What is the best Mass you have ever been to?

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What uplifted you or convicted your heart? What was you biggest takeaway or surrender?
 
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A Chrism mass in a Cathedral, the congregation was seated in a horseshoe shape around the cathedra and when we sang it sounded like the heavenly host, wonderful.
 
My reception into the Catholic Church Easter vigil 2017. One of the happiest 3 hours of my life.
 
Easter Vigil this past Spring. I started crying when the “alleluias” began.
 
I don’t think I point to any one as the best one, but I remembered an early morning Low Mass celebrated by an FSSP priest in the Paulanerkirche in Vienna on the Feast of St. James the Greater. The silence was absolutely stunning and I can’t remember the last time I was so prayerfully participant in Mass as on that morning.
 
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The last one. A close second, anticipated, the next one.

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MiserereMei25 said:
What uplifted you or convicted your heart? What was you biggest takeaway or surrender?
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Amazed that the omnipotent God bends down to hear my little prayer. That the Word became man. That Jesus is really present, body, blood, soul, divinity; that my priest gives his life to make it happen.
 
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It would be the first Mass I ever attended. My wife and I weren’t Catholic. I had a pretty bad falling out with a fellow Episcopal church member. I stopped going completely. I knew that kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen at church. Several months later, while traveling, I asked my wife what she wanted to do one Sunday morning. She said, “Let’s go to church.”

I completely and immediately agreed, and pulled into the parking lot at St. James Episcopal in Wichita, KS. My wife shook her head and said, “No. Let’s go across the street and see what these Catholics are all about.”

So off we go, to Church of the Blessed Sacrament. We knew pretty much what we could participate in, and what we shouldn’t, so we go in, sit in the very back pew, and observe. The first thing we notice is the silence. Nobody was visiting or chatting. Some were sitting quietly. Others were kneeling in prayer. The Mass began, and it was very familiar having come from a liturgical background. We noticed all the gestures, standing and kneeling (all the silly little things Catholics do, as my wife used to say), but we saw them differently. What I saw that day is forever seared into my memory. I saw a group of people unified into a single entity, an organized body. For the first time in my life, I believe I witnessed “the body of Christ.” I can still remember the homily. They had a guest priest that day, Father John Hotze, the guy in charge of starting the cause for canonization of Father Emil Kapaun. He spoke of Father Kapaun’s time as an army chaplain, and prisoner of war in North Korea. He told about one of Kapaun’s fellow imprisoned soldiers, a Jew, who was so moved by Father Kapaun that he carved a Catholic crucifix for Kapaun as a gift. The face on the corpus didn’t look like the traditional face of Jesus that we’re all accustomed to seeing, it was Father Kapaun’s face. Then they began the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and the reverence and awe in that room was palpable. We walked out of that church very nearly in tears. We had never seen anything like that in all our years. We were in the office of our own parish priest the next morning signing up for RCIA.
 
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A Mass with the Bishop Emeritus and 8 others in a small rural church at Easter. Hardly anyone was there and the Bishop used the opportunity to really talk about what the apostles would have experienced at Easter.

The Historic Sex Abuse scandal had been cited by the Bishop as the reason that people were staying away from Mass.
 
The mass at which I realized that Christ was truly present in the Eucharist. At the words of consecration, my soul leaped.
 
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Easter Vigil this year. It was when I was brought into the Church, and that was on top of it being an outstanding Mass.
 
I really like the ones that are concelebrated. If you get seven, eight, nine priests up at the altar, at the Consecration-- it’s really powerful.

Midnight Mass for Christmas is also very moving. 💚
 
Hours before I got in our vehicles to assault into Iraq, with our chem suits on and masks at our side. 14 minute Mass following Confession, changed my life.
 
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The best mass I was ever at was the mass during the charismatic conference in Sreubenville, Ohio, ten years ago.
I think this discussion is great.
 
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As my old Irish PP replied to my seminarian brother when he once blurted “that was the best mass I have ever been to…”

Every sacrifice of the Mass is a good Mass brother.
 
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I’ve enjoyed the other replies. I have a bunch I could share - small family masses and masses so small we stood in a circle around the altar. And every mass can be special when I put my whole self into it. But the ones I’ll never forget were Catholic charismatic masses back in the 1970s when I was a kid. The CC movement was huge then where I lived. On Wed evenings there were many hundreds that would gather for mass, then teaching and prayer meetings after. There may have been 800 people there and 10 priests co-celebrating mass on the altar. They’ed pause mass at the right places for short but wonderfully worshipful singing. It had all the beauty of the form and order of the mass, so steeped in our rich tradition and scripture, and then a beautiful freedom to worship in song. The passion and love for God was palpable. That was special. Makes me feel like I can’t wait for heaven.
 
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Every year, I go to the Melkite Divine Liturgy on Easter (which they call Pascha, or Fesakh), it’s something you need to experience. I can’t even explain how wonderful it is.
 
I was at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress. On Friday and Saturday evenings they have multiple Masses with different themes – a young adult Mass, Vietnamese Mass, Eastern Divine Liturgy, and others. (On Sunday they have a Mass in the morning celebrated by the archbishop of Los Angeles and one in the afternoon celebrated by the bishop of Orange.)

I went to one billed as a contemplative Mass. For the most part I would say it was largely normal but with quieter type music. But after communion they had about 15 minutes for silent prayer. I can’t describe the feeling of being in a room with thousands of people, all in absolute silence. No coughing, no shuffling in seats, no whispering. Just a huge group of people united in silent prayer after receiving our Lord in communion.
 
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