Is Mass the same as Missa?
“Mass” is the English form of the late Latin word “Missa,” referring to, well, the Mass (cf. French “Messe,” Spanish “Misa,” etc.). The question is how did the Latin word “Missa” come to be the name of the Eucharistic celebration? The answer is generally understood to be that it comes from the dismissal
Ite, missa est. Nobody actually what this means.
As a Latin sentence, this means something like “Go, it has been sent.” (
Missa is a form of the Latin verb
mitto.) But
what has been sent? “Missa” is grammatically feminine, so some feminine noun must be understood as the subject. It might be
Hostia, the Host; or
congregatio, the congregation; or any of a number of other things. We just don’t know. And neither did mediaeval Catholics. When they heard
Ite, missa est, being unable to understand what
missa actually referred to, they just heard “Go, it is
missa,” and assumed that that meant that the rite they had just attended was something called, for whatever reason, “Missa.”
To take an English example, imagine that the Mass began with the sentence “This ceremony is yclept Mass.”
Yclept is, as it turns out, a middle English word meaning “named.” But suppose that that fact were lost while the sentence continued to be spoken at Mass. Would it be any surprise if 500 years later people were walking around saying “Hey, are you going to Yclept Mass tomorrow?”
