The Joy of Easter and the celebration of Mass

During the Easter season we pray Psalm 118 frequently in the Church’s liturgy. It is a song of victory, acclaiming the Lord’s strength against oppressors in the face of defeat.

“Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me free.”
 
Historically, this psalm was a liturgical hymn, sung by the Jewish people as they went up to the temple to offer sacrifice to the Lord in thanksgiving for victory. “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

It also would have been the hymn that Jesus and the apostles sang as they left the upper room following the Last Supper to make his way to the Garden of Gethsemane and endure his passion. As Jesus entered His Passion, he sang this hymn.

The intimate connection between this hymn of victory and the Paschal Mystery of Jesus is significant. And if this hymn is intimately connected with the Paschal Mystery, it is also intimately connected with the celebration of the Eucharist itself, which is our participation in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus.

The opening line of this psalm reads, “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His mercy endures forever.” This is what we do when we come to Mass. We give God thanks for His great mercy and love, which He has given us through His Son.

“Let the house of Israel say, His love endures forever; let the house of Aaron say, His love endures forever; Let those who fear the Lord say, his mercy endures forever.” What a beautiful reflection on the Mass, in which the Lord’s love endures forever through the memorial we keep of the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

During this time of Eucharistic revival in our nation, we hope to rediscover that the celebration of the Mass is truly the source and summit of the Christian life. This means that our sacrifice of thanksgiving to God is the most important thing we do. It gathers our life into a unity by linking every detail of our lives to Jesus’ self-offering to the Father. If our participation in the Mass is the most important thing we do in our lives, then we ought to put our whole being into it. 

Among those who participate in the Triduum liturgies and Easter Masses, there is often a certain level of both exhilaration and exhaustion in the days following Easter Sunday. (It’s a good kind of exhaustion!)

You have probably seen this in your priests, deacons, sacristans and all those who work so hard in our parishes to ensure the Easter liturgies are beautiful. The proper celebration of the Eucharist takes a great deal of energy and effort, as during the days of the Triduum we are brought very deeply into the Paschal Mystery in a unique way.

But this doesn’t just mean that we should put effort into our participation in Mass only during Holy Week and the Easter Triduum. Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we should strive to participate with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
 
What does it mean to participate with our whole being? In our Catholic understanding, the body is always involved somehow in our prayer. We sit, we stand, we kneel, we make the sign of the cross, we hold our hands in particular ways and we make many other bodily gestures. These things help unite our bodies and souls in prayer to the Lord, and we communicate certain things to our hearts and minds by different bodily gestures and postures.

Full participation also means that we sing, respond, listen to the readings and do what we can to make sure our minds are not wandering. St. Augustine famously said, “He who sings, prays twice.”

Do we have to sing well to participate in the liturgy? No. Maybe you won’t ever lead the singing at your parish, but everyone in the church can sing, and the Lord wants us to. It is another way that we, as the Body of Christ, can be united in our worship of the Father through Jesus our High Priest, in the Holy Spirit.

Finally, full participation means that we offer the sacrifice along with the priest. Those in the assembly at Mass are not spectators or mere “recipients” of the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  The faithful are offering the sacrifice along with the priest who gathers our prayers and intentions as he offers the sacrifice on our behalf.

We bring ourselves and all that concerns us to be offered on the altar with the bread and wine that become the Body and Blood of Christ through the ministry of the priest. We share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ through our baptism, though in a different way than the ordained priest.

This means that we can bring our personal needs and intentions and unite them with the prayer of Christ for the whole Church.

As we continue our celebration of the Easter Season and this time of Eucharistic revival, let us strive to enter more fully into the celebration of each Mass and more deeply into the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ.