The Mass in its essence is a celebration of life. It is feast, thanksgiving, memorial, communion, compassion, cosmic joy. Its history goes back to the actions of Jesus — who had banquets with people of ill repute and was a guest at wedding parties — as well as to the earliest communities who remembered his life and death with a meal.
The essence of the Mass has been betrayed by rubricism and made subservient to dogmatism. More recently, it has succumbed to clericalism and eccentricity. All kind of manipulations have been tried, some very successfully.
So I am not surprised — but I am still quite sad — when people say that the Mass is boring, or that it has nothing to do with Jesus, or that one single way of celebrating it has been handed down from day one (usually this means essentially: no women at the altar!), and so on and so forth.
The Mass is not just a Roman Catholic ritual. It is celebrated as Divine Liturgy by the Orthodox Christians and has been kept by the Anglicans and the Lutherans after the Reformation. It is only Protestants of other stripes who denounced it as an abomination, as they hated everything ritualistic and called it “superstition”— a hate unique to modern Western culture, by the way, never seen anywhere else in the history of any human culture.
Unfortunately, modernity took its toll on the Mass even where it did not disappear, making it become more and more a bunch of words printed on a page, and less and less a time for silence, aesthetic enjoyment, deep reflection, and union in communion. Let alone bodily movement. With his Cosmic Mass, Matthew Fox has attempted not to “modernize” the mass — as he has been wrongly accused of doing — but to make its essence and history shine once again, in our post-modern context.
The kernel of the Mass, in continuity with the Jewish tradition, is an act of remembrance. The tragic end of Jesus, and his being seen alive at several intimate meals after his death, stimulated his followers to gather together regularly to “break bread” and “share the cup.” These deep ritual acts of communion with each other — the bread and the cup are one, like the community is one, but feed many individuals, as many as there are — thus became also a memorial of what Jesus did, what he said, and how he died.
In a proper celebration of the Mass, the tortures that were inflicted on him and led to his death are neither exalted nor overlooked. The depths of his pain, the via negativa at the most profound level, are metamorphosized by his consciousness, by his high level of awareness in meeting death.
The same level of consciousness — a truly Christic consciousness — is elicited ideally in the participants, who let go of all kinds of alien thoughts to concentrate on the symbols that are continually shown: a round bread which is broken in pieces, the pouring of the wine, beautiful plates and cups, artful objects and colorful vestments. Far from being “trappings” they recall the cosmos, the richness and beauty of the natural world, and the dignity and the royalty of the images of the divine that we are.
Jesus was dead, but now we become him, alive. This is what theologians mean when they say that the divine life of Jesus is infused in the believers as they eat the consecrated bread and drink the consecrated wine. Not an idea or a concept, but a lived experience at all levels of one’s being: feelings, sensations, intuitions, and thinking too.
After Communion, words that he said, and that were recalled during the ritual, might come to mind; but the physical sensation of being a member of a body made of many bodies may prevail; or the perception of the presence of angels or ancestors may be elicited; or a deep feeling of peace and wholeness may ensue.
The Mass then is a Eucharist (= Thanksgiving) because it consists essentially of gratitude about one’s life in the cosmic context, and thus also of gratitude about all life. It connects us to the Source (which we may call God) not because we claim to believe in God’s existence, but as a felt reality.
At the very end of the Mass, the sense of power and energy derived from a proper celebration (what early Christians called Holy Spirit) is the final testimony that something of cosmic consequence has happened through the ritual that was celebrated.
Banner Image: Eucharistic bread and wine: stained glass window from Leicester Cathedral. Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew on Flickr
Queries for Contemplation
Do you have experience of the Mass as an insider or an outsider? What resounds with you about this DM?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
A Way to God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey
Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality
6 thoughts on “Why the Mass?”
I experienced rejection to attend a Christmas mass at the Roman Catholic church in Greensboro, NC, and rejection at a Baptist church in Washington state, even though, at that time, I was affiliated with a southern Baptist church in Greensboro.
What resounds with me about this DM is nostalgia. Nostalgia for the joyful experience I believe the Mass should and could be, even if I have never experienced it as such. I grew up in the most traditional/shame-ridden and spiritually-comatose form of Catholicism with buzzwords like “you are a sinner, Jesus died because of you, if you do not repent you will burn in Hell and, by the way, having no soul, your cat cannot go to Heaven.”
I therefore returned my ticket for this sad kind of postmortem bliss and chose, instead, to live this Life as fully as I could. If I mention nostalgia, however, it is because it did not have to be that way. For instance, Christ did not have to be bleached and to wear blue contact lenses to make believe he was not one of those whom skin color or different religious practices expose to racism and qualify as pagans to be converted.
Fortunately, my journey on “the road less traveled,” allowed me to meet the teachings if people like Matthew Fox, Meister Eckhart and Brother David Steindl-Rast (who will be 100 in a few weeks!) and to realize that my allergy to the Catholicism of my youth was a healthy soul-saving reaction.
Yet, what a massive on-going betrayal of Rabbouni…
As an insider, Seminary 7 years, Director of Religious Ed for 45 years, I supported the “party line”- what you described in the article, but I never really could believe it. I tried, seriously, studied, read, listened but all this never could dispel my deep belief that Jesus would never approve of the “Mass”. Rather, being a Jew, he went from the thrones and altars of Judaism to the discipleship heeding the message of Hosea: “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings” Jesus quoted this exact verse twice in the Gospel of Matthew (9:13 and 12:7)
I like others found the RC Mass an exclusive experience. Only the real
Christians were invited. No Eucharist for any others.
The recitation of the Creed always stood out as a pledge of allegiance devoid of Christ’s fundamental teachings. Never once is the word Love used.
I left wondering something important is missing. I still do on rare occasions I attend. Where to find meaningful ritual remains a journey.
The Cosmic Mass for me is the awareness/consciousness of the Sacredness of the Eternal Present Moment and Divine Flow of Love guiding and healing Us in our interconnectedness of Loving Diverse Oneness with one another, Sacred Mother Earth, and All of Our ongoing/evolving Beautiful Co-Creation Cosmos, All physical/nonphysical spiritual dimensions and beings….
I have two churches: a local UCC and a Disciples of Christ, which I attend online. In both, communion is open to anyone. Disciples like the Eucharist so much that I’ve said that they can hardly have a party without taking communion. UCC is a bit leery of it, but my local church offers it at the conclusion of the service upfront and individually. Some UCC churches only offer it once a month. My Episcopal friend Laura is shocked to hear that. “But that’s the whole point,” she said once. In my two churches and growing up Baptist, the Eucharist was always a time of remembering, never embodiment. It is my Buddhist partner who suggested that that’s missing the point: the point being to become one with Christ, the way one becomes one with Vajrasattva when one chants that mantra. (I don’t quite understand it yet, but a Buddhist monk I trust said last time we saw him that one can fuse Vajrasattva with one’s guru–hence for me: Christ). Not growing up Catholic, I don’t feel I need anyone to bless the sacraments; so most mornings I invite Christ to become one with me as I soulfully ingest the elements of coffee and chocolate. I don’t believe the elements matter. As I write this, I realize that I’m getting it wrong. I need to invite myself to become one with Christ. But perhaps the two are the same thing.