The Mass is the rite of the Holy Eucharist. It is the People of God's principal and most efficacious act of worship and means of salvation.

If we are to appreciate what the Mass means, we should go back into sacred history, clear back to the events of the Exodus. The children of Abraham found themselves sorely oppressed by Pharaoh and his soldiers. Yahweh took pity on His people and raised up a mighty redeemer, Moses, whom He commanded to lead the people out of slavery through the waters of the sea to a new life and freedom on another shore.

The night before this exodus, Yahweh commanded that the people were to gather by households for a special meal. At this meal the father of the household was to place his hands upon the head of a male lamb. Symbolically, the sins of the people would be borne by the lamb. The lamb was to be offered and sacrificed to Yahweh, its blood to be separated from its flesh. The flesh was to be eaten by all present, the blood sprinkled on the doorposts. The blood of the lamb was to be the sign of the covenant of friendship which Yahweh and His people shared. When the angel of death came to wreak the ultimate plague against Egypt, he would pass over the people of the covenant.

We have here then two events which proclaim the union of friendship between Yahweh and His people: an action on the part of Yahweh through His servant Moses (deliverance) and a ritual on the part of the people (sacrifice and paschal meal). These two, the action and the ritual, will be inseparably associated from that time on as the celebration of the friendship covenant. Yahweh's action was once and for all. But it will be renewed and realized down through the ages in the ritual. Indeed Yahweh so stipulated it. When the generations of the people were to ask, why do we carry out this ritual, why do we sacrifice this lamb, eat its flesh and sprinkle its blood, they are to be reminded of their oppression and their deliverance. It is by participating in the paschal meal that they are to celebrate their oneness with the people delivered.

We have here a clear example of what is meant by sacrament. A sacrament is a ritual, often repeated, which calls to the people's mind God's action of loving friendship, and associates the people in that friendship. Jews will see in the paschal meal their identification with a people miraculously redeemed from slavery. But Christians will go far beyond this. They will see the twofold event of the Exodus as the foreshadowing of something even greater.

God's love for us did not stop short with mere deliverance from physical slavery. Indeed, "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son." A new Moses, Jesus Christ, would deliver all mankind from a greater slavery, the slavery of sin and Satan's Dower. Thus, it is no coincidence that on the eve of His own Exodus, when He would go down into the waters of death and rise again to a new life, Our Lord gathered His apostles together to celebrate the paschal meal. Here, at the Last Supper, the Lord would break through into a new dimension of God's love for all His people. "Taking bread He blessed it, and gave it to them and said: 'Take this, all of you, and eat it. This is My body, which will be given up for you.' And after He had supper, taking the chalice of wine, He said: 'Take this all of you, and drink it. For this is the chalice of My blood, which will be shed for you.'"

A new ritual, similar to the old but transcending it, celebrating a new divine action, a Deliverance far beyond the old. A new Victim of sacrifice, far greater than the paschal lamb of old, whose death on the morrow would be proclaimed down through the ages under the species of bread and wine. "Whenever you do this, do it in memory of Me." Whenever the Mass is celebrated, we become His People by identification with Him. No wonder St. Paul could exclaim, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in Me" (Gal 2:20) and why the Lord Himself could say, "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day" (Jn 6:53-54). It is as if He says to us: By this nourishment you shall be who I am, beloved of the Father. With Me shall you go down into the waters of death and rise again. For now you are nailed to the cross with Me and are buried with Me, that you might rise with Me to a new life, a life totally beyond the power and pale of Satan. You have died to sin: you are reborn in Me. You are My People, the People of God.

This, then, is the profound, mystical meaning of the Mass. We Catholics believe in the real presence of the Lord Jesus under the appearances of bread and wine. So the Mass is a ritual which is both identical with, and calls to mind, the Lord's action: His passion, death and resurrection. The only difference between the action and the ritual is that the latter is oft repeated and carried out, down through the ages, in an unbloody, sacramental manner. Being identical with Calvary, it is the Sacrifice of the Lord in which He both acts the priest and suffers as the victim. Being a ritual analogous to the paschal meal of old, it is the gathering of His People into communion for the breaking of bread. In this remarkable way God's action in Christ, locked in as it was to its own place and history, is now made catholic in space and time. Jesus Christ has shared with His Church the power of His priesthood and enabled mortal, sinful men to make Him to be truly present on our feeble altars.

By the separate consecration of bread and wine we proclaim the Lord's death as paschal Victim, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. At holy communion we receive, whether in either species or both together, the living, risen Christ who makes of us Other Christs. The Mass is a ritual and can be celebrated time and time again, all over the world. This makes the redeeming power of Our Lord's body and blood a constant presence among us.

The Mass is the perfect sacrifice to God, the perfect act of worship. It involves perfect adoration, perfect petition, perfect thanksgiving, and perfect reparation for sins. Its fruits are beyond human calculation. It is a gift of divine love beyond explanation. It is a heritage, a treasure that all Catholics should contemplate and cherish.