by Father Walter Ray Williams

 

Part I

            As you may know, in the spring of 2001, Pope John Paul II promulgated in Latin the Third Standard Edition of the Roman Missal, the book in which are contained the prayers of the Mass.  At present this is being translated into English and other vernacular languages.  Each edition of the Missal has also always contained a kind of instructional introduction called the General Instruction of the Roman Missal.  This, the third edition’s General Instruction, has been translated into English and is available for anyone’s perusal on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: http://www.usccb.org/liturgy/current/revmissalisromanien.htm. 

            The latest General Instruction has a number of liturgical changes – some of which have already been implemented here at St. Mary’s – as well as clarifications and reiterations.  The Parish Council of St. Mary’s and I decided that the best way to bring ourselves up to date would be for me to go through the General Instruction and then point out the changes in the bulletin and at the liturgy of the Mass itself (when necessary).  Nothing really major is in the offing, so there’s no need for us to be bracing ourselves for any big surprises!  And so, there will appear in the bulletin, on a weekly basis, the changes and notices that I come across in my reading of the General Instruction.

            But first a brief discussion concerning the Preamble with some quotations that sort of set the tone of the whole thing and of our own approach, I trust, toward the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  It was during the Passover Meal that Our Lord, on the night He was betrayed, instituted the Mass and the Sacrament of Eucharist.  This Jewish feast of the Passover recalls the night that the Passover Lamb was slain in Egypt so that the last and greatest of the plagues would not touch God’s chosen people; the Hebrews, then, took a spotless, male lamb from their flocks, slew it, roasted it for food and used its blood to mark their doors as a sign that they were God’s people.  Over a thousand years later, just hours before the terrible agony of His scourging and crucifixion by the Romans, Jesus interrupts the celebration of this Passover Meal with the strange action and mysterious words of picking up a piece of bread in His disciples’ presence and saying, “Take, eat; this is my body”; and then He took the cup of wine, saying, “Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  Christ is referring to His Body and Blood that are about to be offered on the Cross.  He is saying, in effect, that He is now transforming the Passover into the Reality of which it always had been a shadow:  Jesus would now become the Lamb of Sacrifice. 

“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” proclaimed John the Baptist some three years earlier at the time of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, now realized so graphically as the Lord hangs upon the Cross, the purest Lamb of Sacrifice.  And the Mass, the Eucharist, is the means Christ Himself instituted that evening in the Upper Room to perpetuate all through time the one Sacrifice of Calvary and all its redeeming, saving power, through the offering of His Body and Blood on the altar at Mass.

            This is the important message of the Preamble of the General Instruction, captured in the following words, “The sacrificial nature of the Mass, solemnly asserted by the Council of Trent in accordance with the Church’s universal tradition, was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council, which offered these significant words about the Mass:  ‘At the Last Supper our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood, by which he would perpetuate the Sacrifice of the Cross throughout the centuries until he should come again, thus entrusting to the Church, his beloved Bride, the memorial of his death and resurrection.’”   This glorious memorial, the Mass, calls for a liturgical setting that is in keeping with the nature of the Mass as it is described above.  And so, the Preamble asserts that the Church has always regarded Jesus’ command to His disciples to go and prepare a large, furnished upper room for His last Passover (and institution of the Mass) as “applying also to herself when she gives directions about the preparation of people’s hearts and minds and of the places, rites, and texts for the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist.”  Remembering, then, how the Church herself has always described the nature of the Mass, how she has always directed the liturgical life of her children, let us all listen carefully to these further instructions from the General Instruction of the Roman Missal as they appear in future parish bulletins.  God bless!