Sacrifice, Suffrages, and “This Mass Is Offered for….”

“This Mass is offered for….”

How many times do Catholics hear that ritual phrase sometime before or at the start of Mass? It typically announces the intention for the Mass, usually for “the repose of the soul of….”

The problem with ritual phrases is that they sometimes become white noise: routine enough to be expected without notice but not thought about too often.

I’ve written on this question before, asking whether a new generation, raised with often less of a catechetical exposure to Eucharist as sacrifice, really understands what “to offer Mass” means. To what extent might the focus on the horizontal—on the Church as “constituted” at Mass—blur the focus on the vertical: the offering as renewal of “the covenant in His Blood?”

How is that perspective further blurred by what I call “eschatological deflation,” that is, the reduction of the “Four Last Things” to two: death and Heaven? If we rarely, if ever, talk about judgment and purgatory (much less Hell) then why would we expect Catholics raised in such a milieu to find anything really necessary about suffrages?

I was recently struck by a twist on the question of what it means that “Mass is offered for” X. Traditional Catholics probably think of the question in terms as whether “this Mass is offered for” means anything to the average Catholic in terms of what the priest is doing. I want to expand it more explicitly: Does it mean anything in terms of what they—the Catholics in the pews—are doing?

Vatican II established consciously “full and active participation” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 14, 41) as the norm for all Catholics in the liturgy. That was the justification for all manner of changes to the liturgy and its celebration, Conciliarly expected or not. So, let’s take it at its word.

When “this Mass is offered for…” is announced, what does a contemporary Catholic understand and how is he to respond, given his expected consciously full and active participation in the liturgy?

How does he, as a member of the common priesthood of the faithful, even offer, even take part liturgically in a full and active way, absent some awareness of “sacrifice”? And does he grasp its real significance, given a de facto attenuated eschatology?

These are not rhetorical questions. I remember once, just before Confirmation, the priest giving me a penance of “offer Mass” that Sunday for such and such an intention. I had no idea what he was talking about and, therefore, how to perform my penance. He explained about forming an “intention,”—i.e., that I was asking God in this Mass to bless X and help him through Jesus’ offering of His Body and Blood. 

As a child, I understood it to mean I should pray that God “use” this Mass for that intention and, therefore, be as attentive and focused on the Mass as I could be. I suspect some people, when they hear “this Mass is offered for,” make at least a virtual intention to include it in their prayers, especially if the Mass intention is repeated during the Prayer of the Faithful.

That was how in 1970 this ten-year-old understood what the priest told me to do—and how I think most adults did (at least that’s what my father told me), too.  

But I raise the question today because, as I said, two elements of the theology of the Eucharist were more prominent back then than today: the idea that Mass is a “sacrifice” and the importance of suffrages for the dead.

I’d be curious to know if there’s an age breakdown among Catholics who still request Mass intentions—specifically, whether it skews toward the older. If so, does that say something about today’s “popular” understanding of the Eucharist as sacrifice?

If the post-Vatican II Catholic is to fully, actively, and consciously participate in the Eucharistic liturgy, what is his responsibility vis-à-vis the “intention” of the Mass?  Presumably, it’s not “just” the priest’s job while he prays for his own intentions? That would be clericalism by slough off. But fully and actively to participate in the Eucharistic liturgy for the intention of X seems to presuppose some basic understanding of sacrifice: how what we’re doing here and now relates to Christ’s Self-Offering and its application for this particular intention. 

If that’s not understood alongside some rudimentary concept of suffrages, then do we not need further Eucharistic renewal? After all, it seems the average Catholic who is supposed to be consciously participating in the Mass may not really understand what he’s doing. 

After all, if the common priesthood of the faithful is also in some sense offering Mass, he needs at least in roughest outline to know what he is doing. His “offering” cannot simply mean his presence—because Vatican II seemed to demand more than a “check-in” at the “essential” parts of Mass. His “offering” is a share in Christ’s priesthood, not merely the gift of himself or his presence in church because, as the Preface reminds us, God “has no need of our praise, our desire to thank [Him] is itself [His] gift.” That offering cannot be primarily about himself because the Christian message is getting beyond one’s self. It cannot even be just about this “community” because the ecclesial community extends, in space and time, far beyond the people assembled at St. Lawrence in Boston this Sunday morning at 11:15. 

Some liturgists might try to tackle this question by downplaying the very idea of Mass “for the intention of,” dismissing it as a too-exclusively individualistic approach to the communal cosmic liturgy. Such thinking (as well as fewer priests) often undergirds the abuse of “communal intentions” (for which individual stipends are received) for Mass.  Yes, Christ’s infinite merits extend to intentions beyond the one made explicit for this Mass. But our tradition also recognizes the practice of praying explicitly for a specific intention. That concept should not be lost.

Even on Vatican II’s own terms for liturgical participation—full and active—the contemporary Catholic seems handicapped unless he recovers two notions that have unfortunately fallen into eclipse: that of Eucharist as sacrifice and of suffrages. Otherwise, we talk about “offering” the Mass without really understanding what we are talking about.