In today’s first reading from the book of Nehemiah we see that the people of Israel gathered for worship and to hear the words of Ezra the priest. The reading tells us that everyone is called, men, women, and children. Certain rituals and movements occur, i.e. Ezra stands on a wooden platform, the people fall prostrate in worship, etc. Many Jewish rituals of worship have carried down to our own day; in the very mass we celebrate here and now. When I reflected on today’s first reading, I thought; why not explain the mass, the first part of it that is, “The Gathering Rites.”
The first pressing and most important question is, “why do we gather in the first place? We gather because it is today that the world is remade, made new again, because Jesus rose on a Sunday, the beginning of a new week, and the beginning of our salvation, known to us in Scripture as the Lord’s Day.
The Gathering rites do not begin when the priest makes the sign of the cross, they actually begin before. They begin as soon as you enter the Narthex. It is there that you are hopefully greeted by our ushers\greeters. It is also there where you need to leave your conversations. This is something that we need to take seriously. When we enter the Church we are entering into the Temple which hold the presence of God, for us it is Jesus in the Tabernacle. Our attention should be towards Jesus when entering the Church and our prayers should also begin if not continue since the time we have left our homes and began heading to the Church.
There are two rituals that we all do as Catholics when we enter the. Upon entering we bless ourselves with holy water. This is not simply something nice or just something to do, rather when we bless ourselves it is a reminder of our baptism, that we share an intimate relationship with the Trinity, a reminder that we are priests, prophets, and kings, coming together as individuals and as a community to offer prayer and worship.
The other thing we do is either genuflect or bow in the presence of the Lord. Genuflecting is an old medieval custom from Europe that was done to show reverence to a king or person of high rank. This custom slowly worked its way into the Church, in our case genuflecting before the King of kings. An older custom going back to the very early Church was a simple bow in the presence of the Lord, now working its way back into custom.
The celebration of the liturgy begins with a processional hymn. We sing our praises to the Lord. You have heard it before, “When we sing we pray twice,” as St. Augustine said. If your singing voice is awful, like mine, then just sing low, and let your voice sort of blend in as best as possible. We also stand at this time, standing means that we are at attention, like a soldier, ready to do his duty.
Next comes the greeting: The priest begins with the sign of the cross and then greeting everyone with, “The Lord be with you”, response “and with your spirit.” This is an ancient biblical greeting as found in the book of Ruth chapter 2 verse 4, “Boaz said to the reapers (of the harvest), ‘The Lord be with You.’” You can see that just about the entire mass has its roots in Scripture and that is why it is odd when non-Catholics, especially Fundamentalists-Evangelicals claim that the mass is not biblical, indeed it is more so than even their own services.
Next, we do an examination of conscience in our penitential rite, “Brothers and Sisters, let us recall to mind our sins and failings and ask the Lord for his mercy and pardon.” Then there is a pause in order to allow everyone time to bring before the Lord their sins and weaknesses. We then ask for forgiveness either by reciting the Confetier or the Kyrie. Then we give Glory to God for His kindness and compassion by either singing or reciting the Gloria, during some Church seasons, i.e. Advent and Lent the Gloria is omitted.
Then we have the Opening prayer, there is a pause here, and rightly so, because this gives us the opportunity to make our individual prayers before the Lord, then while the priest begins the prayer he collects all the prayers offered individually and offers them as one prayer to Almighty God. So at mass we pray individually but also as one, hence the importance of going to mass.
One other thing I would like to discuss is a matter of importance and that is getting here on time. I will end our reflection with a story about Vince Lombardi.
Those of you who do not know who he was, he was one of the greatest NFL coaches ever and he had a work ethic second to none. At his first meeting with the Packers he asked the guys to be ready to go the next morning at 7am, the team’s first practice. The next day, as some of the guys were coming on to the field they saw that part of the team was already practicing. Once everyone arrived, by 7am, Coach Lombardi blew the whistle and called everyone in. He said, “Gentleman many of you were late.” One of the players said, “Coach, we were all here by 7am.” Coach Lombardi responded, “Real champions arrive 15 to 30 minutes early to get in extra practice, like I said, you guys were late.”
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