Liturgy of the Eucharist | Understanding our Worship

There is no more beautiful gift on earth than the gift that Jesus gives us in the Eucharist - His very presence with us. The Eucharist is also one of the greatest mysteries of our faith. Sure, we can intellectually accept that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, but there is no way that we can fully grasp this awe-inspiring mystery. And that is a good thing. If we could fully comprehend it, then it would be just another thing we can store away in our mind, rather than something that we can draw deeper into, an infinitely rich mystery that will always bring us to a new love for Jesus. It is this very infinite mystery that we celebrate in the Mass.

After the Liturgy of the Word, we move into the next and most important individual part of the Mass, which is the Liturgy of the Eucharist. This part of the Mass begins with the offering of the gifts that will be used to become the Eucharist. Many parishes have the custom of members of the faithful bringing up the gifts of bread and wine. The community is offering its own goods specifically to God. God uses those gifts that we offer Him and makes them into something new. This is the amazing thing that God does with everything we offer Him. Every work, every prayer, every little thing that we offer Him, He takes, transforms, and makes it into something new and better. If bread and wine can become the Eucharist, imagine what He can do with the things we offer Him. This is true even of the “collection” that we might offer at this point of the Mass - the offering of my treasure that I am making to my parish and to God for His work to be done.

What everyone has the opportunity to do here is to offer some particular intention. Most Masses have a particular intention that the priest is offering, but this does not prevent everyone else from bringing their prayer intentions before God at the altar. There is always going to be some person in our life in need of prayers, so Mass can be the perfect place to pray for them. This is the offering that we can always bring, even if we cannot make any other type of offering. Again, this offering is something that God will take, transform, and make new.

In the Eucharistic Prayer (of which there are several versions), the central aspect is the words of consecration. The priest, holding bread and wine in his consecrated hands, speaks the very words of Jesus as He instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper. The priest knows that these are not his own words, but He has been called by God, through the grace of his ordination, to speak these words acting in the person of Jesus Christ. The priest is not Jesus, but here, he stands in His place to make Jesus present. Through the priest, Jesus makes this all happen. One moment, they are just ordinary bread and wine - there is nothing special about them. But, after those words are spoken, everything is different. They may look the same, feel the same, taste the same, etc., but they are now the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. God Himself is made present in our midst. How wild is that?!

It is so very difficult for us to fully appreciate this moment and this reality. I will always remember the first time I celebrated Mass. My hands were trembling at holding Jesus in my hands. I am not worthy of this, and yet, how good God is that He desires to make Himself present in this way. How can we not be brought to tears at this great manifestation of His love for us? There can certainly be times when we might feel like God is distant, but all it takes is going to Mass or making a visit to the tabernacle to remind us that God is always near.

Although the words of consecration go back to Holy Thursday and the Last Supper, that event is directly connected with the events of Good Friday, on which Jesus makes of Himself the sacrificial lamb, sacrificed once and for all for our sins. At the Mass, we are brought into this entire mystery - we are literally brought back to Jerusalem and Calvary. That sacrifice is made present for us again at the altar. This is not a new sacrifice, but rather we are brought to that one sacrifice. That timeless event is made present at every moment of time for us, whenever and wherever Mass is celebrated. Every Mass is a celebration of the events of Holy Week, particularly in the Eucharistic Prayer. It is this event that brings us salvation, and so we follow Jesus’s command to do these things in memory of Him so that we can be made aware of that salvation.

At the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, in great awe of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, the priest says a prayer known as the “doxology,” meaning a prayer of belief in all that God has done and all that we have prayed in recognition of that. And in response to this and to the entire Eucharist Prayer, the only thing that can sufficiently capture our appreciation and love for God is just one word - Amen. The whole congregation offers a grand “Amen” to honor God for the gift of our salvation, made especially present in this great Eucharist. Of course, this is not the end of Mass, but we have reached the highest point. God has more to give us in the next part of the Mass in which we receive Communion.