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DEFENDING THE BRIDE
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Are You Bored at Mass ?
Getting More out of it.
Are you bored with the Mass ? Do the Rituals seem meaningless ?
The more you put into the Mass the more you get out of it. And learn how Jesus desires to heal, strengthen, encourage, and build you up in the Mass so that you might have abundant life here on earth and to share in His everlasting life in Heaven.
By learning about the Mass and its origins we can pray it better. This will also enable us to understand each part of the Mass, what the rituals mean, and how it is God’s plan for us to be united to Him and share in His joy. The Mass is a celebration and a participation in the holy sacrifice that Jesus made of Himself to the Father at the Last Supper with the Apostles on Holy Thursday.
Because of Original Sin all of mankind is in need of a Savior. In the Old Covenant God revealed Himself to the Jews, and through them to the whole world. This Covenant pointed to God’s holiness and revealed the sins of man and our need to be saved. However, the Old Covenant could not by itself save us. It pointed to the New Covenant through which God offers salvation.
At the Last Supper Jesus instituted the New Covenant. This Covenant is so special and so intrinsically tied to the Last Supper that Jesus waited until then to use this extremely important word “Covenant” which He established at that time. This New Covenant is God’s plan for our salvation. God wants to save us from sin and suffering and to unite us with Him heaven. Since we could never earn God’s forgiveness or salvation we are totally dependent on God and His infinite mercy. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
At this Last Supper Jesus offered bread and wine to His Father in Heaven. And He changed them into His Body and His Blood. The separate consecration of the bread from the consecration of the wine signified the separation on His own Body from His Blood which was shed for us as He freely offered His life for us on the cross. (John 19:34) Thus, even at the Last Supper Jesus was already offering His willingness to accept His impending death on the cross as the new Passover Lamb to be sacrificed for our sins.
However, Jesus is the Lord of Life. He conquered sin and death. By His Life, Death, and Resurrection He won for us the grace that will enable us to have everlasting life and joy with Him in heaven. Jesus’s love for us is so powerful and intimate. During the Last Supper when He instituted the New Covenant He changed the bread and wine into His Body and Blood so that we might receive Him in this Most Blessed Sacrament. He desires that we receive His very own Flesh into our bodies so that we would be in communion with Him, united to His unfathomable love and even His very own Person. At the Last Supper “In order to leave them a pledge of this love, in order never to depart from his own and to make them sharers in his Passover, he instituted the Eucharist as the memorial of his death and Resurrection …” (CCC 1337)
The Lord’s Last Supper
Matthew 26:26-28
“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke
it, and giving it to his disciples said, ‘Take and eat; this is my
body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them,
saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the
covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness
of sins.’ ”
John 6:51-57
“ ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats
this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my
flesh for the life of the world.’
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give
us (his) flesh to eat?’
Jesus said to them, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life
within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal
life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true
food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks
my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent
me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds
on me will have life because of me.’ ”
The Mass is also a wedding banquet. It prefigures and anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem. Revelation 19:9 “Then the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.’ ” [Cf. Matthew 8:11, 22:2-14, Rev. 21:9] However, this wedding banquet is also partially realized here on earth at each Mass where we the Church, the Bride of Christ, receive our groom, Jesus Christ, into our bodies. He loves us that much.
Consider studying typology and how Jesus was prefigured in Adam, Mechizedek the Priest-King, Moses, and the Passover Sacrifice.
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The Greatest Drama Ever Staged is the Official Creed of Christendom, by Dorothy Sayers.
Studying the history of the early Church and how it worked out an explicit expression of her teachings brings out a deeper appreciation of those teachings of Jesus the God-Man.
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