Issue 1: Questions About The Mass

[1962Missal]

Why does it have all the form & ritual that it has? I mean, is the “Catholic way” the only way to have a true worship service? I love the church services at my current church and my former (I changed to my husband’s church when we got engaged), and it’s **nothing **at all like a Catholic service. Did Christ or the Apostles teach that we must worship in the Catholic style?

Lady_K2, I don’t know how you feel about investing in books to read, but I’ve a suggestion for you. You said you come from a non-denominational background, so I will assume that your church is non-liturgical. There is, behind liturgical worship, a worldview and philosophy of worship that is quite different from what you are used to. It is worth taking the time to examine liturgical worship in depth. Evangelical is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament, a book by former evangelical Protestant, Thomas Howard, explores liturgy from the point of view of one brought up in a worship tradition more like yours. It would be well worth your time and money.

 

[Jaypeeto4]

ABOUT the mass as a Sacrifice:

Please know that in the Mass,
Christ does NOT, does NOT, DOES NOT suffer and die again.
He CANNOT die again, EVER, because in his Glorified body he lives forever and ever at the right hand of God, in the Heavenly Holy of Holies with his OWN glorified body and blood (( Hebrews 9:13 I believe).

So how is the Mass a sacrifice?
Jesus is eternally and forever present before the Father
with his body bearing the wound-marks of his past crucifixion,
ministering as our High Priest ETERNALLY before the Father.
What does this High Priest offer the Father??
Simple: his completed sacrifice, his Glorified Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity are what he eternally offers to the Father on Our Behalf, once and for all time. Just by being in heaven at the Father’s right hand in the heavenly holy of holies, Jesus
is a perpetual offering (living sacrifice) to the Father on our behalf.

In the Mass, through the Ministry of the Ordained Ministerial Priest and the action of the Holy Spirit, Christ makes his GLORIFIED Body and blood present on our altars under the sacramental species of bread and wine which become the Glorified Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus by the action of the Holy Ghost and the liturgical action of the Priest.
HOW can the Glorified Jesus be in Heaven AND on our altars?
That’s no problem. Remember in John 5 and 6 where Jesus fed
5,000 people? If you read John carefully, you will note that what Jesus did was actually extend the “substance” of the 5 loaves of bread into enough bread to feed the 5,000, so that when the disciples took up the fragments, John writes that they took up
“twelve baskets full of the fragments OF THE FIVE LOAVES.”
Jesus does the same with his glorified living body, he “extends” it similarly to the way he extended the five loaves of bread into enough bread for 5,000 people.
We the Church (priest and laity) JOIN JESUS in his eternal offering of his living self to the Father (his completed sacrifice which began with his horrible death on Calvary) every time we offer the consecrated bread and wine to the Father. It is not a “new” sacrifice, but a joining-in as the Church with Jesus in his one eternal offering of himself to the Father.
It is a “propitiatory” sacrifice in the sense that Jesus
uses the Mass as one of the ways he APPLIES to us the FRUITS of his sacrifice on the Cross (which death sacrifice is why Jesus was resurrected and ((like the Old Testament High Priest on the Day of Atonement had to take the blood of the bulls into the earthly temple’s holy of holies)) at his ascension took himself - living body, blood, soul, and divinity, the acceptable living offering, into the Heavenly Holy of Holies, the TRUE tabernacle of which the earthly temple was a mere COPY.
Love,
Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+