June 8, 2010: The Mystery of the Mass - A talk by Fr. Paul Yi

Click to hear the audio of the talk

The Mystery of the Mass: Outpouring of the Father’s Love
in the Sacrifices of the Old and New Testaments

presented by Fr. Paul Yi

Tuesday, June 8

 Our Lady of Mercy Church

On a typical Sunday, most of us arrive for Mass a bit preoccupied. We are distracted. Mass feels like an “obligation” but we know it is more.What really happens in the Mass? Fr. Paul Yi will explore the intimate connection between the Holy Mass, the Last Supper and the sacrifices offered from the time of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, King David, Solomon and in the Temple where Jesus worshipped. Fr. Paul will explain how the Mass is an hour of transformation for our lives.

Prayer A reading from the Letter of St. Paul to Colossians (1:11-23)
Let us give thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.
He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation;
for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities -- all things were created through him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent.
For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,
he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, provided that you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. The word of the Lord.

Introduction

February of last year, a small group of pilgrims and I from Baton Rouge arrived in Tel Aviv, Israel to begin our 10-day journey following the footsteps of Jesus from the very place he was conceived in a little town of Nazareth, his birth in Bethlehem, where he preached along the shores of Galilee, and where he freely laid down his life on the cross and was finally buried. At that time, I was just ordained 8 months as a priest so there was a newness in just about everything I did. We traveled all over Israel where significant events happened to Jesus and his disciples. What I realized was that this mass we celebrate here in this church in the city of Baton Rouge captures, re-lives, and re-presents the mystery of all those events that happened to Jesus. At the Basilica of Annunciation in Nazareth we celebrated mass right where Blessed Mother met Archangel Gabriel and she declared that 'yes' that 'Be it done to me according to thy word.' As I lifted the Eucharist and the chalice, at the altar in that basilica, I was so aware of the weight of that 'yes'--a total self-giving, a total gift of herself before God, a total gift which her Son Jesus will later make on the cross. As we celebrated mass at the church of Gethsemane, we were right in front of the rock on which Jesus agonized over taking the chalice from the Father. This was the very place he said 'yes' to the Father, saying 'yet, not as I will, but as you will.' (Matt 26:39) Then at 5:30AM in the morning, the morning when we were to depart back for Baton Rouge, I was at the chapel of Calvary, where Jesus was nailed on the cross and died. On the wall facing the altar where I celebrated mass was a mosaic of Blessed Mother dressed in all black, with her face full of sorrows, for her 'yes' was also a 'yes' to give her first and only child, her precious son to the Father as a sacrifice. And before her was a mosaic of her son brutally being nailed on the cross. But bitterness was not on his face, rather a face that spoke of full, willing, and active embrace of that altar of the cross; 'yes' that he spoke to the Father was now finally becoming flesh as a slaughtered lamb on the altar of the cross.

As many masses I celebrated since then, I wonder about the mystery of being in that chapel of Calvary. All the masses I celebrate somehow flow from that 'yes' of Jesus to offer himself on the cross, 'yes' of Blessed Mother to give her son up for sacrifice, and 'yes' of the Heavenly Father who so loved the world that he gave his only Son (Jn 3:16). Sometimes I celebrate up to 4 masses a day on a Sunday, and on those days I do get fatigued and lose sight of this great mystery. One day I was in the vesting room at the convent for Mother Teresa sisters at St. Agnes, I noticed a tethered piece of paper with the following hand written note: 

"Priests of God, Celebrate this Mass as if it was your first Mass; as if it were your only Mass; as if it were your last Mass.That note reminded me that what I was about to celebrate was not a casual event. To become a priest, I gave up my career as an engineer, I gave up my chance of having a family with children, and I gave up being near my parents. It took me 6 years of seminary studies to become a priest. And what that note was suggesting was that even if I celebrated one mass right after my ordination and I die of some sudden illness, that single mass was equal to thousands of masses that I would celebrate if I was a priest for 30 years. 

The same is for all of us. Should we not have a little prayer card that said, "People of God, Celebrate this Mass as if it was your first Mass; as if it were your only Mass; as if it were your last Mass." Several weeks ago, I brought from Sunday mass a Eucharist to a man in a hospice who had stayed away from the Church for over 20 years. I heard that man's confession a couple of weeks prior. He was dying of cancer, and he was in his last days. I said holding the Eucharist before him, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, happy are those who are called to his supper." I had to say the response for him because he was too weak to say so. "Lord, I'm not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed." That Eucharist that he received on that day was his first, last, and the only mass on this earth for the past 20 years. As he closed his eyes, he had both the tears of joy and tears of contrition. He stayed away from Jesus for a long time, but Jesus came to him anyway. 

Why does Jesus invite us to mass? Many of us say, "I can stay at home, read the bible, and pray more effectively than trying to find a parking space, find an empty pew, and falling asleep during homily." When I fell away from the Catholic Church, in high school and college, I came back to Christian faith through a non-denomination church. At that time my mind was blank slate as far as what I thought was the right way to worship God. So I welcomed whatever worship style I encountered. In that non-denomination church there was a lectern and vast numbers of folding chairs, but there was no cross. We sang hymns, heard scripture read out loud, heard a teaching on that reading, passed collection plates, sang more hymns, and went home. Later I joined an Assembly of God-styled church. There was a cross inside. We sang praise-&-worship songs, heard scripture, heard a long sermon, passed collection plates, sang more songs, and went home. Then I joined a United Methodist Church. The inside looked more like a Catholic church with what they called an altar table, a cross on the wall, and a big imposing organ. We sang hymns, heard scripture, heard a long sermon, passed collection plates, sang more hymns, and went home. Once a month, though, we had a communion service with small bread crumbs and grape juice. For those of you who joined Catholic church recently, or those of you who have left the Church and came back, do you feel the same way about what happens at mass? We sing hymns, hear words from scripture, hear a long homily, pass the collection plates, and sing more songs, and go home? 

Somethings are very different at mass aren't they? Very prominent and at the center of the whole worship is the altar. The word altar evokes sacrifice. If you ask our Catholic school kids, "What or who is being sacrificed on the altar?" And the kids will answer, "Jesus." If we ask them, "Who is the priest?" Most will answer, "Fr. Miles or Fr. Paul." But sharp kids will answer, "Jesus." [When we ask them, where does he live? And the kids will answer, "In the tabernacle."] In this talk, we will explore the sacrifice of mass and its connections to the Old Testament. We first have to go to the Last Supper for clues.

The Passover Meal

We all have seen Leonardo Davinci's painting of the 'The Last Supper'. Da Vinci is depicting the reaction of the disciples when Jesus tells that one of them would betray him. But to answer what's really happening at the Last Supper, we have to look at the scripture. After Jesus and the disciples enter Jerusalem, the disciples ask Jesus where they should prepare for the passover meal. So what's happening at the Last Supper is really a passover meal. Let's look at the passage. After Jesus enters the Jerusalem amid great welcome by the inhabitants (we memorialize by celebrating the Palm Sunday), the disciples ask Jesus, "Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the passover?" Jesus said, "Go into the city to such a one and say to him, 'The Teacher says, My time is at hand; I will keep the passover at your house with my disciples."(Matt 26:17-18)

What is a passover meal? It is a meal eaten in remembrance of freedom from slavery for the Israelites when Moses led them out of Egypt. Remember the movie "Ten Commandments" with Charleston Heston? (Let's turn to Ch. 12 of Exodus) We find in Exodus Chapter 12, Lord instructs Moses and Aaron to institute the first Passover. He had them instruct the Israelites to procure a lamb for each household. The lamb is to be without blemish, a  year old male. At a prescribed evening this lamb is to be killed, and some of its blood is to be put on the doorposts and lintels of the house. They were to eat the flesh that night, roasted, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The lamb's bones are not to be broken when eaten. That night, the Lord was going to passover the land of Egypt and kill all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, except those in houses where the blood of the lamb were on the doorposts. Here the Lord was going to accept the life of the lamb as a ransom for the life of the first-born in Israelite houses. And the Lord tells the Israelites through Moses that, "This day will be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance for ever." Then the Lord also instructs the Israelites to eat unleavened bread and establish the feast of unleavened bread as a memorial of the day the Lord brought Israelites out of the land of Egypt. He told them to observe this feast throughout generations, as an ordinance for ever. [Are you hearing something that's familiar to you? Where do we in rememberance offer the sacrifice of the lamb by eating unleavened bread? At Mass, where the priest holds the broken Eucharist and says, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper."] 

What is different about the Last Supper from a traditional passover meal? Something is missing. We have the bread, but where is the lamb to be sacrificed? As our school kids would have answered, 'It's Jesus, the Lamb of God.' And something else is happening that is different. Jesus says:

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the discples and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." (Matt 26:26-29) 

At mass priest says these words in slightly different form, "Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body, which will be given up for you...Take this all of you and drink from it. This is the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me." 

Jesus mentions about the blood and the covenant. And there is the puzzling question of why is there not an ordinary lamb for this passover meal? Is there something more to this? Let's begin by answering, 'What is a covenant?' In order to answer this question, we'll go visit Abraham in the Book of Genesis.

Covenant made over sacrifice

Let's open to Genesis Chapter 15 (Gen 15:5). Book of Genesis says that God promised to give Abraham descendents as numerous as innumerable stars in the sky and vast amount of land. Abraham asked God, "O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" God instructed Abraham to bring a 3 yr. old heiffer, a 3 yr. old she-goat, a 3 yr. old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon and asked him to sacrifice them. And over the blood and the flesh of these sacrifices, God made a special bond of relationship with Abraham. The scripture reads, "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram." (Gen 15:18) We'll see that Lord makes covenant through sacrifices. Let's go to Lord made a covenant with Noah after the floodwater receded. Coming out of the ark, Noah built an altar and sacrificed every clean animal and birds as burnt offering. Then the Lord said, "Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendents after you..that never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." (Gen 8:20-21)
(Gen 9: 11-16) I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth." God added: "This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you: I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds, I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings. As the bow appears in the clouds, I will see it and recall the everlasting covenant that I have established between God and all living beings--all mortal creatures that are on earth."

So what exactly is a covenant? When you make a covenant, you are forming a bond. It is a kinship or family bond between two parties, with conditions or obligations established by an oath. It is not a contract where goods and services are exchanged; a covenant involves exchange of persons. In fact many of you who are here should be familiar with it because you have made covenants. (Marriage) Do you remember some of the words that your priest or yourselves have said at the wedding mass?

Priest: Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage? (Covenant as giving entire self to the other)
Will you love and honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives?
Will you accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?

Groom/Bride:  "I, (Name), take you, (Name), for my lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part."

Blessing of the ring: Lord, bless these rings which we bless in your name. Grant that those who wear them may always have a deep faith in each other.
May they do your will and always live together in peace, good will, and love.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. (Reminiscent of the sign of the rainbow)

Groom/Bride: (Name), take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Nuptial Blessing: Holy Father, you created mankind in your own image
and made man and woman to be joined as husband and wife in union of body and heart
and so fulfill their mission in this world.
Father, to reveal the plan of your love, you made the union of husband and wife
an image of the covenant between you and your people.
In the fulfillment of this sacrament, the marriage of Christian man and woman
is a sign of the marriage between Christ and the Church. Father, stretch out your hand, and bless (Name) and (Name).

And how is a covenant formed in the Old Testament? In the scriptures we see God making covenant with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David over animal sacrifices. We'll see later Jesus making his covenant at the Last Supper. If the marriage is a covenant, and it is covenant formed over by sacrifice, who or what is being sacrificed? Dying to self, isn't it? Selfishness is not a virtue in the covenant of marriage; selfishness is rather a refusal to honor the obligation of the covenant. With Abraham God promised over the cut animals, I will be like these sacrificed animals if I go back on my promise to bless you with descendants and land. That's God's side of the obligation in this covenant. God is essentially saying, I'm giving myself completely to you to form this bond with you. What is the obligation for Abraham in this covenant?   

God will provide the lamb
In Genesis 22, we find God instructing Abraham to do something difficult. God said, "Abraham, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you." (Gen 22:2) I wonder if Abraham could have slept that night at all. The scripture says, "So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddling his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac...On the third day Abraham saw the place afar off...Abraham laid the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife...And Isaac said, 'My father, behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?' Abraham said, 'God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." (Gen 22:2-8) "Out of obedience, Abraham is willing to do something that goes against the mission given by God: to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, the bearer of the promise. In so doing, he would be giving up everything, for, without descendents, the land promised to his descendants has no meaning." (Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, Ch 2) 

Representative sacrificial lamb

Right before Abraham thrusts the sword into his son Isaac, God stops him. And as Abraham has told his son, God himself provides the lamb for the sacrifice, a ram caught in a bush nearby. So begins, by a divine command, representative sacrifice. God gives a lamb, which Abraham then offers back to him. Abraham was willing to give up everything, even his most precious love; we can say that Abraham was willing to give up himself to God as represented by his son Isaac. Now God provides a representative sacrifice which will represent Abraham's very self-offering. Animal sacrifice now has a deeper meaning. Not only is it a thanksgiving to God, but self-offering. A two-way giving happens over a sacrifice; God gives himself and we give ourselves to him.

Our free will is to be sacrificed

Let's go forward to our time. At mass, what are we bringing to offer to God? A 5 dollar bill? An offering envelope? Does God who created everything need money from us? Does God who can do everything perfectly, need for us to do something for him? What is the one thing that God does not have that we have? Our free will; our free will to love Him or not to love Him. If we decide to sacrifice ourselves, to sacrifice our free will to love Him, how are we going to do it? Are we going to stretch ourselves on the altar and someone else offer us up as a sacrifice? Or like in Abraham's case, will God provide a lamb to represent our true self-offering? Who is that lamb that God provides for us at mass, to represent us? Jesus. At mass the priest says, "Behold the Lamb of God." 

Why does God no longer instruct us to obtain a real, live lamb for this sacrifice? The question goes to the heart of whether an ordinary lamb truly represents us, for that matter, can anything worthily represent us, other than another human person? Let's not stop there. Is there a more worthy representative who will take us to the heart of divine God himself in this offering, than God himself? We can begin to understand why the Second Person of the Trinity has to become flesh--to provide for us the perfect lamb who will represent us as our self-offering. 

At the same time, at mass Jesus is making a covenant with us, though a sacrifice--his very self. This new covenant will form a special relationship, a bond that now makes us his brother, and his father is now Our Father, his mother is now, our Blessed Mother. So Jesus was sacrificing himself so that we can now have a new bond and status before the Heavenly Father--'children of God', a privilege which was lost by our parents, Adam and Eve. On a different level, Jesus willingly and fully sacrifices himself for another purpose: to form a mystical marital bond with us, the Church who is the Bride of Christ. We read from the Nuptial Blessing of the wedding, "Father, you have made the union of man and wife so holy a mystery that it symbolizes the marriage of Christ and his Church." Hence earthly marriage symbolizes the true marriage which is between Christ and his Church. I have presided over many weddings where at the moment of exchange of vows, the groom began to cry because for all his life, he has been waiting for that day when he would find the love of his life, the person that he would willingly sacrifice himself over for. Can we then understand the great desire that Jesus had for us to offer his very life, searching and seeking us, to bring us to the Heavenly wedding, to the New Covenant. 

What does all this say about God the Father? He as the Father sees us coming to mass broken, burdened, and longing for peace. He sees us his children unable to offer ourselves fully because we were separated from Him by sin, therefore unable to participate fully in the Divine Family. So He is moved by love to provide us a sacrificial lamb, and His Son Jesus is moved by love to offer his very self, for the Bride, as the lamb to be sacrificed. Another analogy that capture in some way this love is what's on our Louisiana State flag--the mother pelican wounding her breast to feed her baby pelicans with her own blood so the her young can sustain and grow. Isn't mass God himself wounding himself to give himself to us, so that we will be nourished and transformed? Isn't this Heavenly Father's outpouring of love upon us? 

One of the most moving masses I celebrated in my 2 years as a priest was in January of this year right here at Our Lady of Mercy when I came back from leading a pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. At the Basilica in Mexico City we saw thousands of men and women streaming toward the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe which was given to an Indian named Juan Diego in 1531. After that image was given, within 7 years, 8 million Aztec indians converted from their native religion to Catholicism. The Aztecs believed in gods who needed human sacrifice on the altars of their temples to sustain them. Much blood was shed through those human sacrifices for the false gods. Our Lady of Guadalupe led these Aztecs to her Son, who showed them that it was God himself who laid Himself down on the altar of the Cross because He loved them and because He wanted to save them.
    
Back in Baton Rouge during that Sunday mass, I felt something was different about the mass. I didn't know what it was. But the moment when I lifted up the Host and the Chalice and pronounced the words, "Behold, the Lamb of God..." I could not finish the sentence. I was choked up and tears began to flow down my eyes. With difficulty and trembling in my voice I finished the rest of the line, "who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper." Here I was holding God Himself who created me and who took away my troubled past sins, and invited me to His banquet. I cried the rest of the time when I was distributing the Eucharist. Why was I so moved that day, I thought.

And as I prepared for this talk, I came to realize why I was so moved at that mass in January. My physical eyes did not see Him, but my soul saw, throughout the whole mass, the great sacrifice that Jesus made for you and me. He was beaten and broken so that we might be united once again to the Father.  Jesus, in His great obedience and generosity, gave and continues to give as gift to each of us, His body and His blood as food to nourish us. In turn, Jesus is asking us to be food for others, to give ourselves in service to others. The greatest moment on earth when we offer our entire self to God as sacrifice is at mass. And our self-sacrifice continues long after the mass. Each of us as a temple of the Holy Spirit, offer daily sacrifices right in our heart. The moment that our flesh is tempted to pride, anger, lust, gluttony, jealousy, envy, sloth, and greed, we offer our selfishness on the altar of the heart to be burned up. Just as at the sacrifice of mass where Heavenly Father, Our Lord, the Holy Spirit, Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, the angels and saints are present to assist us in our sacrifice, we will experience their assistance in the daily moments when we offer up our temptation to selfishness.