The Offertory

For the past several weeks, with some detours, we have discussed only the first part of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Word.  Today we begin discussing the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Our Eucharistic celebration begins with the Offertory.  In the Middle Ages the faithful would bring their gifts of offering forward and place them on the altar.  These gifts would have included bread and wine, along with produce and small animals such as chickens and pigs.  The larger animals would have been placed in a side chamber before Mass began.

The deacon of the Mass would have taken aside an amount of bread and wine that would be suitable for the Mass and the remainder of the gifts would have been put aside for the care of the clergy and the church.  Now you know the reason that Father washes his hands following the prayer of offering our gifts to God – he would have just finished handling the animals that had been offered.

The priest then takes the gifts and offers them to God.  We hear this happening as Father lifts the bread toward God and says in a formulary that is faithful to our Jewish roots, “Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.”  After blessing God, which in this context means “praising,” and offering the bread, the wine is offered in a similar formula. 

Today, we don’t individually bring our gifts to the altar.  A couple of people or a family is chosen from those attending Mass to represent all of us.  And instead of us bringing bread and wine, or grain or livestock, we offer a monetary gift to support those in need and the Church’s needs:  be that bread and wine for the Liturgy or electricity so that our worship space may be kept a comfortable temperature.

 Of course, it is not just the bread and wine and the gift of our monetary resources that is offered to God.  We are also bringing ourselves to the altar, offering ourselves, consecrating ourselves to God. 

At Risen Savior, we invite all of our families to be “gift bearers.”  If you would like to bring up the gifts at any of our Masses, please contact our Liturgist, Kevin Newman at 821-1571 ext. 122 or knewman@risensaviorcc.org.  

The Intentions of the Mass

When a priest presides at the Mass he has three objectives: First, to offer the Mass in union with and for the good of the whole Church; Second, to offer the Mass reverently; Third, to offer the Mass for a particular intention, such as the repose of the soul of someone who has died.  

Right before Mass begins, our announcement reader tells us for whom this Mass is offered.  These most frequently are the deceased members of our parish family, but on occasion the Mass is offered for someone’s birthday or anniversary, or for someone who is facing a particular trial in life.

Praying for the dead began long before the early stages of Christianity.  The earliest Scriptural reference to prayers for the dead comes in the second book of Maccabees, written some 150 years before the birth of Christ. The book tells how Judas Maccabee, the Jewish leader, led his troops into battle.  When the battle ended he directed that the bodies of those Jews who had died be buried.  As soldiers prepared their slain comrades for burial, they discovered that each was wearing an amulet taken as booty from a pagan Temple. This violated Jewish law and so Judas and his soldiers prayed that God would forgive the sin these men had committed (II Maccabees 12:39-45).

This is the first indication in the Bible of a belief that prayers offered by the living can help free the dead from any sin that would separate them from God in the life to come. It is echoed in the New Testament when St. Paul reminds us that Jesus is the “Lord of the living and the dead” (II Timothy 4:1).

The cavelike tombs under the city of Rome, which we call catacombs, bear evidence that members of the Roman Christian community gathered there to pray for their fellow followers of Christ who lay buried there.  By the fourth century, prayers for the dead are mentioned in Christian literature as though they were already a longstanding custom.

Praying for the dead also has roots in our belief in the communion of saints.  We who are living often assist each other through prayers and other forms of spiritual support. Christians who have died continue to be members of the communion of saints. We believe that we can assist them by our prayers, and they can assist us by theirs.

The Prayers of the Faithful

The deacon says, “For our Holy Father and all the leaders of the Church, we pray to the Lord.”  And all of us immediately know to respond by saying: “Lord, hear our prayer.”  This form of prayer was new to Catholics after the Second Vatican Council, but now the response is almost automatic.  The danger with automatic responses, of course, is that we tend to forget the deeper meaning of what we do and say.

The petitions that follow the Creed are called the Prayers of the Faithful or the General Intercessions.  Each name tells us something important about this prayer.

It’s called the Prayer of the Faithful because this prayer is said by those who are baptized.  As Christ prayed for the good of the people, so we are called to offer prayers and intercessions for the needs of all people today.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says that this prayer generally includes four main categories of intentions: “for the Church, for public authorities and the salvation of the whole world, for those burdened by any kind of difficulty and for the local community” (#70).  There may be more than one petition in any of those categories, but these general areas remind us that the prayer is to be universal in scope.  It seeks to address the needs of all people, near and far.  Thus the prayer is also called the General Intercessions – because they are general in nature.

While they are general in scope, the petitions are also current and local.  They address the needs of our world in our own time, and they reflect local needs as well as global ones.  The rest of the prayers at Mass are prescribed in the official books – we are not free to rewrite or create them.  In the Prayers of the Faithful, in contrast, we are expected to write our own – otherwise they could not reflect what is happening at this particular time in this particular place.

But what do we mean when we say, “We pray to the Lord?”  This statement requires us to remember that the Church teaches that we are the Body of Christ.  When we ask Christ to care for the ill, or end war and poverty, we are also taking on the commission of doing so ourselves.  We are not passive.  We understand that faith is a verb and we are all called to action when we say, “Lord, hear our prayer.”

One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic

Every time we’ve prayed the Creed we’ve professed our belief in the “Marks of the Church.” The essential characteristics or “Marks” that distinguish the true Church from other groups are expressed in our statement of belief in “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.”

In the first article of the Creed we express our belief in One God who is undivided and indivisible.  Our expression of belief in One Church does not deny diversity.  Nothing in the New Testament suggests that uniformity is an ideal.  The Second Vatican Council in their document The Light of the Nations teaches us that the Church shines forth as “a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

We say of the Church that it is “holy” because there is holiness both of and in it.  We do not claim that the church is holy because we, collectively, are a holy, sinless people.   The Church’s holiness is the expression of divine love that will not allow itself to be defeated by human willfulness and weakness.   The Church is not holy because of us, but in spite of us.

The word “catholic” derives from a Greek phrase that means “on the whole.”   The first recorded use of the word seems to have been from St. Ignatius of Antioch in the early 2nd Century when he wrote, “Where the bishop appears, there let the people be, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”  He was saying that the church had reality, life and power only to the extent that it formed part of the universal church in union with its spiritual head.  When we speak of being catholic we are saying “the Church is one, not a union of parts but a unity of many.” 

The last Mark of the Church is that we are “apostolic.”   As St. Paul said in his letter to the Ephesians, “You form a building which rises on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.”   The apostles were first and foremost what Jesus refers to them as being, “witnesses.”  Our faith is built upon the Apostles, who witnessed to what they had seen, heard and experienced.

When you put these four Marks together we can see that the Church is from God and for us.

God's Spirit

When the Bible speaks of the Holy Spirit it uses a variety of metaphors and images to describe the Spirit’s activity in the world.  But even the word “Spirit” is a metaphor.  The term began as an image rather than a concept.  Spirit is the modern translation of the Greek word “pneuma” which names invisible forces that are real without being tangible and, though intangible, are felt without people being able to see or control them.  Pneuma is the word for wind – the fresh breeze of a spring day or the fury of a tornado.  Pneuma is also breath – the breath of life that gives life.  Whatever image we use, spirit implies something dynamic – energy, activity, life.

In the Creed we say with firm conviction that the Spirit is the “Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” By doing so we are saying that the Spirit is also God – in the same way that the Son is God.  But this one phrase, while making a unifying statement about who God is – is the divisive statement between the Latin Church, of which we are members and the Orthodox Churches. 

The original language of the Creed, still maintained in the Orthodox churches says that the Spirit comes from the Father only.  The statement we in the Latin Church recite is that the Spirit comes from both the Father and the Son.  This idea began in the 8th Century in Spain and within a few hundred years had swept through the Western Church.  Pope Benedict the ninth had the phrase added to the Creed and recited in churches in the 11th Century.

Both the Latin and the Orthodox churches are endeavoring to do the impossible – describe God – so neither can be exactly correct.  Both are mankind’s attempt to put a handle on God.  The Latin Church says, “three persons in God” and the Orthodox says, “one God in three persons.”  By doing so we emphasize the unity of the divine nature while the Orthodox look at the individual persons and emphasize how they function in perfect unity. 

However we describe the Spirit, we are saying that it is the Spirit we acknowledge when we say, “with the Father and the Son He is adored and glorified.”

On the Third Day

Christians are by definition an “Easter people;” our faith rests on the reality expressed in the creedal statement AND ROSE AGAIN ON THE THIRD DAY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES. 

It is a mistake to read THE THIRD DAY as a simple reference to earthly time as if one were dating the resurrection event seventy-two hours after Good Friday.  The phrase is filled with deeper meaning.  It is an end-time expression linked to the saving action of God in the person of the crucified Jesus.  To the Jewish way of thinking, “the third day” or “after three days” had a special significance even in everyday speech.  It represents a turning point in the course of human events.  In no less than thirty places the Hebrew Scriptures employ the phrase to indicate a critical moment when one thing is definitively concluded and a new thing begins. 

The Lord instructs Moses to have the people, “… ready for the third day.”  “On the third day” Esther begins her task of delivering Israel, and “on the third day” Israel expects God to raise the people up “to live in his presence.”  That Jesus rises from the dead “on the third day” marks a focal point in salvation, not in time. 

The Creed goes on to say “HIS KINGDOM WILL HAVE NO END.”  This phrase was added specifically to condemn those who said that Christ would come again to set up a worldly, political kingdom based in Jerusalem.  From there, He would rule the earth as king of a physical realm and the world would enjoy unprecedented peace and prosperity for one-thousand years. Then, after a millennium was complete, Satan would be loosed for a time and would make war upon Christ and His Kingdom.

Those who signed on to this heresy saw the reign of Christ as being composed of two kingdoms: an earthly one that would last for a thousand years, and the second and eternal one to follow the final defeat of Satan.  The Council of Nicaea rejected this notion outright.

We understand and believe that when Jesus comes again it will be to usher in the end-times where he WILL JUDGE THE LIVING AND THE DEAD.  

Why Did God Become Man?

Last week we talked about our belief in Jesus Christ who is both fully human and fully God.  In the Creed we say, “For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven.”  But why did God become Man and what is Salvation?

In everyday language the verb “save” is used in a couple of ways. We save for something – like for our retirement and we are saved from things – like from a disaster.  In the language of faith, it seems that salvation most often implies being saved from something. 

In the Hebrew Scriptures God is seen as the salvation of the people of Israel.  God delivers them from mortal danger time after time.  In the Christian tradition we understand that we are being saved from our sin through the love and power of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Sin is a failure in human relationships – the relationship between ourselves and others and our relationships with God.  Like the old “chicken or the egg” riddle, we find ourselves with an unanswerable question, “which is first, the fact of sin or the act of sin?”  Are we sinners because we sin, or do we sin because we are sinners? 

In an autobiographical passage which almost all of us can make our own, St. Paul recognizes the power of sin in his life when he writes in his Epistle to the Romans, “I am weak flesh sold into the slavery of sin.  I cannot even understand my actions.  I do not do what I want to do but what I hate... But if I do what is against my will, it is not I who do it, but sin which dwells in me.”

Paul talks about sin as having a life of its own.  Other biblical writers speak of it as “the power of darkness,” and “sin of the world.”  In that sin, as St. Paul suggests, “resides” in all of us, it is called “original sin.” 

Until we become aware of the power of sin that is at the root of all evil in the world, we cannot fully appreciate the significance of Christ’s death and resurrection. 

Why did God become man?  The best answer is that in becoming one of us He could fully understand the influence that sin has upon us.  And by not sinning he shows us that we do not need to become mastered by sin.