Episode Transcript  

One

Worship as Love and Sacrifice

The Mass is the greatest reality on earth. But growing up, I had no idea. One afternoon in graduate school for theology, I was sitting quietly in the library when I picked up a worn 1936 copy of Pius Parsch’s book on the Mass. As I read, the truth hit me with such force that I dropped the book, stunned. Out loud, much too loud for a library, I exclaimed, “Why did I never know this before!”

What I discovered that day is that the Mass is not just man-made rituals we do over and over. At its heart, the Mass is worship, and true worship is sacrifice. But sacrifice is not something grim or negative. Sacrifice is simply love carried to the point of total self-gift. To sacrifice is to give back entirely to the One from whom everything comes. It is “right and just” that all should return to Him.

And how do we make such an offering? By giving what is most precious. Humanity has always sensed this. From the beginning, people have known, though imperfectly, that worship demands costly offering. Sadly, sin distorted this truth into dark practices like human sacrifice. But even those distortions prove the point: deep down, humanity has always known that true worship costs everything, because true love holds nothing back.

Two

The Son’s Perfect Worship

Into this longing, to give God our most precious gift in thanksgiving and love, the unimaginable happened: the Son of God became man. When the Son of God became man in Jesus, He did not merely take on a human body. He united Himself to all of humanity, in some mysterious way, to every person who would ever live. And more than that, in assuming human nature, He also took up all of creation into Himself.

And then, on the Cross, He offered it all back to the Father. He poured Himself out to the furthest limit human nature can go, into death itself. This was love to the end, sacrifice carried to its absolute fullness. Yet death could not hold Him. He rose, and in His Ascension, the Father accepted His perfect offering.

Finally, for the first time in human history, there was a perfect act of worship: the total self-gift of the divine Son to the Father, in love, on behalf of us all.

Three

The Mass: Christ’s Sacrifice Made Present

And now, Jesus makes that infinite and perfect act of love and worship present in every Catholic Mass. The Mass is not a ritual whereby we simply recall the sacrifice of Christ. In the Mass, the Holy Spirit makes the sacrifice of Calvary present and effective here and now. In it, Christ’s self-offering and with it, all of creation is once more offered to the Father. 

This is why, at the Offertory, bread, wine, and our gifts are brought forward and placed on the altar. In the early Church, the faithful also brought food, clothing, silver, and gold, bread and wine for the sacrifice, and the rest to care for the poor. Each person brought something that represented themselves, their work, their life, their love, placing it before God.

Bread and wine still carry this meaning today. Bread is the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands. Wheat must be harvested, crushed, ground, and baked. It represents our labor, our daily work. Wine comes from grapes that must be crushed so their blood-red juice flows out. It represents the suffering, endurance, and trials of life. When we bring these gifts to the altar, we are bringing ourselves, the bread of our labor, and the wine of our suffering, as an offering to God. The altar itself is both the place of sacrifice and the sign of Christ on the Cross. Placing bread and wine on the altar means placing ourselves with Him on Calvary, so that we may be offered to the Father through Him, with Him, and in Him.

Christ offered Himself completely to the Father on the Cross, even to the point of death, the greatest worship the Father could receive. The Mass enables us to join ourselves to that perfect worship, uniting our own offering to His one sacrifice. In this way, His sacrifice becomes ours, and ours becomes His. This is why the priest turns to us at this moment and says, “Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.” And we respond, “May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory of His name, for our good and the good of all His holy Church.” 

Four

Our Active Participation in the Sacrifice

The Mass is not something Christ does apart from us while we watch. The Catechism teaches, “In the Eucharist the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of his Body” (CCC 1368). Through Baptism, we were united to Christ and made members of His Body. This means that when the Head offers Himself to the Father in the Mass, the whole Body offers itself as well.

So we bring to the altar all that we are, our prayers, works, joys, and sufferings, and place them into His hands. “The lives of the faithful, their praise, sufferings, prayer, and work, are united with those of Christ and with His total offering” (CCC 1368).

This is active participation at its deepest level. It is not just standing, kneeling, singing, or responding aloud. It is interiorly uniting our whole being to Christ’s self-offering so that our worship is truly, “through Him, with Him, and in Him.”

Think of a mother or father who comes to Mass carrying the exhaustion of caring for children while trying to make a living. Or someone who suffers from illness, loneliness, or grief. In the Mass, they can place all of it on the altar. In Christ, it becomes worship, pleasing to the Father.

Five

Living the Sacrifice We Celebrate

The worship we offer in the Mass does not end when the final blessing is given. St. Paul exhorts us, “Think of God’s mercy, my brothers, and worship him… by offering your living bodies as a holy sacrifice, truly pleasing to God.” (Romans 12:1).

If we have truly united ourselves to Christ’s offering, then our whole life becomes an extension of that sacrifice. The dismissal at Mass is not the end of worship but its extension. We are sent forth to “go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.” This means offering every moment, our work, our love, our service, even our trials, as a spiritual sacrifice pleasing to God. The grace of the Eucharist shapes us into people whose daily living proclaims, “It is right and just, our duty and our salvation,” not only in church, but always and everywhere.

In this way, the worship of the Mass overflows into the worship of daily life. The sacrifice we share at the altar becomes the mission we live in the world. And the love carried to the point of self-gift on Calvary becomes the love that animates and transforms everything we are.

Suggested Resolutions:

Choose one resolution for today to help you grow closer to God, or create your own. Here are some ideas to inspire you. 

• At Mass this week, be aware of the sacrifice you are offering up to God in the Mass: your sickness, your suffering, all your daily annoyances and struggles.

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