Is Holy Mass a celebration/ party/ gathering?

[santodomingo]

Yesterday, discussing with my wife, I told her I didn´t like going to Holy Mass in a particular church because the priest tends to improvise and include words that are not in the missal. I told her I prefer a priest who simply sticks to what is written, and celebrates Holy Mass with reverence and respect.

She replied that Holy Mass is a party (the exact word is “fiesta” in spanish, which doesn´t mean quite what “party” means). She said that the freer the priest is to improvise the more spontaneous and genuine the Mass will be.

I said that Holy Mass is not the personal property of any priest, and therefore they should all respect the rubrics, and that Holy Mass is not a party but a sacrifice.

Please give me more imput. Is this correct? What exactly is the Holy Mass? I love it and go daily, whenever I can, but I´m a recent convert and I have much to learn. Thanks

 

[FrDavid96]

Yesterday, discussing with my wife, I told her I didn´t like going to Holy Mass in a particular church because the priest tends to improvise and include words that are not in the missal. I told her I prefer a priest who simply sticks to what is written, and celebrates Holy Mass with reverence and respect.

She replied that Holy Mass is a party (the exact word is “fiesta” in spanish, which doesn´t mean quite what “party” means). She said that the freer the priest is to improvise the more spontaneous and genuine the Mass will be.

I said that Holy Mass is not the personal property of any priest, and therefore they should all respect the rubrics, and that Holy Mass is not a party but a sacrifice.

Please give me more imput. Is this correct? What exactly is the Holy Mass? I love it and go daily, whenever I can, but I´m a recent convert and I have much to learn. Thanks

The Mass is also called the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We can call it the Sacrificial Banquet, the Feast of the Lamb, or any of (hunderds?) of other “nicknames.” There is nothing wrong with using the word “fiesta.” However, there is everything wrong with seeing the Mass as something that can be “made up as we go along” this is not what the Church teaches. In fact, the Church teaches the opposite of that. The Mass is no one’s “private property” not the priest-celebrant, not the parish community, not the person who makes up things for the Mass. The Mass belongs to the Universal Church.
I suggest you read Redemptionis Sacramentum
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20040423_redemptionis-sacramentum_sp.html

There is nothing wrong with sometimes using the word “fiesta” but her ideas about the Mass could not be more wrong.

 

[santodomingo]

Thank you for that link. The document is rather dense but illuminating. I´ll have to read it a few times to get it into my skull!

I was quite worried to read all sorts of things that are not allowed but which I have witnessed in Holy Mass several times. One example is communion with the two species. In one Mass I saw how the Body of Christ was picked up by those taking Holy Communion and dipped into the Blood, as if they were eating french fries with ketchup! I was sitting near the priest and I saw the Precious Blood being spilt all over the floor. :bigyikes:

It was horrifying, but at the time I didn´t know it was forbidden.

By the way, are you a priest?

 

[Eucharisted]

Yesterday, discussing with my wife, I told her I didn´t like going to Holy Mass in a particular church because the priest tends to improvise and include words that are not in the missal. I told her I prefer a priest who simply sticks to what is written, and celebrates Holy Mass with reverence and respect.

She replied that Holy Mass is a party (the exact word is “fiesta” in spanish, which doesn´t mean quite what “party” means). She said that the freer the priest is to improvise the more spontaneous and genuine the Mass will be.

I said that Holy Mass is not the personal property of any priest, and therefore they should all respect the rubrics, and that Holy Mass is not a party but a sacrifice.

Please give me more imput. Is this correct? What exactly is the Holy Mass? I love it and go daily, whenever I can, but I´m a recent convert and I have much to learn. Thanks

The Mass is a Sacrament, the greatest of the seven Sacraments - for it is the Eucharist and Christ, Who is the full spiritual benefit of the Church, is in the Eucharist. The Mass is a Sacrament of Christ and of His Church. The Church is in Heaven and on Earth; the earthly liturgy is a mirror of the heavenly liturgy. No man owns the liturgy - only Christ is King.

 

[bpbasilphx]

**She said that the freer the priest is to improvise the more spontaneous and genuine the Mass will be. **

**1. Does she mean to imply that the Mass is not genuine when sticking to what the prayers and rubrics say? In any case, there cannot be degrees of “genuineness”; something is either genuine or it is not.

1. Who said that spontaneity was necessarily more spiritual?**

 

[benedictgal]

Spontaneity doesn’t equate with a more genuine Mass. A genuine Mass follows the norms and rubrics prescribed by the Church.

Of course, when you have hymns like “La Misa es Una Fiesta Que No Termina” (The Mass is a celebration that never ends), one could interpret it to mean that you need to include spontaneity, which is a sad way of looking at the Mass.

During the Mass, the veil between heaven and earth and time and space is lifted. We enter God’s time. We enter into His Divine Majesty. We do not enter alone as we are surrounded by a cloud of unseen witnesses, namely the Church Triumphant (the saints in heaven) and the Church Suffering (the pour souls in purgatory).

In a recent address, Francis Cardinal Arinze, the Prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, explained the dangers of spontaneity. He notes in part that:

If there were no liturgical norms, then every priest and congregation would be free to invent their own way of worshipping. In such a do-it-yourself celebration, it would not be possible in the long run to avoid manifestations of horizontalism, man-centeredness and even desacralization and banalization. The sacred and transcendent dimension of the Eucharistic sacrifice would be put at risk.

It is to be remembered that the Eucharistic sacrifice, and indeed the sacred liturgy as a whole, are not something that we make or invent, or put together on our own. They are gifts that we receive, keep, treasure, celebrate and for which we are grateful.

It must be lamented — says Pope John Paul II — that, especially in the years following the post-conciliar liturgical reforms, as a result of a misguided sense of creativity and adaptation there have been a number of abuses which have been a source of suffering for many.8

No doubt a merely external and formal carrying out of rites without internal unity of heart and mind should be rejected. But it is quite another matter when each celebrating priest or local community presumes to have the right to create or invent words and gestures in the sacred liturgy. Liturgical norms, properly understood and observed, help to save the Church from such damage and see that God is at the center of our worship.

You can read his entire address at this link:

adoremus.org/0508Arinze.html

I am curious. Do either of you belong to the Neocatechumenal Way? I ask this because your wife’s comments sound like something a member of the movement would say. We have this movement in our diocese and one of our prelates has had to reign them in on following the rubrics of the Mass. That is not to put down the movement. There are some good things to it, but, the excessive liberties that they have taken with the Mass (which required the personal intervention of Pope Benedict XVI) have cast been somewhat problematic.

 

[santodomingo]

No, it has nothing to do with the Neo Catechumenal way. I know several people in this movement, who are in general very faithful to Rome, even though they have quite a “loose” liturgy. The problem comes from the evangelical church we used to go to. That was 10 years ago, before I converted, but it still affects the way she thinks. I´ve come to realize that protestantism is a cancer for any serious catholic. It is very harmful to our appreciation of fundamental truths, especially the Real Presence.

BTW, we also use that song “la misa es una fiesta que no se acaba” as an exit song for first communions. Are there many Spanish speakers in your parish?

 

[benedictgal]

No, it has nothing to do with the Neo Catechumenal way. I know several people in this movement, who are in general very faithful to Rome, even though they have quite a “loose” liturgy. The problem comes from the evangelical church we used to go to. That was 10 years ago, before I converted, but it still affects the way she thinks. I´ve come to realize that protestantism is a cancer for any serious catholic. It is very harmful to our appreciation of fundamental truths, especially the Real Presence.

BTW, we also use that song “la misa es una fiesta que no se acaba” as an exit song for first communions. Are there many Spanish speakers in your parish?

Well, considering the fact that Laredo was part of a colony known as Nuevo Santander and founded by Spaniard Don Tomas Sanchez, you bet. In fact, the Cathedral only has one English Mass. Our parish has two Spanish Masses. We are on the Texas side of the Texas-Mexico border.

Unfortunately, there are many folks down here, including some priests, who stress the community (horizontal) aspect of the Mass as opposed to the Divine (vertical) dimension of it to the point that they make the community more important than why we are gathered. Yes, we worship as a community, but, we are not the focal point: God is.

During the Mass, we offer a pleasing and acceptable sacrifice to the Father. Part and parcel of that sacrifice is to recognize that we are engaging in something divine, totally other and different from our every day lives. Sadly, there are those who forget that.

 

[requiemaeturnum]

To the thread title’s question-

My God is it even necessary to ask such a question? The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a SACRIFICE. [Edited]

 

[BlessedRosary3]

The Mass is taking part in what is happening in Heaven - candles, endless prayer, thanksgiving, etc. While there is celebrating in Heaven, it’s not a bonfire/fiesta/“party”, etc. It’s a celebration of righteousness, of Jesus Christ/God and his sacrifice that He made for us in order to live forever.