What are we, the People of God, doing at Mass?
We are being the People of God!
We are taking up the means that Christ has left to us to enter into contact and communion with him! The two greatest things that he has left us are his words and the Eucharist. It is by listening to and hearing those words and by celebrating the Eucharist that we are able to continue to be his disciples.
When we celebrate the Liturgy of the Word, we are entering into dialogue with him. We are not just being instructed or given moral principles. We are putting ourselves in the shoes of those people who originally heard his words. If we take up any of the gospels, we will find that for the most part they are telling us about Jesus’ contacts with the many and various people of his time. He interacts with Peter and James and John etc., he interacts with blind people, with crippled people, with religious people who disagree with him and so on. It is really helpful to take up a gospel and see what goes on between him and the people around him.
Fundamentally this is what we are seeking to do in the Liturgy of the Word. We are placing ourselves before him and letting him say to us what he said to those people in his time. And as they entered into a process of coming to grasp what he had to say so that is what we are called to be doing.
And so it is crucial that we listen or read not only the words of the gospels but also listen to our honest and immediate reactions to those words. This involves us in a dialogue with Christ! So we ought never neglect what arises in our hearts at the hearing of his words, be those reactions positive or negative or are seemingly indifferent. Such reactions are the beginning of his word having its interior effects within us.
The Word of God being proclaimed to us now is one of the ways in which the Christ whom we cannot see is making himself present to us.
We then move on to celebrate the Liturgy of the Eucharist, in which we also celebrate his continuing risen presence with us.
By Fr Frank O’Loughlin
Comments
Gerald
Thank you for your encouraging and insightful words Father Frank. I have been attending Mass every Sunday for nigh on 30?years and yet only recently at the age of 72 can I truely say I am becoming involved with the dialogue of Christ and listening more closely to the reaction of my heart. I have been guilty of perhaps not indifference but certainly a shallow acceptance. Your words are a timely barometer.
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