Must mass be entertaining?

 

One of the great challenges facing adults and young people today is the struggle to pay attention. Never has so much been said about “mindfulness,” even as our minds seem more scattered than ever. I am not speaking of the ordinary distractedness that has always accompanied daily life, long before social media and smartphones. Future research may well show long‑term changes in our ability to focus on a story or a single subject for any length of time without constant visual or auditory stimulation.

The most important part of the mass

 

I want to make what may sound like a controversial claim: the most important moment of the Mass is the very end. After the final blessing, the priest proclaims, “The Mass is ended, go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord,” and we respond, “Thanks be to God.” That response is not meant to be a sigh of relief but an expression of gratitude for what we have received and excitement for what now begins.

Why do I say this?

Divisions over the sacrament of unity

 

The terms Mass, Eucharist, Divine Liturgy, Lord’s Supper and Holy Communion are used across Christian traditions to describe the sacrament instituted by the Lord Jesus on the night of his betrayal and entrusted to those he called to celebrate it in memory of his death and resurrection.

Christians differ in how they understand the Eucharist and in the place it holds within their liturgical life. I hold to the catholic understanding of the Eucharist as a threefold gift of sacrifice, communion and presence; remove one and the others collapse.

Drink this all of you

 

picture: Confession & Communion - Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia

The sixth movement of the Mass is the Communion Rite, which follows the Eucharistic Prayer and prepares us for the reception of Holy Communion. The bread and wine have been consecrated and changed into the Body and Blood of Christ, and we receive these gifts from the minister. For reasons that have never been fully convincing to me, Communion for lay people in the Roman Catholic Church is almost always given under one species, namely the consecrated bread.

A disciple's charter

 

Sunday 1 February 2026

Lectio Divina:*

Zephaniah 2:3, 3:12-13

Psalm 146

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Matthew 5:1-12 

 

Meditatio:

“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.’’ (Matthew 5:12)

Commentary:

Religion often gets a bad name. It is accused of spreading gloom, fear or a spirit of killjoy, and many today contrast religion with spirituality as if they were opposites—religion = bad, spirituality = good. The phrase “I’m not religious but I am spiritual” is now commonplace, sometimes spoken with a hint of self‑protection, as if being “religious” were old‑fashioned, reactionary or faintly embarrassing.

Facing the rising sun

 

Yesterday, I wrote about the moment of epiclesis in the Eucharistic Prayer and the value of being able to see what the priest is doing at key points in the liturgy. Many of us will remember attending Mass when the priest “said the Mass with his back to the people.” That was the norm for centuries until the post–Vatican II reforms.

Holy Spirit at work

One of the advantages of the priest facing the congregation is that we can see what is happening at different points during the liturgy. At key moments in the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest invokes—calls down—the Holy Spirit upon the assembly. Before the words of the Institution Narrative, “Take this, all of you, and eat of it…”, the priest asks the Spirit to bless the bread and wine that are to be consecrated and transformed. This is the first moment of the epiclesis, the Greek term meaning “calling upon.”