​In Catholic tradition, the celebration of the Mass has been the central identifying action of the church.  Our liturgy has power and beauty when celebrations are done with attention and devotion, with full, active, and conscious participation by every person present.


How did the Mass get started?
The Catholic Church teaches us that the very first Mass was celebrated by Jesus at the Last Supper. During this meal, Jesus took bread, blessed it, and the bread became His body; He took a cup of wine, blessed it, and the wine became His blood. Then He told His Apostles “Do this in memory of Me”.

The Apostles probably didn’t fully understand the significance of what Jesus had just done, or what He had instructed them to do. Nobody took any notes, and he didn’t leave them any written instructions. His only directions consisted of “do this.” Then, as if to emphasize the importance of what He had done, Jesus did it again three nights later!   On the first Easter Sunday evening, after He had risen from the dead, Jesus met up with two of His followers on the road to Emmaus. While they walked, He instructed them on the meaning of the Scriptures. Then, when they sat down to dinner, He took some bread, blessed it, and gave it to His friends.  

We start to see the Mass taking shape here. In both instances, Jesus first talked to and taught His companions. Then He blessed bread, broke it, and gave it to them.   The Apostles took this format, and added some ceremonies and prayers that were used in the Jewish Synagogue.  It was only natural that they would keep on using their familiar Jewish rituals in their new worship. After all, they were all still Jews, and in fact for many years after Jesus’ death and Resurrection Christianity was considered to be a branch of the Jewish religion. One change the Apostles did make, however, was to switch their Christian worship from Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) to Sunday, the day on which Jesus rose from the dead.

As the Apostles and those who came after them journeyed to distant lands, they took the ceremonies of the Mass with them. Evidence that they faithfully taught others to “do this in memory of Me” as Jesus commanded them can be seen in St. Justin’s description of the Mass, which he wrote around the year 155 A.D., about 120 years after the death of Jesus:  

    “On the day called Sunday, all who live in the city or in the country gather together in one place. There, the writings of the apostles or     the prophets are read, for as long as time permits. When the reader has finished, the presider verbally instructs those who have             gathered together to imitate these good things.   Then we all rise together and offer prayers for ourselves and for others, after which     bread and wine mixed with water are brought to the presider. He takes them and offers praise and glory to the Father through the         name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and gives thanks that we have been judged worthy of these gifts. When he has concluded         the prayers and thanksgivings, all present respond by saying ‘Amen’.   Then those whom we call deacons give to those present the     ‘eucharisted’ bread and wine, and take them to those who are absent.”


Is the Mass always the same everywhere? 
Yes . . . and no. The Mass is always the same in that Catholics believe that the miracle of Transubstantiation --- a big word that simply means that the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus --- takes place at every Mass, when the priest repeats the words that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper: “This is My body” . . . “This is the cup of My blood.”   This basic truth, and the general structure of the Mass as described as far back as the second century A.D. by St Justin, always remain the same; it is the external ceremonies and rituals - how these basic truths are expressed in the celebration of Mass - that can vary from place to place. Remember, Jesus didn’t give the Apostles any specific instructions on how to celebrate Mass. And as the Apostles gradually left Jerusalem and traveled to all parts of the world, they not only took different customs and practices with them, but they also encountered people whose cultures were very different from their own.  Over the course of the centuries, the ceremonies and rituals took on new forms as the Church adapted itself to the customs of the many lands in which it became established.  

While the visible ceremonies changed, the invisible truths which the Church taught and believed never change.  The different liturgical traditions, or systems of expressing those beliefs, are called Rites. Transfiguration Parish belongs to what is known as the Roman Catholic Church, because it uses the Roman Rite established by Saints Peter and Paul at Rome. Other Rites in the Catholic Church include the Byzantine Rite, which encompasses about 14 various nationalities including (among others) the Greek, Russian and Ukranian Catholic Churches; the Alexandrian Rite, which includes the Ethiopian and Coptic Catholic Churches in Ethiopia and Egypt; the Antiochian Rite found in and around Syria and Lebanon, which includes (among others) the Syrian, Chaldean and Maronite Catholic Churches, and the Armenian Rite of the Armenian Catholic Church. All except the Roman Catholic Church are referred to as the Eastern Catholic Churches. And the rituals and ceremonies they use in celebrating the Mass and the Sacraments are quite different from what we are familiar with.   So, which Rite is “right”?   All of them!  All Catholic Rites profess the same Creed, or belief in all that the Catholic Church teaches, and they all accept and obey the Pope as the head of the Church.  Regardless of the Catholic Rite, the “WHAT” is always the same; it’s the “HOW” that differs. And the most noticeable difference in the celebration of Mass is the language that is used from place to place.
 

Are we all speaking the same language? 
When Jesus celebrated the first Mass at the Last Supper, He most likely spoke in either Hebrew or in Aramaic, His native language. When He told the Apostles to “Do this in memory of Me”, Jesus left no directives regarding the language they were to use. About the only church that uses Aramaic today is the Syrian Catholic Church, and except for a few words such as “Alleluia” and “Amen”, Hebrew has just about disappeared from use in the Catholic Liturgy.  

During the times of the Apostles and the early Church Fathers, Mass was most probably celebrated in the local language. As the faith spread, it became practical to celebrate Mass in a common language that was familiar to all people everywhere.  That language was Latin, the common language of the Roman Empire, and it became the common and official language of the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Catholic Churches did not adopt a language common to all Rites, but continued to use the traditional languages of each individual Rite, some of which are Arabic, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic, Greek, Italian, Croatian, Ukrainian and English.  

For centuries, Latin was the only language permitted for the celebration of Mass and the Sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church. It didn’t matter if you were in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia. Mass was always celebrated in the same way, and it was always in Latin. There were a few other words and expressions from other languages, such as the Hebrew “Alleluia” (“Praise the Lord”) and “Amen” (“it is true” or “so be it”), or the Greek “Kyrie Eleison” (“Lord, have mercy”), but the rest of the Mass was always in Latin.  Churches of the Roman Rite are still often referred to as the Latin Rite Churches.   

In the early 1960’s (about 50 years ago), Pope John XXIII called the Bishops of the Catholic Church together for a series of meetings known as the Second Vatican Council. Many changes were made in the Church as a result of this council, one of which was the permission to celebrate Mass and the Sacraments in the vernacular, or common language of the locality. Even though Latin remained the official language of the Catholic Church, the use of Latin in the Mass pretty much disappeared everywhere except in Rome until 2007, when Pope Benedict XVI restored the use of the old Latin Mass as an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite. 

Today, the ceremonies of the Mass and the Sacraments have been translated into many languages. Among the more recent, in 1986 the Vatican approved a translation of most parts of the Mass into Navajo, the first Native American language to be granted the status of a liturgical language. The following year, a translation of the Mass into Choctaw, another Native American language, was approved.


How does the Mass mirror the life of Jesus?
At every Mass, we hear readings from both the Old and New Testaments that instruct us as to how God wants us to live. We experience, just as the Apostles did at the Last Supper, the miracle of bread and wine being changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus. But other than that, have you ever thought about how the actions that take place during other parts of the Mass speak of events that occurred in Jesus’ life?  

If you take a close look at the structure of the Mass, you can almost see Jesus’ life unfolding before your eyes. When the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her that she was going to be the mother of Jesus, his greeting included the words “the Lord is with you” (Luke 1: 28); at the beginning of Mass, the priest greets us by saying “The Lord be with you.”  When Jesus was born, choirs of angels appeared to the shepherds singing “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to those on whom His favor rests” (Luke 2: 14); at Mass, we sing “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to His people on earth.”   We receive instruction in the readings from the Scriptures and the priest's homily, just as Jesus taught the crowds of people who followed Him during His public ministry.   At the Last Supper, Jesus changed bread and wine into His Body and Blood. During the Mass, Jesus performs this same miracle when the priest repeats His words “This is My Body . . . This is the cup of My Blood.” The bread and wine are consecrated separately to remind us of Jesus’ death, when His blood was separated from His body on the cross.   During the Last Supper, Jesus prayed for all people of all times (John 17: 20-26); at Mass, the priest also prays for both the living and the dead, and for the unity of all God’s children during the Eucharistic Prayer. This part of the Mass ends with the “Our Father”, the very same prayer that Jesus taught to His Apostles (Matthew 6: 9-13).   Shortly before Communion, the priest breaks the large host and drops a small piece of it into the chalice containing the Precious Blood.   Just as Jesus’ human body and blood were reunited when He rose from the dead, here at Mass the Body and Blood of Christ, which were consecrated separately, are united to remind us of His Resurrection.   Every time that we receive Holy Communion, Jesus keeps His promise that “I am with you always” (Matthew 28: 20).   At the end of Mass, the priest dismisses us to “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord”, recalling Jesus’ final instructions to His Apostles before His Ascension into heaven: “Go and make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28: 19).   Jesus may not have left any explicit instructions as to how to “Do this in memory of Me”, but it certainly appears that the Holy Spirit inspired and guided the Church in how to carry out Jesus’ command.