Do We Underestimate the Mass? Part 2

In the Mass, we surrender ourselves for further transformation into new Christs. The Mass is both a human and a divine accomplishment. By our Christian initiation, we are actually co-offerers with Christ. No other prayer in our life can come anywhere close to comparing with this. The divine mercy is nailed to the cross and beckons us to share his peace and unity. In Christ, we are joined one to the other.

When we as Americans think of liberation, our minds travel back into history, to the days of the Emancipation Proclamation and Abraham Lincoln. However, until more recent civil rights struggles, this freedom was often eroded and suppressed. The Mass offers a liberation far greater still. All men and women may be free. We do not have to be the forced slaves of anyone. All are equal on the level of grace in the eyes of God. The liberating power of the cross is actualized in the Mass. We can throw off the yoke of being manipulated by others and of being imprisoned by the passions of a fallen nature.

When we think of the incredible weapons of war, our minds center upon the nuclear arsenals that could wipe out entire cities and possibly destroy the entire planet under a radioactive blanket of dust and smoke. Yet, this almost unimaginable power is reduced to nothing in the face of the power that Christ exerts. Because of sin, the rupture between God and man was infinite and beyond our ability to bridge. The cross extended through time by the Mass gives a blow to the kingdom of Satan from which it cannot be healed. The war is won, even if there are still some battles yet to be fought. He who was infinite and all powerful entered the human side of the equation, offering the heavenly Father a sacrifice of immeasurable worth in the work of our redemption. The Mass destroys and it builds. This latter aspect shows the full depth of its power. It takes a great deal more to build than to destroy. A new dispensation ushers upon the world. We need not live and die in vain.