Reflections on the Mass: Holy Communion

The time has now come for us to receive Jesus in Holy Communion. This should be a moment of great longing and great joy. We are receiving our Lord and Savior, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

Before going up to Communion, we should pray for Jesus to come to us and enter our bodies, hearts, and souls. We can ask our Lady to help us prepare to receive her Son. We should also repent of our sins by praying an Act of Contrition and expressing our sorrow for having offended God. If we are conscious of any mortal sins, we must refrain from receiving the Eucharist until we go to Confession.

When we go up to Communion, we should do so deliberately, with concentration and devotion. When the priest, deacon, or extraordinary minister holds up the Host before us and says, “The Body of Christ,” we should recognize Jesus in our hearts and respond with a firm “Amen.” The same holds true with the chalice of Jesus’ Precious Blood.

After we receive, we should thank Jesus for coming to us. We might express our love for Him, offering Him everything we have and everything we are. We can ask Him to burn away our venial sins in the fire of His love (for that is what the Eucharist does) and to cleanse our hearts and minds and souls. We could bring Him our special intentions at this point as well, or we might also simply close our eyes and bask in the warm presence of Jesus’ love within us.

Some churches sing during Communion and/or afterward. We can participate, but we can also continue to pray silently, enjoying our intimate fellowship with Jesus. This is a special time that we should not miss through distraction or carelessness. It is a time to be with Jesus, Who is personally within us, radiating His love into us and filling us with His grace. 

Reflections on the Mass: Preparing for Holy Communion

After we have recited the Lamb of God, we kneel down in reverence before our Eucharistic Lord. The priest elevates the Host and chalice, and we gaze upon Jesus, present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity under the signs of bread and wine. The priest then says, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him Who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”

Do we realize how blessed we are to be kneeling there at that moment? We have been called to share in the Eucharistic sacrifice and banquet. We have been called to worship God present among us and to welcome Him into our very selves.

We respond with great humility, “Lord I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” Here we echo the words of the Roman centurion who asked Jesus for a miraculous healing and had the faith to believe that Jesus could do it without even entering into his home. In that case, Jesus performed the miracle from a distance, but now He does indeed enter under our roofs to heal our souls.

And we should be ready to receive Him. In these few precious moments before Holy Communion, we must prepare our hearts and souls to welcome Jesus. We might pray an Act of Contrition and simply talk to Jesus, asking Him to come to us, shower us in His merciful love, and strengthen us. This might also be a time to present special intentions and petitions and to simply marvel that our Lord loves us so much as to enter into us in this intimate, perfectly loving way.

Reflections on the Mass: The Lamb of God

As the Sign of Peace draws to a close, the priest mingles a little bit of the Host with the Precious Blood in the chalice, praying quietly as he does, “May this mingling of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it.” This symbolizes the resurrection of Christ, when His Body and Blood were reunited to His spirit, but it also symbolizes the unity of the Church with Christ.

Around the same time, we sing or recite the Lamb of God sequence:

Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

Jesus is our Lamb of God. John the Baptist said so clearly, indicating that Jesus was to be the sacrifice that would replace all the animal sacrifices of ancient Israel. He is the new and perfect Sacrifice of the new and eternal Covenant. He gave Himself up on the cross for our sins, and that sacrifice on the cross is re-presented in an unbloody manner at every Mass.

Yes, the Mass is a sacrifice where we enter into the sacrifice of the cross and unite ourselves to Jesus, Who is both priest and victim. We give ourselves completely to Him as He gives Himself completely to us. 

Reflections on the Mass: The Sign of Peace

When the Lord’s Prayer is finished, the priest turns to us and says, “The peace of the Lord be with you always.” We respond, “And with your spirit.”

It is important to understand peace according to its Biblical meaning. In the Scriptures, peace is not simply the lack of conflict. Rather, it is a state in which everything is in its proper order. When we are truly at peace, we are living as God would have us do. We are in a right relationship with Him and with the people He has put into our lives. Our minds and our hearts are focused on Him, and our words and actions flow out of that focus.

The priest or deacon then invites us to offer each other the sign of peace. This should be brief and simple. A handshake, nod, smile, or wave to the people around us is sufficient. We must remember that the sign of peace is not intended to be a miniature social hour in the middle of Mass. Instead, it is intended to remind us of Jesus’ words about reconciling with our brothers and sisters before we bring our gifts to God in worship. It is a nudge toward forgiveness, a challenge to let go of grudges, and an invitation to allow God to fill our hearts with His love for the people around us.

Reflections on the Mass: The Lord’s Prayer

The Eucharistic Prayer is finished. Jesus is present on the altar, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. We stand now, and the priest reminds us of Jesus’ teaching and command. We are to pray as He taught us, and that means praying the Lord’s Prayer.

We join our voices to praise God and ask Him for our daily bread and for the forgiveness we continually need. We beg Him that His will may be done on earth, in us and by us, as it is in Heaven. We long to “hallow” His Name, to hold it sacred, and we desire the coming of His kingdom.  We ask God that we may not be led into temptation, the testing or trials that God sends to us but that He always gives us the grace to endure and conquer if only we turn to Him. We conclude with a request that recognizes how small and helpless we are as we ask God to deliver us from evil.

Here we pause, but the priest continues to pray. He reiterates the request to deliver us from evil and asks that God grant us peace and the help of His mercy that we may be “free from sin and safe from all distress” while we wait in hope for the coming of Jesus. 

We rejoin the prayer then with the doxology, “For the kingdom, the power and the glory are Yours now and forever.” We know that God is control. We realize that everything we have comes from Him. We proclaim this in trust, recognizing that He longs to give us every good gift, for He is our Father. 

Reflections on the Mass: The Doxology and Amen

At the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest takes the chalice and paten in his hands and raises them up before us. Then he proclaims the doxology, a prayer of praise and worship:

Through Him, and with Him, and in Him,
O God, almighty Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
all glory and honor is Yours,
for ever and ever.

We channel our worship of God through His Son, Who is now present on the altar, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. We praise the Father with the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit. We entered into divine life in Christ when we were baptized, and we are about to dive deeply into intimacy with the Blessed Trinity when we receive Jesus in the Eucharist.

We join our hearts in adoration as we gaze upon the Eucharist, and at the end of the doxology, we say or sing “Amen!” We proclaim our “Yes!” to God. We declare, “It is true!” We profess our belief that Jesus is really present. Our “Amen” should ring out with joy and awe that we should receive such a gift.

Reflections on the Mass: The Eucharistic Prayer

We now enter into the climax of the Mass as the priest begins to recite the Eucharistic Prayer. There are four major Eucharistic Prayers that the priest can choose from. They are of varying lengths and complexities, but they all contain the necessary elements of the epiclesis, the institution narrative and consecration, and the anamnesis.

The epiclesis invokes the Holy Spirit to come down upon the gifts of bread and wine and transform them into the Body and Blood of Christ. We watch as the priest extends his hands over our offerings and asks God to accept them and to change our hearts and minds and lives along with them so that we may be all the more ready and eager to receive our Lord. A server will sometimes ring a bell to remind us that a very important invocation is taking place.

The institution narrative follows. While the prayers are slightly different in each Eucharistic Prayer, they all recall how, on the night before He suffered and died for us, Jesus took bread, broke it, gave thanks to the Father, and said, “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is My Body, which will be given up for you.” With these words, the bread on the altar becomes the Body of Christ. The priest is acting in persona Christi, and Christ acts through Him as the Holy Spirit answers the prayer of the epiclesis. This is the first part of the consecration.

The priest is holding the bread as he speaks the words of consecration and the transubstantiation takes place on the altar. He then raises the Host up for all to view. We cannot see the transformation happen, but we know it by faith.

The priest then takes up the chalice, recalling how Jesus took the chalice in His hands and said the blessing before giving it to the disciples with these words: “Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of My Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of Me.” With these words, the wine is transformed into the Blood of Christ.

Jesus Christ is now present on the altar, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. We have the obligation to worship Him in wonder and awe and to receive Him with the greatest reverence. We declare this mystery of faith with a brief response proclaiming the death and resurrection of our Lord and declaring that He has set us free and that we will continue to proclaim this mystery until He comes again.

Each Eucharistic Prayer also features an anamnesis, a remembrance. In the anamnesis, we do exactly what Jesus commanded us to do when He said, “Do this in memory of Me.” We remember what Jesus did, but we also remember the people with whom we share in this offering and those for whom we pray. We remember the whole Church, clergy and laity together. We remember those living and those who have gone before us. We remember the saints and those who may still be suffering in Purgatory. We remember our own special intentions. What is more, we ask God the Father to remember all of this, too. It is not that He will ever forget, but we reverently place all of this before Him so that we do not forget.