SECTION THREE: (A)
THE FIRST OF THE THREE MAIN PARTS OF THE MASS
The Offertory
In order to fulfil the Sunday obligation, i.e. the obligation imposed on every Catholic to attend Mass devoutly on a Sunday, unless circumstances over which he has no control prevent this, a Catholic must be present in the church building before the start of the Offertory. Many Modernist priests who value the readings higher than the Consecration (although, like the Pharisees they are, they have no intention of living up to the readings) will of course dispute this. But Holy Church is a Mother and Her motherly rulings prevail.
The actions of the Offertory are simplicity itself. The Priest withdraws bread and wine from its profane use, i.e. from the normal function and use it has in the world to provide us with food and drink, and reserves them, “offers them”, for God’s exclusive use in providing us with ‘food and drink’ for the spiritual life of our soul on our journey on earth to our heavenly Fatherland. The act of withdrawing bread from its profane use of providing food in our daily lives to divine use for the spiritual Life of our souls is expressed by the following prayer:
Blessed are You, Lord, God of all creation.
Through Your goodness we have this bread to offer,
which earth has given and human hands have made.
It will become for us the Bread of Life.
By the ‘Bread of Life’ here is meant the Body of Christ as It will become present to us at the highpoint of the Mass at the Consecration of the bread.
And the action by the Priest of withdrawing wine from its profane use in our daily lives to the exclusive use by God, is expressed by this prayer:
Blessed are You, Lord, God of all creation.
Through Your goodness we have this wine to offer,
Fruit of the vine and work of human hands,
It will become our Spiritual Drink.
By this ‘Spiritual Drink’ is meant of course the Blood of Christ, as it becomes present to us later on in the Mass at the Consecration of the wine.
The actions of the Offertory then may appear to us as being quite simple, but underneath them lie hidden for us some far-reaching, even awesome, realities.
For, in between these two prayers, the Priest does something else. At the side of the altar he lowers a few drops of water into the chalice containing the wine. These few drops completely disappear in the wine. In fact for all intents and purposes they become wine, and as such they too are offered up to God in the second of the above prayers.
Now herein lies that far-reaching, even awesome reality we spoke about above. For these few droplets of plain water in a strict sense represent the faithful present at this Mass, offering themselves. And in a wider sense these droplets represent the Church, the whole Body of Christ. These few droplets of water, indistinguishable from the wine once they have been lowered into the chalice, cease to be water at the moment of the Consecration of the wine and with the wine they too become the precious Blood of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
What an honour! These few droplets of plain water make Christ’s Sacrifice complete. For they allow Him to be the Head as they represent the faithful, His Body. And in the chalice, at the moment of the Consecration, the two combine together: the Head and the Body, to become once again “The Perpetual Sacrifice” of Calvary. In the Holy Mass prior to Vatican II we were free to kneel during the Offertory, and many did, for in a real sense the faithful present are watching the preparation of their own execution! What is being added to the chalice is they themselves, inexorably being turned into Victims at the moment of the Consecration. And no one watches his own execution sitting down as a non-participating spectator! The faithful, in union with the whole Church, find themselves present to each other and to Christ in the chalice for only one purpose: to offer themselves as true Victims as the Body of Our Lord to the Blessed Trinity as the one Perpetual Sacrifice of Calvary for the salvation of the world. They are in the most literal and unique sense ‘Blood Brothers’, for in the chalice the same Blood is in them as is in Christ. There is no possible escape then: we are here at the heart and centre of the Universe. This must be the most momentous and precious Thing there is. Here the Church is most powerful and effective, for, after all, what can Christ refuse Her and us when we are together with Him in the Chalice? So it must be here that She is most under attack. The whole conspiracy of Modernism can only be geared to one thing: the abolition of the Perpetual Sacrifice, the Holy Catholic Mass!
No wonder, then, that in Sunday Masses the Holy Church wants Her children to be present at the Offertory.
All this explains the significance of the concluding prayer of the Offertory:
May the Lord accept this Sacrifice at your hands,
for the praise and glory of His Name,
for our good, and the good of all His Church.
After the Prayer over the Gifts which is different for each Mass, and is to be found in every Sunday or weekday missal, we have arrived at the most important part of the Mass.
The Canon Of The Mass
Most important, we said, because in the middle of the Canon of the Mass occurs the Consecration of the previously offered bread and wine. A more modern word in use for Canon is Eucharistic Prayer.
There are four Eucharistic Prayers. The first of these is the translation from the Latin into the vernacular of the Canon which became universally used in Catholic Masses from the days of the Council of Trent, ca 1563, but had a much older beginning. The next two have been added to the Roman Liturgy by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) because of their venerable Tradition going back to the earliest times of Christianity. The fourth one is a Eucharistic Prayer cast in a modern form.
Whatever Eucharistic Prayer is used, they all start off with a Preface. Prefaces occur in important books to give some indication by the author of how the book is to be viewed. In the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer the Church lays down how, what is to follow, must be understood in order that the faithful can be part of Her Mind. And the essential part of the Preface, and thus of the whole Eucharistic Prayer it introduces, is to give glory to God as expressed in these words:
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We have lifted them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give Him thanks and praise.
Father, all-powerful and ever-living God,
We do well always and everywhere to give you thanks,
Through Jesus Christ Our Lord ...
If we truly understand the implications these words have on Catholic lives; if we truly mean what is being said here by us and in our name, we may begin to understand why Christ wants the members of the One Holy Church He founded to be present with Him in the chalice after the Consecration. For these words should lead those same members to the pinnacle of heroism ...
Imagine a father and mother whose daughter has been abducted and murdered under the most gruesome circumstances. Not only are they required to fulfil Christ’s demand of love, proclaimed by Him from Calvary in the new Covenant in His Blood, and sincerely forgive the perpetrators of such an evil act from their hearts. Here the way is opened for them to go much further. Here it is put to them to always and everywhere to give thanks to God, even in the terrible twist their life has taken. This demand can only be placed before people who have an unwavering Faith and Hope in God’s absolute Holiness. Before people whom St. Peter refers to as a chosen race, a holy priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God [1 Peter 2:9]. This can only be addressed to people who believe that this absolute Holiness of God contains no flaw and can be trusted in the most trying circumstances of our lives.
Here the Preface of the Canon of the Mass sets the tone for us how to view the Consecration. For it is in the Consecration of the bread and wine that this absolute Holiness of God comes down on our altars in the Person of Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God from God, Holiness from Holiness.
Holy, holy, holy Lord,
God of power and might.
Heaven and earth are full of Your glory,
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord,
Hosanna in the highest.
The Holiness of God ...
Most Christians would agree, at least in theory, that the Holiness of God must not be questioned. However that is still a far cry from the most necessary conviction that, on a Divine Command revealed to us, this Holiness should be unconditionally loved and trusted as something so perfect as to be totally flawless. The scramble for dollars and possessions in this life shows, that in practice even Catholics have their minds on other things, and that for them too the ‘Beatitudes’ are worth at most an ‘after hours number’ so as not to interfere with the busy lines of ‘business as usual’ of the material life. It is for that reason that greed is called by St. Paul “the same thing as worshipping a false god” [Col. 3:5]. Not so much because of Our Lord’s realistic observation “where your treasure is there your heart will be also” [Luke 12:34]. The much deeper reason for calling ‘greed’ “the same thing as worshipping a false god” is, because greed stands in direct relationship to the worst insult inherent in all Jewish idolatry: of safeguarding oneself against God. Of taking precautions against the Holiness of God Who hates any fortifications between Himself and His creatures, meant to give them a sense of security as if He cannot be trusted without them.
And now that the scramble for securities has reached fever-pitch and is now practised quite openly, even to the point of becoming murderous, then all those centuries of indifference to God, inherent in the West’s idolatrous greed, thriving behind those futile barricades of money and possessions and weapons of mass destruction, have turned, according to the Book of Revelation of St. John, into hatred of God. Thus began the mass exodus from the Catholic Church, and with it the mass apostasy from the Catholic Faith. If the West could not be ‘catholic’ on its own idolatrous, greedy terms, then it had no intention of being Catholic on anyone else’s terms, least of all on His ...
The Holiness of God. Totally worthy of our trust without any fear of ‘ulterior motives’, secret designs or vindictiveness. To what degree of love could a human being be inspired by it if the human mind was free from and suspicion or a defensive attitude.
The Holiness of God, capable of loving sinners; always to be trusted, never to be doubted, never to be queried, always worthy of our supernatural, infused, divine and Catholic Hope, the virtue that, as is required here in the Preface of the Mass, gives glory to God.
The mind simply boggles if it considered what our planet would look like, if people everywhere would let themselves be guided by a realistic acceptance of the absolute Holiness of God. And with this Preface, we must admit, the Holy Church has put us on the road to this perfection and has prepared us for the Consecration in a most suitable way.