With this text I am beginning a short series on the liturgy, and more specifically on the Holy Mass. My intention is not to speak about liturgical abuses, but rather to explain, in a systematic way, why I hold the Holy Mass in the so-called traditional form of the Roman Rite in particularly high esteem.

First, a brief linguistic note. The term “Tridentine Mass” is not entirely accurate, and the designation of two forms of the Roman Rite is, to some extent, disputed. Therefore, and simply for the sake of convenience, I shall speak of the “old” and the “new” Mass, meaning respectively the form of the Mass before the reform of 1969 and the form introduced afterwards.

In fact, the whole matter could be summed up in a single sentence: the “old” Mass expresses the Catholic faith in the most perfect manner.

To understand this, however, we must first remind ourselves what Catholic doctrine actually teaches concerning the Holy Mass and the Sacrament of the Eucharist. I spoke about the latter aspect not long ago in connection with Corpus Christi; here I would like to focus more on the Mass itself. These two aspects are inseparably linked, yet they are not identical. On the one hand, we are speaking of a sacrament which WE receive; on the other, we are speaking of an act of worship, the service of God.

In recent times we have witnessed an anthropocentric—that is, man-centred—shift, which tends to reduce the whole reality to only one of these aspects. As a consequence, the Holy Mass itself is effectively reduced to two elements: first, the part in which we are, so to speak, nourished by words—the readings from Sacred Scripture, the sermon, and the account of the Last Supper—and secondly, the reception of Holy Communion, with a few prayers in between. This, however, is a very truncated and, in essence, Protestant way of understanding the Eucharistic celebration.

This also helps us understand why services of the Word with the distribution of Communion are nowadays accepted so readily. Many people scarcely notice the difference. Technically speaking, the difference may appear rather small; if one is accustomed to the shortest Eucharistic Prayer, one may hardly even notice whether those ten lines of text were omitted or not. In reality, however, the difference is enormous—indeed, essential. For what is lacking is the most essential and holiest element of all: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the making present of Christ’s sacrifice.

We shall come to that in a moment. But first, one further remark concerning this anthropocentric shift. Much as I appreciate the German word Gottesdienst in this context, I nevertheless have the impression that its meaning has effectively been turned upside down. The word itself—used, for example, in Czech as bohoslužba—is meant to remind us that it is WE who place ourselves in the service of the Lord, not the other way round. God has no need of anything from us; indeed, in one of the prefaces we confess:

“Our praise adds nothing to your greatness, but profits us for salvation.”

Yet, as we have already seen in one of the catechism episodes, our purpose is:

To know God, to love Him, to serve HIM, and thereby to attain eternal happiness.

Now let us turn to the essence of the Holy Mass. A solemnly defined dogma declares:

“In the Holy Mass, God is offered a true and proper sacrifice, namely the unbloody sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.”

I do not intend to enter into apologetics here. If you would like that, please let me know in the comments, and I shall prepare a separate episode explaining why this is so, with references to Sacred Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, and so forth. Here I would merely like to dispel one common misconception. If anyone imagines that this doctrine was somehow invented by the Council of Trent, he could scarcely be more mistaken. Quite the contrary: the understanding of the Eucharistic celebration as a sacrifice remained undisputed within Christianity until the twelfth century. Only later did voices begin to emerge which reached their culmination in the Reformation and denied the sacrificial character of the Mass.

The Sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrifice of the Cross are identical with regard to the victim and the principal priest; only the manner of offering differs.

The victim in the Holy Mass is Christ, true God and true Man, who also offered Himself entirely to the Father upon the Cross. He is likewise the principal priest, who on the Cross endured death in obedience and love, thereby offering the sacrifice of Himself. The glorified Jesus, having returned to the Father, can no longer suffer, yet He still possesses that most perfect disposition of sacrifice with which He surrendered His life upon the Cross in atoning death: the interior self-offering in burning love for God and mankind, in complete self-forgetfulness and perfect submission to the will of the Father. Only the mode of offering, the external sacrificial action, is different. Like the sacrifice of the Cross, the Mass is a true sacrifice taking place here and now, not merely a memorial celebration.

Yet it is a living, objective representation and sacramental re-presentation of the one sacrifice accomplished upon the Cross and is therefore a relative sacrifice, whereas the sacrifice of the Cross is an absolute sacrifice.

On the Cross the merits of redemption were won; in the Holy Mass they are applied to individual souls.

St Thomas Aquinas summarises the matter as follows: the essence of the Holy Mass consists in this, that Christ, the principal priest, through the ministry of the human priest, makes present His bloody Passion upon the Cross in an unbloody mystical immolation through the sacramental separation of the Blood from the Body, and at the same time truly becomes present under the separated species in that most perfect disposition of sacrifice.

The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has a fourfold purpose. It is:

an act of adoration,
an act of thanksgiving,
an act of propitiation,
and an act of petition.

We must keep this nature and these purposes of the Holy Mass firmly in mind when, next time, we begin to examine the texts of the Mass themselves.