[Footnote 233: Ibid.]
The offering, then, which takes place in the Mass is the very same that was made on Calvary, only it is made in a different manner. On the Cross, that offering was made in a direct and absolute manner, it was a bloody Sacrifice; in the Mass, it is made in a mystical and commemorative way, without blood, without suffering, without death. Therefore, in order to understand what takes place in the Mass, we must go back to the Cross. What was it that took place on the Cross? You answer, perhaps, Christ shed His Blood there for the remission of sins. True: the Blood of Christ was the material cause of our Redemption, but that which gave the Blood of Christ its value, that, indeed, which made it a Sacrifice, was the interior dispositions of the Soul of Christ. The Blood of Christ, taken as a mere material thing, could never have effected our reconciliation. What does the Scripture say? "Sacrifice and oblation Thou didst not desire. Burnt-offerings and sin-offerings Thou didst not require. Then I said: Lo, I come to do Thy will O God!" [Footnote 234]
[Footnote 234: Ps. xxxix. 7, 8.]
It was by the obedience of Christ, an obedience practised through His whole life, but of which His Death and Passion were the fullest expression, that Christ, as our elder brother, repaired our disobedience. While our Lord was hanging on the Cross, He exercised every Divine virtue which the soul of man can exercise. He loved. He prayed. He praised. He gave thanks. He supplicated. He made acts of adoration and resignation. In one word, He performed the most perfect act of worship.
Well, it is just the same in the Mass. It would be the greatest mistake to think of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Mass as a sort of dead offering. It is living, and offered by the living Christ. Christ is the Priest of the Mass as well as the victim. It is Christ who celebrates the Mass, and He celebrates it with a warm and living Heart, the same Heart with which He worshipped the Father on Mount Calvary. It is this that makes the Mass what it is. If it were not for this, the Mass would be a carnal sacrifice, infinitely superior, indeed, to those of the Old Law, but of the same order. It is this which makes the Sacrifice of the Mass a reasonable service, a Spiritual Sacrifice.
And now you are prepared to understand my assertion that the Mass supplies the want of the human soul for an adequate mode of approaching God. As a creature before its Creator, you are oppressed with your own inability to worship Him worthily. Do you want a better worship than that which His Eternal Son offers? In the Mass, the Son of God in His Human Nature worships the Father for us. He prays for us; asks pardon for us; gives thanks for us; adores for us. As He is perfect man, He expresses every human feeling; as He is perfect God, His utterances have a complete perfection, an infinite acceptableness. Thus, when we offer Mass, we worship the Father with Christ's worship. It seems to me that the Catholic can have a certain kind of pride in this. He may say, "I know I am weak and as nothing before God, yet I possess a treasure that is worthy to offer Him, I have a prayer to present to Him all-perfect and all-powerful, the prayer of His Only-Begotten Son in whom He is well pleased."
Nor is this all. Christ worships the Father for us in the Mass, not to excuse us from worshipping, but to help us to worship. You remember how, the night before our Saviour died, He took with Him Peter and James and John, and going into the garden of Gethsemane, He said to them, "Tarry ye here, while I go and pray yonder." And how, being removed from them about a stone's cast, He began to pray very earnestly, so that He was in an agony, and the drops of blood fell from His body to the ground; and how He went to them from time to time to urge them to watch and pray along with Him. The weight of all human sorrows was then upon His soul. He was presenting the necessities of the whole human race to His Father, but He would have the apostles, weary as they were, borne down by suffering and fatigue, to join their feeble prayers with His. So, in the Holy Mass, He is withdrawn from us a little distance, making intercessions for us with groanings which cannot be uttered, and He would have us kneel about the temple aisles, adding our poor prayers to His. Our prayers, by being united to His, obtain not only a higher acceptance, but a higher significance. Our obscure aspirations He interprets. What we know not how to ask for, or even to think of, He supplies. What we ask for in broken accents, He puts into glowing words. What we ask for in error and ignorance, He deciphers in wisdom and love. And thus our prayers, as they pass through His Heart, become transfigured and divine.
Oh, what a gift is the Holy Mass! How full an utterance has Humanity found therein for all its woes, its aspirations, its hopes, its affections! How completely is the distance bridged over that separated the creature and the Creator! It was to the Mass that our Lord alluded in His conversation with the woman of Samaria. You remember the incident. The Samaritans were a schismatical sect. They had separated from the Jews, had built a temple on Mount Gerazin, in opposition to the temple of the Jews at Jerusalem, and there they offered sacrifices. Now, this Samaritan woman, when our Lord had entered into conversation with her, put to Him the question which was then in controversy. Which was the right temple? Which was the acceptable sacrifice? Which was the place where men ought to worship—Mount Gerazin; or Mount Sion? And how does our Lord answer her? "Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem adore the Father. The hour cometh and now is, when the true worshipper shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth." [Footnote 235]
[Footnote 235: St. John iv. 22, 23.]