October 9 ~ 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Whose Mass Is It? That’s the title of a book published in 2015. The author is a well-known and respected priest and liturgical scholar Fr. Paul Turner. In roughly 100 pages, Fr. Turner provides a clear, concise, and understandable reflection on the various attitudes, skills and practices that make the Mass for Catholics the most spiritually important event of their faith lives. The book is not only well-written but also well- structured, such that one needn’t be a professional theologian to gain lots of understanding about the Mass.

As the book well demonstrates, the response to the question “whose Mass is it?” is strongly influenced by a person’s standing within the church. For a bishop seated in the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (the group that oversees the publication of books and guidelines for the Eucharist), the Mass will belong to him in a certain way. The same goes for bishops who are part of various national conferences of bishops throughout the world, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Then there are the priests who preside at Mass and deacons who often assist them. For them, the Mass belongs to them in the way they interpret the rubrics and guidelines of the Mass, as well as in their own unique style they bring to the celebration. Then comes the people in the pews, the assembly. The Mass belongs to them.

I know this not simply because the Second Vatican Council instructs them to full, active, and conscious participation in the Mass, but because they have strong feelings about various aspects of the Mass. They might be likes or dislikes, but they are all expressions of care and concern. In fact, I hear about them all the time!

We might extend the list further to include, singers, musicians, and artists. We could also include lectors, servers, eucharistic ministers and ushers. The Mass belongs to them in the way they nourish other people’s participation in the Mass in word, in song, and in the call to faithfulness.

So by now, you get the picture. The Mass belongs to the whole church, and not any single individual or a group of individuals. But to leave it at that would be to get ahead of ourselves. That’s because the Mass first and foremost belongs to God. It is God’s continual gift to God’s People. This great gift occurs by virtue of the proclamation of God’s holy Word, in Christ’s once-and-for-all sacrifice being made sacramentally present to us, and in the Holy Spirit’s sending us forth to be bread for a hungry world.

The word “Eucharist” means thanksgiving. One out of ten healed lepers in today’s gospel recognized what God had done for him and returned to give thanks. We do this Sunday by Sunday. And by doing so, we are made aware of how much we belong to God.

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