The mass is a large ritual. It is not unusual for some people to wonder or question why we have this ritual or where it came from. For many people it all seems very strange. I’d like to share with you where we get the ritual of the mass from and why it is important that we continue to follow this ritual even 2000 years after Jesus.
A few thousand years ago (and still to this day) the Hebrew people (the Jews) had a few very important religious occasions that they would celebrate with a ritual meal.
It is kind of difficult for us to fully appreciate what their ritual meals were/are like because in the 21st century United States we don't have many rituals to our meals. We live in a "fast food" era and when we do have a holiday meal there might only be a little bit of "ritual" to it.
The Thanksgiving meal might be the best example for us (in the USA). We always have turkey and my family has the same side dishes every year. We always have a prayer before hand and the meal will probably end with pumpkin pie and the watching of football. I love Thanksgiving...
The Hebrew ritual meal was also (what we might call) a "prayer service." Their meal had a few steps to it. The whole meal was a ritual.
They gathered as a community/family/loved ones
An elder would lead the ritual meal
They sang a religious hymn (or more than one)
They read from Scripture
There was a time to reflect on the passages from Scripture
Then they would eat the meal
At different times during the meal they would offer various items of food to God, bless them, and then share them with each other.
They would conclude the meal with some prayers and some more hymns.
I think we all know that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew. So he often would celebrate these "ritual meals" with his friends and family. The Last Supper was one of these "ritual meals." He gathered in the upper room with his Apostles, celebrated the ritual meal but he made two small changesto the ritual and the prayers. At one point during the meal the bread is offered to God, blessed, broken, and shared. At the end of the meal the cup of wine is offered to God, blessed, and shared. Both of these blessings were part of the ritual of that meal. These two things were always done. But Jesus changed these two small actions in a big way! I'll let St. Paul explain this further:
The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and after he had given thanks, broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.?In the same way he also took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this... in remembrance of me."(1 Corinthians 11:23-25)
Jesus changed the prayers at the time of the blessing and sharing of the bread and the wine. There is something really important to notice and consider in what Jesus said. He said "Do this in remembrance of me." We should ask ourselves, “What did he mean when he said the words "this?"” What is the thing that the pronoun "this" refers to?
When Jesus said “this” he was referring to the whole ritual meal. Jesus was commanding his apostles to celebrate that ritual meal and when they did they celebrate it they were supposed to do it in "remembrance of [Jesus]." We often don't realize that Jesus was telling them to celebrate a meal together. He was commanding them to pray with a ritual meal.
The apostles understood what Jesus told them to do. So the apostles immediately began to celebrate this ritual meal as a community of disciples. They even celebrated this meal with Jesus shortly after he had risen from the dead. The apostles and disciples taught others to celebrate this meal as well. We can see in the Acts of the Apostles (the book in the Bible that tells us of the activities of the Church just after Jesus Resurrection from the dead)that the earliest Christians “They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.” (Acts 2:42) The “breaking of the bread” was what they earliest Christians called the mass. It was what they called this ritual meal.
But, very soon there was a problem. In the town of Corinth the Christians would gather to eat this ritual meal and the rich people would eat too much, drink too much, and get drunk. The poor people would end up going home hungry because no one had given them anything to eat. So St. Paul wrote them a letter (his First letter to the Corinthians)and he scolded them for this. He also offered a solution to the problem. He said, "Eat at home." (1 Cor. 11:33) In other words he told them to separate the meal from the ritual. He told them to keep the ritual hymns, Scripture readings, reflections, and prayers but to eat the meal part at home. This is what the changes looked like.
They gathered as a community/family/loved ones
An elder would lead the ritual meal
They sang a religious hymn (or more than one)
They read from Scripture
There was a time to reflect on the passages from Scripture
Then they would eat the meal
At different times during the meal they would offer [bread and wine] to God, bless them, and then share them with each other.
They would conclude the meal with some prayers and some more hymns.
So St. Paul told them to keep doing everything the same... just remove the meal from the ritual. You might notice how this is identical to our mass.
They gathered as a community/family/loved ones
We still gather as a community of Christians.
An elder would lead the ritual meal
The Greek word for "elder" is presbyter... which we call "priest"
They sang a religious hymn (or more than one)
We still sing at different parts of mass.
They read from Scripture
The first part of every mass has three or four passages of scriptures that are read.
There was a time to reflect on the passages from Scripture
We do the same. We call this the homily or sermon.
Then they would eat the meal
We eat after mass... I love going out for brunch after mass!
At different times during the meal they would offer [bread and wine] to God, bless them, and then share them with each other.
We do the same things and we use the words that Jesus spoke.
We consecrate the bread and wine and share it.
They would conclude the meal with some prayers and some more hymns.
We do it exactly the same.
Jesus told us to, "Do this in remembrance of me!" So we continue to celebrate the mass because the mass is the same ritual meal that Jesus celebrated at the Last Supper. The only difference between what we do at mass and what Jesus did is that have followed the advice of St. Paul and taken the meal part of the ritual meal out. That is why we do the same ritual over and over again… because it is the ritual that Jesus told us to celebrate.