The Most Perfect Worship

     The Mass is the most perfect act of worship that man individually or the Church collectively can offer to God the Father. The Mass is the liturgical setting for the offering of the sacrament of the Eucharist, the “source and summit” of the Christian life (CCC 1324), and thus has a unique place in the Catholic Church. Nothing can take its place, nothing is comparable to it, and spiritual progress is impossible without it. This is due to the fact that in the Mass the very Person of Christ Himself is offered to the Father in the unbloody Sacrifice of the Altar. All theology surrounding the Mass, all liturgical practice regarding how it is to be carried out and all disciplines with regards to how we come to and participate in the Mass are derived from the reality of Christ’s divine offering of Himself through the Mass.

Origin of the Name: “Mass”

     The Mass has gone by many names. In the New Testament, the Mass is called the “breaking of the bread” (Acts 2:42) or the “liturgy” (Acts 13:2, leitourgountes). The early Church used a variety of names for the Mass: The Lord's Supper" (coena dominica), the "Sacrifice" (prosphora, oblatio), "the gathering together" (synaxis congregatio), "the Mysteries", and (since Augustine), "the Sacrament of the Altar".

     The English word “Mass” comes from the concluding formula of the Mass in Latin: “Ite, missa est,” which literally means, “Go, it is the dismissal,” but it usually translated into English as “The Mass is ended, go in peace.” This word became prominent in the West after the time of Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604).

     The Mass in the Roman Rite is currently offered in two forms: the Ordinary Form, which is the form celebrated in most Catholic parishes that is based on the revision of the liturgy done in 1969; and the Extraordinary Form, which is the Mass celebrated according to the rubrics in place in the centuries prior to 1969, as codified in the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal. Most of this lesson will concern itself with the Ordinary Form, though we will draw on the Extraordinary Form for reference and clarification.