The Latin Mass Explained

Rev. Msgr. George J. Moorman

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781618909008
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Everything needed to understand and appreciate the Traditional Latin Mass. Fr. George Moorman. Extremely informative, yet very easy to read! Explains, prayer by prayer, what happens at the Latin Mass and why. Answers all your questions about the Mass: why Latin is used, silence, bells, specific colors, etc., and how we participate. Ties in beautifully with Pope Benedict XVI's motu proprio opening the door to the universal celebration of the Latin Mass.

PART ONE

The Teaching of the Church On the Sacrifice Of the Mass

Chapter 1

The Nature of Sacrifice

The Significance of Sacrifice

When we speak of the Mass we usually associate it with Sacrifice and speak of it as the Sacrifice of the Mass.

The word sacrifice is derived from the two Latin words, sacer, meaning “sacred,” and facere, “to make.” The words “to sacrifice,” as quite commonly used, mean to offer something valuable to a person as a token of affection for, or dependence on, that person. If a father gives all he has to enable his children to receive a good education, and himself lives in straitened circumstances, he is said to make a great sacrifice for his children. When a soldier leaves home and country to battle for the defense of his country at the risk of his life and limb, he is said to sacrifice himself for his country. The young missionary who leaves his native land and the comforts of home to preach the Gospel in foreign lands to hostile people is spoken of as making a great sacrifice. And rightly so, for when wealth and life and that which we hold dear are given for a noble purpose, they are rendered sacred.

In this same sense our offerings made to God may be called sacrifices. The poor widow who, out of love for God, cast into the treasury her last mite, made a great sacrifice for God’s sake.

It is man’s duty to honor his fellow men. Some among them—for example, parents, teachers and superiors—must be honored in a special manner. This honor may be shown interiorly by respecting them, thinking well of them; but these sentiments are given outward expression—for example, by saluting them, speaking well of them—and thus we show them exterior honor. But when we wish to honor a person in a particular manner we offer him a gift, or make him a present. Thus, in the days of feudalism, when the lord visited his domains, the inhabitants offered him presents in order to testify that they acknowledged him as their master. They honored him as their lord.

But God is our Supreme Lord. We belong to Him with body and soul. We are subject to Him in all things. Hence, we must give greater honor to God than to all men. We honor God interiorly by thinking reverently of Him, by submitting ourselves to Him. We honor God exteriorly by showing our reverence and submission outwardly, for example, by words, prayers, etc. If we show respect even toward men not only by word, but especially by visible gifts, how much more should we also honor by gifts God, Who is the Author of our being, to Whom belong Heaven and earth and all things!

Sacrifice as an Act of Divine Worship

There is, however, a wide difference in the manner in which we offer a gift to man and to God. By offering gifts to men, we do not pay them the same honor which we pay to God. When we offer God a gift, we recognize Him as our Supreme Master, to Whom we belong entirely; we do Him the greatest honor—we adore Him. The gifts which we offer to men are simply presented, but the gifts which we offer to God are destroyed. The destruction of the object renders its recovery impossible.

When, of old, the Jews offered a lamb, they brought it to the Temple; then it was slaughtered by the priest, the blood was spilled, and the dead animal was burned. If the offerer had merely given the lamb, he would have declared only: “The lamb belongs to God; and not only the lamb, but all that I possess, I have from God, and I would give it to Him if He desired it.” By the killing and burning of the lamb another sentiment is expressed: “God is Master over the life and death of this lamb, over the life and death of all creatures, and also over my life. I ought, properly speaking, to give up my life to God; but as God does not demand this, I now give Him, instead of my life, the life of this lamb, and thus show that I am ready, if He so desires, to give up also my life for Him.”

As the gifts, or sacrifices, which we offer to God confer the highest honor and are signs of adoration, such sacrifices can be offered only to God.

Religious Sacrifice Honors God as God

What, then, is a sacrifice in the sense of divine worship? A sacrifice is that highest act of religion in which a duly authorized person offers to God some sensible* thing which is visibly immolated,** either physically or mystically, in acknowledgment of God’s dominion over all things and of our total dependence on Him.

He who sacrifices is called a priest; the sensible thing which is sacrificed is called the victim; the place where it is sacrificed is the altar. These four—priest, victim, altar, and sacrifice—are inseparable. Each one of them calls for the others.

The intention of a sacrifice may be to give honor to God, to give thanks to Him, to ask a favor, or to make atonement. The offering of a sacrifice gives outward expression to the sentiments of the heart. The man who has a due knowledge of God will be filled with sentiments of respect, of gratitude, of confidence, and of contrition. Since it is part of man’s nature to manifest outwardly what he feels inwardly, he will give expression to these sentiments by the offering of some object that he values. If he who offers a sacrifice has no other purpose than to honor God, we call this a sacrifice of praise. But if, besides this object, he has the particular intention to thank God, he offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving. When the offerer wishes anything particular from God, he offers a sacrifice of petition. If he wishes to pacify God, Whom he has offended by sin, he offers a sacrifice of atonement.

The man who believes in God understands perfectly that he is bound in conscience to spend his life in serving God, nay, that God is worthy even to be honored by the sacrifice of his life. Man gives expression to these sentiments of the heart by offering sacrifice. For the sacrifice of his own life, he substitutes the offering of other sensible objects. By destroying or otherwise changing them, he acknowledges by this destruction or change of sensible things that God is Sovereign Master of life and death; he states that, were God to require it, he would be willing even to sacrifice his own life in order thus to render Him an honor and homage of which He alone is worthy.

Sacrifice Answers the Craving of Human Nature

Sacrifice is the highest form of religious worship. It is the outward expression of man’s entire dependence upon God. This absolute dependence of man upon his Creator is expressed in the destruction, or change, of the thing offered. Without this destruction, or change, it would seem that man did not fittingly express his interior acknowledgement that God was the Sovereign Master of life and death and, as such, worthy even of being honored by the sacrifice of man’s life, were He to require it.

Man instinctively manifests his inward feelings by words and actions. The child, already at a tender age, shows its attachment and affection for its mother by outward signs. The highest, holiest, noblest and strongest sentiments of the soul conscious of its relations to God are those of the supreme adoration due to Him. Now the only outward sign which represents these sentiments of itself is sacrifice. Every other outward rite or act of religion may of itself be used to manifest the lower reverence paid to creatures as well as the high worship which is God’s inalienable right. We may bow, kneel, prostrate ourselves before creatures, as the subject in the Orient does before the monarch’s throne. We may burn incense, as did the Jewish priests before the ark of the covenant, or utter “the harmony of sweet sounds” in honor of the Saints and Angels. Take away sacrifice, and religious worship has no outward sign which by itself expresses those high sentiments toward the Ruler of the Universe which are the most obligatory on mankind.

Chapter 2

Sacrifice Before the Time of Christ

Sacrifice in the Patriarchal Age

It is natural for man to believe in a Supreme Being. It is also natural for him to give expression to the sentiments entertained toward the Ruler of the Universe. Hence we find that the custom of offering sacrifice to the Deity is as old as the human race. On the initial page of history we read how Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam, offered sacrifices to the Lord: the one offering the fruits of the field, the other immolating the firstlings of the flock. So also, when the waters of the Deluge had subsided and Noe stepped forth from the ark, his first act was to offer holocausts to God in thanksgiving for his own and his family’s preservation. Sacrifices were offered by Abraham, Job, Melchisedech and all religious-minded men who lived in the Patriarchal age before the law of God was promulgated on Mt. Sinai.

Sacrifice among the Pagans

The Gentile nations themselves, “seated in the valley and shade of death,” did not lose every ray of the primal revelations and usages. With the notion of a Supreme Being, they preserved universally the practice of sacrifice, a fact which goes far to show that sacrifice was according to the heart of man’s rational nature. Among all tribes and nations of whom history has left us any record, we find the two mysterious institutions, sacrifice and priesthood. This is so universally true that the Greek historian Plutarch, who lived in the second century before Christ, did not hesitate to say: “You may find cities without walls, without literature, and without the arts and sciences of civilized life, but you will never find a city without priests and altars, or which does not have sacrifices offered to the gods.”

There is in man a religious instinct by reason of which he reaches out spontaneously in thought and affection to the God Who made him. There is also within man a natural tendency to express his religious sentiments by the sacrifice of something that is dear to him and thus show outwardly his total dependence on the Author of his being.

Sacrifice, therefore, was even under the Law of Nature, and among the Patriarchs, from the beginning of the world, the essential form of religion. That these sacrifices, when offered with the proper dispositions of the heart, were agreeable to the Almighty, we may gather from Holy Scripture, which tells us that “the Lord had respect to the offerings of Abel.” (Gen. 4:4). From the very fact that God showed His pleasure in such sacrifices, we are naturally led to believe that He Himself had taught men, even from the beginning, to worship Him in this manner. However, this original revelation concerning sacrifice, traces of which are found among all nations, became very much corrupted in the course of time. In order, therefore, to teach men how to worship Him properly, God chose a particular people to whom He gave express and minute directions about the sacrifices that they were to offer.

Sacrifice among the Chosen People

This chosen people was the Jewish nation. When Jahweh manifested Himself amid thunder and lightning on Mt. Sinai and delivered to Moses the written law engraved on tablets of stone, He also prescribed the sacrifices which He was pleased to accept from the people of His choice. (Num. 28). Out of this nation God chose a particular family—that of Aaron—to offer these sacrifices. These sacrifices were of various kinds. In some the victim was only partially consumed by fire, in others, entirely.

God Himself prescribed most minutely all the rites and ceremonies to be observed in that most solemn act of public worship. (Lev. 1 ff.). Sacrifice was not only the essential worship of the entire nation, it was also the essential worship of each individual. Whenever an Israelite committed a sin he was bound by the law of God to confess that sin and to offer sacrifice. (Lev. 4). The sinner led to the priest the animal destined for sacrifice. He then laid his hand upon the head of the victim, in order to acknowledge before God that this innocent animal was intended to bear his sins and to die in his place. The animal was then slain by the priest, and its blood was poured round about the altar. By this the sinner acknowledged that God was worthy to be honored by the sacrifice of his own life, especially after having offended Him so grievo...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Byline
• Foreword
• Author’s Introduction
• Contents
• Half Title
• PART ONE: The Teaching of the Church on the Sacrifice of the Mass
• PART TWO: The Name, Language and Things Necessary For the Celebration of Mass
• PART THREE: The Prayers and Ceremonies of the Mass
• About the Author
• Notes