As a Catholic child I learned that ‘the Mass is everything’ and that ‘our martyrs’ suffered and died to preserve the Mass in England. I still maintain a strong impression of my parents at Mass, intently following the Latin prayers in an English translation. When old enough to understand, I was given a missal and taught how to use it. Pupils of my convent school were carefully instructed in the meaning of the Mass, in its prayers and ritual gestures, and though I cannot say that my understanding was profound, I knew that the Mass was the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and that what we must do was to offer ourselves with him. The morning offering we were taught was to that effect: ‘Jesus, I offer you all the prayers, works, suffering and joys of this day, for all the intentions of thy divine heart in the holy Mass’. In my school days I often heard, in reference to some difficulty, some important issue to be resolved, the exhortation: ‘Put it in the Mass that is being said somewhere in the world at this moment’. No act, no prayer, nothing we could do for God equalled the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

They were gathered round Jesus as the Galileans of old, listening to his word spoken directly to them, for ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever’

The ritual of sacrifice is as old as humanity itself. An object of value is offered to the Creator in place of the self whom it represents. One might say that the gift carries the self along with it on a ‘journey’ to the Creator. What lies – and still lies – behind this gesture, is the urge, the longing, unrecognized perhaps, to be united to the Creator, a longing, a need that is of the essence of human nature: ‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you’.

We Christians know that no creature can ‘get to God’. Only God can attain God. God in his love became man so as to become for us both victim and priest of a sacrifice that would take us to God, a sacrifice that would infallibly ‘get there’. His was no ritual sacrifice: with unsurpassable love, willing, adoring, the obedient victim was immolated on a cruel cross of shame. With love commensurate with his, the Father received the self-gift of Jesus, and he whom love had brought so low was raised in glory.

The whole of Jesus’ earthly life was a sacrifice, reaching its fulfilment in his death and exaltation. The Letter to the Hebrews is an impassioned appeal to wavering Jewish converts to recognize in Jesus the fulfilment of everything they had cherished in Judaism and most especially the sacred ritual of sacrifice. Jesus Christ, it claimed, was both supreme High Priest, appointed by God himself from all eternity, and the Victim he offered. Mysteriously, but in utter reality, Jesus ordained for all time a ritual whereby his all-sufficing, all-embracing sacrifice, offered once and for all, can be offered in every age, by each member of his Church, as their own, personal sacrifice. In the holy Mass we ourselves offer as our own the sacrifice of Jesus himself.

It is very possible that the four Gospel accounts received much of their formation in early liturgical celebrations when the believers gathered to listen to the Word, to the teaching of the apostles and to celebrate what the Lord had commanded to be done ‘in memory of me’. In his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Erasmo Leiva Merikakis observes that the word used for the crowds, or multitude, that gathered round Jesus in Galilee to listen to his word, and to be healed and cared for by him, is ekklesia, the Greek word denoting ‘the gathering of those called out’ – in ordinary usage a summons to take part in a public event. So, it is easy to see that the faithful, gathered for the liturgy, saw themselves as those chosen ‘from the world to be my own’ (cf. John 15:19), God’s new people, his Church. They were gathered round Jesus as the Galileans of old, listening to his word spoken directly to them, for ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever’ (Heb. 13:8). We, in our turn, are his Church, called out to hear the word the Lord speaks to us today.

The same commentator draws our attention to the Greek word
prosenegkan, from the verb meaning ‘to hand over as an oblation’. The evangelist deliberately chooses to use this particular word in the context of Jesus’ healing ministry: ‘they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them all’ (Matt. 4:24). Reading the Gospel of Matthew, I have the impression of Palestine as a vast hospital with Jesus traversing its wards, sick people calling out to him, some blindly groping their way to him, cripples being brought to him. So Christians, down the centuries, gathered together for the liturgy, would see themselves in these sufferers, would understand that their painful, often shameful human lives could be offered to Jesus as an oblation. Taken up into his own surrendering heart, they would be purified of everything sinful and, transformed, carried by him to the Father.

Jesus’ healing ministry, although an incomparable manifestation of God’s compassion and an indisputable disclaimer that human afflictions are from God and punishment for sin, was essentially a sign of a deeper spiritual reality. These works bore all the limitations of this world; sickness itself was not eliminated; those whom he had raised from the dead would die again. His great purpose was to give eternal life, real life, the only life that endures for ever, a participation in the life of God himself. Jesus’ Lordship was not ‘of this world’. He came to accomplish a mighty deed: ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil’ (1 John 3:8), to wrest his Father’s creation from the grip of the evil one, who arrogantly claimed lordship over ‘all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them’ (Matt. 4:8).

A prominent feature of Jesus’ ministry is his confrontation with the ‘evil one’. Demoniacs, those possessed with an unclean spirit, mingle with the sick that come to or are brought to Jesus. With a word he can oust them. But he is powerless when his opponents choose to ally themselves with the ‘prince of this world’, deliberately choosing darkness to light (cf. John 10).

The measureless love of God is here available for us, for each one of us, in the Mass

Utterly strange to the human mind is the way the holy ‘Stronger’ One (Matt. 12:24) plundered the stronghold of the ‘strong man’, totally despoiling him. In the Father’s unfathomable wisdom, in order for the Evil One to be driven from the dark places of the human heart, the Son of Man must allow the prince of this world power over him, allow him and all he represented of human sin, to vent his hatred upon him. Not this time with fair words and blandishments did Satan seek to overcome him, but with claws and talons, in undisguised cruel malice. God’s love in the heart of Jesus absorbed all in love and compassion. ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34).

Only by himself accepting to die could Jesus ‘abolish death and bring us life and immortality’ (cf. 2 Tim. 1:10). He shared our mortal dying in order to endow us with the ‘imperishable life’ which is his as the eternal Son of God. The measureless love of God is here available for us, for each one of us, in the Mass. We have only to come with desire to receive all that God wants to give us and to become channels for his love to flow out upon the whole world.

Look, O Lord, upon this Sacrifice

which you yourself have provided
for your Church,

and grant in your loving kindness

to all who partake of this one Bread and one Chalice

that, gathered into one body by the Holy Spirit,

they may truly become a living sacrifice to Christ

to the praise of your glory.

To have become a sacrifice to God is our beatitude; it is to have attained the end for which we were created, and our Saviour’s prayer to his Father fulfilled: ‘Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me before the foundation of the world’ (John 17:24).