Go forth, the Mass is ended!
Deacon Douglas McManaman
I received a text about the closing remarks of an Archbishop of a major U.S. city. A number of people were rather upset that the Archbishop would point to the altar and say to the congregation: “The consecration is not the most important part of the Mass, but rather the “sending forth”. I was asked to comment.
My first reaction was that this is a strange thing to be upset about; after all, the word ‘Mass’ is from the Latin missa, which means “dismissal” or, as the bishop indicated, “sending forth” (from the Latin verb mittere: to send, to discharge, to release). My friend took issue with my reply and began to argue: “Why not just do social work? Forget the Church and the “silly Eucharist”, he said. “It’s not that important anyways, at least not as much as sending forth”.
But the Archbishop did not say that the consecration is not important. Moreover, the movement outwards can hardly be classified as “social work”. Archbishop Romero, for example, was hardly a social worker; neither could Mother Teresa be classified as such, nor Mother Cabrini, Don Bosco or St. Vincent de Paul, etc. It seems to me, however, that there is a tendency among some clergy and laity to reduce Catholicism to the sanctuary. And this seems to be a perennial problem. In the early 20th century, English poet and chaplain of the British Army during WW1 G. Studdert Kennedy wrote:
The cry that is often raised, that we are going to secularize religion and take the clergy away from their purely “spiritual work”, is the cry of the man who dare not face the Cross. He wants to keep his Christ forever standing amid the lilies of the altar, with the sweet incense of worship rising around him, a weekly refuge from the distraught and vulgar world. He wants to lock Christ up in the Tabernacle, to keep Him in the silence of the secret place, where men must go down on their knees before they touch Him. But Christ wants to come out into the market-place, and down to the streets; He wants to eat and drink with prostitutes, to be mocked and spit upon by soldiers. He wants to call the dishonest trader from his office desk; to stand at his lathe beside the workman; and to bend with the mother over the washtub in the city of mean streets. He wants to go out into the world, that beauty and goodness and truth – beautiful things, good people, and true thought – may grow up around Him wherever He goes. You cannot keep Christ in your churches; He will break them into pieces if you try. He will make for the streets in spite of you, and go on with His own work; defying dead authorities, breaking down tyrannies, destroying shams, declaring open war against a Godless world. And wherever He goes the true Church will go with Him – the Church of those who are forgiven because they are bearing the sins of the world, and have learned how to forgive.
For me, that says it all and says it best. The Archbishop is simply emphasizing the fact that the Mass is ordered outwards, towards the world. The bread and wine that we offer becomes Christ in order that we become Christ, so that when we are sent out, we may bring Christ into the world, and that sending forth includes the priest who says Mass. In other words, it is not a matter of “you go forth” while “I stay here” among the lilies and the incense–although some very conservative clergy argue that “going forth” is for the laity only, while the priest remains inside. Things haven’t changed all that much since the 1920s. Whoever becomes Christ after consuming him will be moved to go out into the market-place, not to shop for dainty pastries and other fine delicacies, but to “eat and drink with prostitutes”, to mix it up with those whom Christ redeemed. Not everyone is so moved: “I don’t want to smell like sheep” protested one priest to a fellow Deacon, upset that Pope Francis would ever suggest such a thing.
The Mass is a beginning, not an ending; it is a means, and a means is subordinated to the end, which in this case is the “Christification” of the world, or rather the universe as a whole. The consecration is the beginning of that Christification of ordinary matter. The Mass is a movement, and the most important part of a movement is the final cause. This has to be emphasized for those who would like everything to revolve around the sanctuary, as though what takes place there is the sole purpose of the Christian life.