“Holy Communion has a fuller form as a sign when it takes place under both kinds.” GIRM §281, p. 91.) You should approach in procession, make the gesture of reverence required, and take the Chalice firmly in both hands to drink a little before handing it back to the Deacon or Priest.

For those who find difficulty in swallowing gluten, it is perfectly correct to receive from the Chalice only (although we do have low-gluten Hosts if you ask us before Mass) – you receive the entire Lord, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity from the Chalice as from the Host. Conversely, if you have a cold or any other infectious condition, or if you have reason to believe your immune system is weakened, it is prudent and charitable not to approach the Chalice until you are cured.

Our belief that both bread and wine are truly changed into the Body and Blood of Christ, entire and undivided, is termed the Doctrine of Concomitance: if we truly believe in the Blessed Sacrament, then we know that to receive in either kind is sufficient. In fact the Instruction in the new edition of the Missal urges us priests to “take care to ensure that the faithful who participate in the rite or are present at it, are made aware of the Catholic teaching on the form of Holy Communion … that Christ, whole and entire, and the true Sacrament, is received even under only one kind … that the Church … has the power to lay down or alter whatever provisions, apart from the substance of the Sacraments, that she judges to be more readily conducive to reverence for the Sacraments and the good of the recipients, in view of changing conditions, times, and places.” (GIRM 282, p. 91) The Church has the power and the duty to make sure that there is no misunderstanding, or lack of respect for Our Lord in the Sacrament. Practices have changed, and may change again, but we may not consider our own present practice to be better, more correct, or more spiritual than the practices followed in the time of St Francis or St Thérèse of Lisieux. Charity, as always, is the supreme law.

The Women’s Oratory sponsored the statue of St Hilda of Whitby on the reredos, and at their meeting on Monday, Fr Anton gave a talk about St Hilda, before blessing the statue, which as you see is on the top row of statues:

Fr Dominic Jacob preached this tenth sermon on the Mass on Sunday 6th November:

We have reached the end of the Canon, the Great prayer of Consecration, the main focus of the Mass, during which the bread and wine offered at the altar, become the Body and Blood of our Lord. We now move on to the Communion rite.

This begins with the Pater Noster, the Our Father, which St Thomas calls “The most perfect of prayers.” This has always been part of the Mass, but it was not always where it is now, serving as a bridge between the Canon and the Communion, somehow belonging to both, uniting the sacrifice with the Banquet.

It was, Pope St Gregory the Great who had this prayer placed at the end of the Canon, which was the custom in the Greek Church where the prayer was said at that point by all present . One bishop, John of Syracuse, took issue with this innovation in the Roman Liturgy, but Pope Gregory defended his decision vigorously in a letter to the Sicilian bishop: “The Lord’s Prayer,” he wrote, “is recited immediately after the Canon, because it was a custom of the apostles to consecrate the offerings only when this prayer was also recited. It also seems most inappropriate to me, to recite at the sacrifice a prayer which was composed by some scholar, and to omit the recitation of the prayer which our Saviour himself composed, in the sacrifice of His Body and Blood.”

One thing which has been restored in the new edition of the Missal is the more literal translation of the introduction to the prayer. “At the Saviour’s command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say…” it sounds rather more severe than the cosier introductions we were used to in the earlier translation and not a few have raised the question as to why we “dare” to say the Our Father. It’s a fair question. But the truth is, we have always “dared” to call God our Father. Not, however, in any craven way as though we were terrified of the Lord. Surely it’s about reverence before Almighty God, remembering first that God is God and that here we stand on holy ground. Here, in our presence, the Lord has done something truly awesome in making the Divine Presence a reality in the Sacrament of the altar. More than this – we, who are nothing, have been given through the grace of our baptism, a tremendous privilege: to call God our Father. On this matter, St Peter Chrysologus said: “Our awareness of our status as slaves would make us sink into the ground and our earthly condition would dissolve into dust, if the authority of our Father himself and the Spirit of his Son had not impelled us to cry …’Abba, Father!’…When would a mortal dare call God ‘father’, if man’s innermost being were not animated by power from on high?”

We “dare” to call God father, because Our Lord has told us we should: “When you pray, say this…” Moreover (and I quote the Catechism here) the “power of the Spirit who introduces us to the Lord’s Prayer is expressed… by the beautiful, characteristically Christian expression: parrhesia, straightforward simplicity, filial trust, joyous assurance, humble boldness, the certainty of being loved.” (CCC 2778) So when we pray this prayer, we do so confidently, as a child coming before a father. St Philip once taught an old lady how to pray simply by helping her enter into the Our Father, and think about it clause by clause, beginning with what a marvellous thing it is to have God as our Father. It is important that we meditate on this often.

Another reason why the Lord’s Prayer is such a good bridge to Communion is expressed in its central phrase: “Give us this day our daily bread.” This was understood by early writers such as Origen, Tertullian and St Cyprian as a reference to the Holy Eucharist, “the daily bread which nourishes and preserves the divine life within us.”

But there is another clause in the prayer which lends weight to its being included as part of the preparation for Holy Communion. This is the petition for the forgiveness of our sins and our deliverance from all evil. St Augustine puts it rather neatly: “When, because of human weakness, our minds have conceived something improper, or our tongues have spoken something unjust… these things will be removed through the Lord’s Prayer, when we say: ‘Forgive us our trespasses’, and we may approach without fear and not eat and drink what we receive to our own judgement.”

The first section of the Lord’s Prayer, where we dwell on the nature of God, and implore him to make his presence felt on earth, and the last section, where we dwell on our response to his love, linking the forgiveness he gives us with that we ourselves must show to others, are the two wings that make this prayer so powerful. If you take the wings of a bird apart, you may understand how they work, but the bird will no longer be able to fly. Faith cannot exist without the wings of prayer and there is no better way to make that leap of faith which is so essential to our Christian lives than to speak the language of God himself, using the prayer with which the Son catches us up into the life of the Father, the life of the Kingdom for which our hearts yearn.

Here is the ninth in the series of sermons on the Mass, preached by Fr Nicholas Edmonds-Smith on Sunday 30th October:

For most of us, the sacraments are our primary encounters with the Church, and the primary expression of our Catholic Faith – or rather, those two sacraments – the Holy Eucharist and Confession which we celebrate with varying frequency. The other 5 are more occasional: most of us will have been baptised and confirmed but a long time ago. Some of us are married. Some of us are priests or deacons. Perhaps we have been very ill, or in hospital, and have received the sacrament of the Sick. But Mass and Confession are the two that almost define us as Catholics – they are what Catholic “do”.

Yet it is also true that we tend to think of the sacraments as something peripheral to our faith – peripheral not in importance, and certainly not in practice – but peripheral in that they are “add-ons”, extras to one degree or another. Just look at a catechism or an instruction course – you have all the meaty theology, all the essentials of Christian faith first. Creation, Incarnation, Redemption; the Bible,the Trinity, Our Lord, Our Lady and the saints, the Church. And then you have a chapter on the sacraments. In a sense, the sacraments are separate from what we might regard as the fundamental doctrines of Christianity – which might be why there have always been Christians who have thought it possible to jettison one or more of the sacraments, or change their nature, or abolish the sacramental system altogether, and yet still be orthodox Christian believers.

The sacraments are certainly not mere additions to a system of belief. Rather, the concept of a sacrament, of sacramentality, is absolutely necessary for making sense of most of our doctrines. It is all pervasive. It is a common thread running throughout Christian teaching. For a sacrament is something that reveals and makes present.

Consider Our Lord himself – Christ, through his life and death, through his teaching and miracles, through his very person, reveals God to us. He tells us something about God. He tells us everything about God we’ll ever need to know. But he does more than just reveal Almighty God to us. Christ is the incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, he is God the Son himself made flesh. He brings God to us. Christ, in his humanity, reveals God and makes him present. As he himself says, “To have seen me, is to have seen the Father”. And as St Paul tells us, He is “the image of the invisible God”.

This is the most fundamental doctrine we have: that God became man. And he became Man so that we might know him, that we might love him and serve him. That we might enter into a relationship with him, through faith and through his death and resurrection, both now and into eternity. Christ is, in a sense, the outward sign of an inward grace, an inward spiritual reality – the love of God for mankind – who actually is himself that love. He is a sacrament. He reveals and makes present.

Or look at the Church. We believe that the Church – those billions of believers, united with their shepherds, those alive today, those in heaven, and those awaiting the end of their purification in purgatory – this mystical body is the Body of Christ. It not only teaches us about God and Christ, and rules and guides us with his authority; it is actually the living presence of Christ on earth. It is his Body. It both reveals him to the world, and makes him present. It is His Sacrament. It is the outward material expression of that Spirit of the Risen Lord who binds those who believe to each other and to himself, that we might be caught up into the life of the Trinity, the mystery of the love of the God we cannot see.

And finally, look at the seven sacraments: those outward signs of inward grace, instituted by Christ for our sanctification. It is in these seven moments that the Church most perfectly realises her nature as the Body of Christ. In these seven celebrations, something about God is revealed to us, we are told something of what God is doing, of how he loves us, of what he wants for us. But more than that, God is himself made present. Grace is actually given. They do what they say they do. So that in baptism we are told about the love of God which recreates us in the image of his Risen Son – and then we are recreated. In the sacrament of Penance, God is revealed as a Shepherd who searches out the lost sheep; a loving Father always ready to embrace and forgive us – and we are in that moment embraced and forgiven. Or in the Holy Eucharist, we see that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son, who gave up his life on the cross for our redemption – and then we are given that life through Christ’s actual body and blood, made present through the action of the Holy Spirit in the elements of bread and wine. It is in this Blessed Sacrament that Christ is most perfectly revealed and most really made present. And this so that we might share his life and the salvation he won for us, that we might have grace in our souls and the love of God in our hearts.

Through our participation in the sacraments, above all in the Mass, we encounter Our Lord, and his power working in us. We celebrate our redemption and our union with the Father, and we are given all the graces and blessings, all the spiritual gifts and power we need to live as sons and daughters of God.

But the sacraments are not to stop there. They do not reveal Christ and make him present for ourselves alone. They are meaningless if they do not empower us to go out and reveal him to the world. And not only reveal him, but actually make him present. Because where we gather, he is present. When we act, it is he who acts in us and through us. The sacraments make us into sacraments – the Body of Christ makes us the body of Christ, that we might share him others, that we might show the Love of God and be that Love. The Church most fully IS the body of Christ when we share the body of Christ in the Eucharist. In the sacraments, and especially in the Blessed Sacrament, we become, as the Church, what we are called to be – the visible, material, bodily revelation of Christ in the world. An outward sign to others of an inward grace.

The eighth sermon in the series of the Mass, preached by Fr Daniel Seward on Sunday 23rd October:

“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?.”

In the sixteenth century, one of the most controversial debates between Catholics and Protestants was that of sacrifice: is the Mass a sacrifice? Still today you might meet people who say that this idea has no warrant in the scriptures. But sacrifice is essential if we are to understand what we are doing here, and the scriptures themselves show this clearly. Today I shall use just two passages from the New Testament to show this.

If you were a Gentile Christian living in Corinth in the fifties of the first century, you had a problem: in a Greek or Roman city, the normal suppliers of produce to the meat market were pagan temples. The meat that had been offered there to idols was sold in the market and then eaten at home. There was no overt connection between pagan worship and the eating of meat, but the consciences of some Christians were disturbed. Were they themselves guilty of idolatry by co-operating with this trade in sacrificial meat? Were they therefore obliged to be vegetarians, since there was not any other source of meat available to them? St Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, dispenses good, sound, practical advice. It is not permitted for Christians to eat meat in the context of a pagan ceremony, but if they have bought meat from the market that may have been offered to idols, they can eat it in good conscience, only they should be careful that in doing so that they did not give the impression that they condoned pagan sacrifice and so lead their weaker brethren astray. What is significant for us is that when Paul goes on to talk about the Eucharist, he explicitly compares it with a pagan sacrifice. The result of taking a meal in which the sacrificial victims of an idolatrous sacrifice were being eaten was to participate in this sacrifice and so become ‘partners’, that is friends or associates of demons. Whereas, in the Christian Eucharist, we share in the Body and Blood of Christ which has been offered to God in sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Cross. When we take part in the Eucharist, we are expressing our status as partners, friends, associates of God by participating in the sacrifice of Christ. So Paul says,

“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? … Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.”

In this sacrifice Christ Himself is the priest – represented in the Mass by His earthly minister, and He is the pure victim.

The Passover meal, at which Our Lord celebrated the first Mass, was not an historical re-enactment, but a celebration of God’s saving and liberating action now. At the Passover meal, the Jews don’t say, “Tonight we remember when our ancestors were set free”, but “Tonight we are set free from slavery in Egypt”. The one who takes part in the Passover meal becomes a participant in the Exodus from Egypt. What was it caused the angel of death to pass over the Israelites? It was the blood of a lamb, smeared in the form of a Cross upon their doorposts. During the Passover meal there are four cups of wine to be drunk, representing the four promises that God made to Israel at the first Passover: “I will bring you out…I will deliver you…I will redeem you…then I will take you for my people.” The third cup is drunk at the end of the meal when grace is said and relates to the promise to redeem Israel. It is followed by the ‘hallel’, the praise of God, and then by the fourth cup, called the cup of completion. It was at the third cup, at the end of the meal that our Lord gave His Precious Blood to the disciples. The third cup – the cup of blessing – represents the blood of the lamb that the Israelites smeared on their doorposts. Their covenant with God that He would pass over them was sealed by this blood. In the Gospels we read:

“In the same way, He took a cup after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of Me.””

Clearly, our Lord is linking this cup of His blood with the sacrifice of the lamb at Passover. It is certain then, that He means this meal, the Eucharist, to be a sacrifice in an analogous way to the Passover. In St Matthew’s Gospel we read:

“Drink of it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.”

After the third cup should come the drinking of the fourth cup – the cup of completion. It relates to the last of the four promises – “I will take you for my people.” But this fourth cup is not drunk by Jesus and His disciples. In fact He quite explicitly says that He will not drink wine again until He does so in his Father’s kingdom. The Passover meal is deliberately left incomplete. Why is this? It is because it is only the death of Jesus on the Cross the next day that consummates the action of the Last Supper. Our Lord relates the two of them by saying that His blood is to be poured out for the remission of sins. In the Garden of Gethsemane He prays, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” The cup is the fourth cup of completion which the Son will drink on the Cross. In St John’s Gospel, our Lord cries out from the Cross, “I thirst!” and then is given vinegar on a hyssop stick. When He has drunk this He says, “It is finished!” – or consummated or completed. This is the fourth cup of completion, drunk upon the Cross.

“Do this in remembrance of Me” This word ‘remembrance’ or ‘memorial’ or simply ‘memory’ can be confusing when we use it in English, because we use these words simply to mean recalling something in the past. If I remember something, it is usually something that no longer exists, but the Passover meal made the events of the Exodus present there and then to the participants – “Tonight God frees us from slavery.” So when the Lord says, “Do this as a memorial of Me”, He means that whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup, we are proclaiming His death – we are making His death present to us. A covenant is not simply a contract between two people – it is a sacred blood bond between two people involving the exchange of life – “I am yours and you are mine”. This is why a covenant has to be sealed with blood, to show the reality of this commitment. Participation in the new Covenant of the Eucharist means then that Christ gives Himself to us, and we must give ourselves to Him. The Eucharist is a Sacrament of total self-giving – Our Lord does not give Himself to us in any measure, or only partly. He holds nothing back, because He gives Himself. It is because Christ unites Himself totally with us, that we are enabled to unite ourselves with Him – to follow Him through the veil to the holy of holies.

The new English translation of the Missal re-emphasizes such words as sacrifice, oblation and offering to remind us of the importance of this scriptural concept of sacrifice. This is also why the Church is rediscovering her ancient practice of the priest and people facing together towards the altar, to show that the Mass is not a simple meal around the kitchen table but a sacrificial offering to the Father of the one sacrifice made by Christ on Calvary. It is offered for our good, to the praise and glory of His name and for the good of all His holy Church – for the living and the dead. From this follows the sacrifice that we make of our time to assist worthily at the Mass, from this follows the sacrifice of our lives in the Lord’s service, to which the Mass invites us.

Last weekend saw our annual Forty Hours’ Devotion, during which the Blessed Sacrament was solemnly exposed.

An innovation this year was that the Dominicans of Blackfriars came to sing Compline, complete with the Dominican Salve, at midnight on Friday, and the Sisters of the Work sang Matins and Lauds of the Blessed Sacrament at 5am on Saturday morning.

The seventh in the series of sermons on the Mass, preached by Fr Joseph Welch on Sunday 16th October, during the Forty Hours’ Devotion:

And so we come to the seventh in our series of Sunday sermons on the Mass, and turn our attention to the Offertory, very appropriately during this weekend of our Forty Hours devotion.

To understand the Offertory, indeed to understand the whole Mass, we have first to be reminded that the Mass is not primarily something that we do. The Mass is, first and foremost, something that Christ does. The Mass is the supreme act of homage and adoration offered by Christ, the Son of God, to His Father, and carried out in humble obedience; an act of expiation to make amends for our sins, and of propitiation to appease the wrath of God because of the injustice of our sins; an act of thanksgiving for all that God has bestowed upon mankind; and an act of supplication, appealing to the Father for all that sinful man yet needs. These are the four ends of the Mass: adoration, satisfaction for our sins, thanksgiving, and supplication.

All of these four ends were accomplished on Calvary when Christ, in dying on the Cross, offered Himself to the Father on behalf of sinful mankind.

The Mass and Christ’s offering on Calvary are, then, one and the same thing. The Mass is simply the continuation in time of that offering on Calvary.

So when we come to Mass, we come, not primarily to get something out of it, but to accept Our Lord’s invitation to join in His act of adoration, His offering of Himself, to the Father. In other words, we come primarily not to receive but, like Christ arriving on Calvary, to give. And the offertory is the moment in the Mass where this point is, perhaps, most apparent.

At the offertory, the pure and unblemished bread is offered up in preparation for its becoming the Lamb of God sacrificed on the altar of the Cross. But it also represents us. In the bread, offered up to the Father by Christ in the person of His priest, is also offered all that we bring to the Father: our adoration and praise, our thanksgiving for all the gifts He has given us, for all of our joys, our hopes and our aspirations and our longings. But alongside these joys we bring, too, all our sufferings, all that weighs us down or troubles us, our anxieties, our ills, our loneliness, our confusion, our despair, and, in addition we bring to God all those for whom we wish to pray. Even our sins are brought to Him as we beg forgiveness and sanctification.

As the priest raises the patten at the offertory we should, in our mind’s eye, place on that patten alongside the bread, all that we have come to give to the Father, asking Our Blessed Lord, the mediator between we sinful creatures and our sinless Creator, to offer it to the Father on our behalf, and to purify our gift from any selfish or vested interest with which our prayers may be tainted.

Then the priest mixes wine and water: a tiny drop of water is comingled with the wine in the chalice. That tiny drop of water, which signifies our smallness, our limitedness, our humanity, is dropped into the vast richness of the wine, the vastness of God’s greatness and mercy, the richness of His grace and His love. Once that drop of water is poured into the wine it is, as it were, lost, no longer detectable, because God’s infinitely merciful love absorbs us into His being, into a share of His life, sanctifying and making divine that which is sinful and human. Like the drop of water in the wine, we become lost in God’s love.

The chalice too, then, is offered up by Christ in the person of His priest on our behalf but, once more, we, in our mind’s eye, place within that chalice all that we have brought to the Father, asking our beloved Lord to offer it to Him.

Here then, at the offertory especially, we see how the Mass is primarily something which Christ does. And we? What is our role? Are we merely spectators? Certainly we, as it were, get caught in the updraft of Christ’s offering to the Father; we get caught on the coat-tails of Christ’s upward movement. But our gift of self is taken up by Christ precisely because we have responded to His call like Mary the sister of Martha, and like Our Lady herself.

When Our Lord went to Bethany after Lazarus has died, Martha rushed to her sister Mary and said, “The Master is here and calls you”. Mary rose quickly and went to Him (Jn 11:28,29). So in the Mass our Master calls to us, and we, rising from our places, hasten to Mass to join in His life-giving work.

And just as God courted the chosen virgin of Nazareth, who surrendered herself entirely to her Lord, and was promptly overshadowed by the coming of the Holy Spirit; so, too, God woos us, invites us to surrender ourselves to Him. We do so in the offertory of the Mass, and we, too, are overshadowed by the Holy Spirit as the greatest Gift known to mankind descends from heaven upon the altar in the hands of the priest, and we become one with Our Lord in Holy Communion.

Let us pray, then, that both the priest’s sacrifice and ours, which we offer up in unison, may be acceptable to God the Father almighty.