I’m rather new to the faith and have yet to start my RICA classes. (I hope to this week) Could anyone tell me a website where I can go to learn what and when to say it during mass. My family has been attending mass for the past month, and I feel disrespectful not participating.
Welcome aboard!
www.ewtn.com is an excellent website to help you along the way. For the particulars, let me give you just a few.
We have the option of singing or saying the following prayers during the Mass:
The Gloria (only, during Advent, which starts next Sunday, we don’t recite nor sing)
The Psalm Response (sandwiched in between the First Reading and the Epsitle)
The Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy)
The Memorial Acclamation
The Great Amen
The Agnus Dei (Lamb of God)
Now, the Gospel. Acclamation (Alleluia, except during Lent -carries a different one) is to be sung. If it is not sung, it’s not done.
The Gloria is derived from the Gloria in excelsis Deo, the song the angels sang the night Christ was born. The Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy) comes to us from both Isaiah (where he beheld the glory of God and lamented about how unclean he -Isaiah- was, and the Palm Sunday accounts, wherein the Jews cried out Hosana to Jesus during his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We pray/sing this immediately before the Eucharistic Prayer (in which is imbedded the Consecration, the high point of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass).
The Memorial Acclamation (of which there are four to choose) is sung when the priest invites us to proclaim the mystery of Faith, after the Consecration. The Great Amen, is usually a triple Amen sung after the doxology.
The Agnus Dei is the Lamb of God. Twice, after we pray/sing, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, we pray/sing, have mercy on us. On the third one, rather than pray/sing, “have mercy on us”, we pray/sing “grant us peace.”
