Why We Go

Even if I am late, do not close your door. I have come to knock. To one who seeks you in weeping, open the door, merciful Lord; receive me in your dwelling, give me the bread of the Kingdom. (Ambrosian Liturgy for Holy Week)

For those of us who manage to get to Mass at least once a week, not infrequently arriving moments before the sound of the opening hymn, the distance between car and church is only a parking lot away, even less if you’re lucky enough to be dropped off a couple feet from the door. It is no great spatial challenge, in other words, to navigate the short distance. Nor is the issue of time a particular problem, unless, of course, having slept in you find yourself showing up so late you wonder if it was worthwhile going in the first place.    

Still, most of us do go, thinking it sufficiently worthwhile to make the sacrifice. Week after week, in fact, we put in the time, dutifully finding the nearest pew where, for the space of an hour or so, we stand, sit, or kneel alongside hundreds of other similarly situated members of Christ’s Body. 

But what is it that we think we’re doing there? Why have we come? Are we aware that during the brief time we spend filling that space, we’ve actually taken leave of this world, entering upon another world far beyond the parking lot? That we’ve been swept utterly away from the workaday world we know, summoned across the threshold of time and space, in order that we may be ushered into the very presence of God Himself? “Suddenly,” reports Josef Pieper in his little book In Tune with the World, “the walls of the solid here and now are burst asunder and the everyday realm of existence is thrown open to Eternity.” 

How is that possible? Where is the point of entry into that higher life? How does one transition from time into eternity? I mean, without actually being dead first? Does that even make sense, biologically speaking? 

And yet, if one were to grant the possibility of such a transition, then certainly it would follow that the essence of what happens at Mass does not take place in time at all but beyond time, in a dimension totally transcendent to all that we imagine a time-bound world to be. Within that sacred and sequestered space, earthly cares and concerns melt happily away, having put on the face, the very sheen of eternity. “To us who live here,” St. Athanasius tells us, referencing a time and a place transfigured by the grace of Jesus Christ, “our festivals are an unobstructed passage to that life.”   

How seldom we think of Holy Mass in those terms! Too often we approach the matter as a duty to be discharged, not as a divinization waiting to happen. Which, come to think of it, really hasn’t got a lot to do with us anyway. It certainly isn’t about how good we think we are. The reason Protestants, for instance, go to church, to paraphrase a line from Msgr. Ronald Knox, is because they think they’re good enough to go, while Catholics, already knowing they’re not good enough, go in the hope that they just might get a little bit better. But, again, it’s not finally about us. 

“When the liturgy is rightly regarded,” writes Romano Guardini, 

it cannot be said to have a purpose, because it does not exist for the sake of humanity, but for the sake of God. In the liturgy man is no longer concerned with himself; his gaze is directed towards God. In it man is not so much intended to edify himself as to contemplate God’s majesty. 

The Mass, therefore, is less an exercise in moralism than an immersion in Mystery. Its aim is not didactic, but dramatic. If it were otherwise would not our sermons sound better? Do not look for self-improvement, then, look rather to God, on whom all honor and glory rest. And there at the heart of it stands the cosmic drama of a God who dies in order that, by rising, He may raise us up with Him.

So, where and when does all this begin? It begins the moment when, leaving behind the bustle and distraction of the parking lot, we walk through that door into another world. And there, signified by the lighted sanctuary lamp, we find God amid the silence and the song of divine worship. It is there that we encounter Christ the High Priest offering the perfect sacrifice of Himself to the Father for the world’s salvation. “In the liturgy the absolutely Other takes place,” writes Joseph Ratzinger in The Feast of Faith, “the absolutely Other comes among us.” And citing a profound commentary on the Song of Songs by St. Gregory of Nyssa, he describes man, 

as the creature who wants to break out of the prison of finitude, out of the closed confines of his ego and of this entire world. And it is true: this world is too small for man, even if he can fly to the moon, or one day perhaps to Mars. He yearns for the Other, the totally Other, that which is beyond his reach. Behind this is the longing to conquer death. In all their celebrations, men have always searched for that life which is greater than death. Man’s appetite for joy, the ultimate quest for which he wanders restlessly from place to place, only makes sense if it can face the question of death. Eucharist means the Lord’s Resurrection gives us this joy which no one else can. So it is not enough to describe the Eucharist as the community meal. It cost the Lord his life, and only at this price can we enjoy the gift of the Resurrection.

Here is the true and unending Mass of the angels and saints, the most sublime artistry of all, beckoning us to enter into the celestial liturgy itself. “That is its true greatness,” declared Ratzinger when, as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he sat down with Peter Seewald for a wide-ranging conversation, “that heaven is torn open here, and we are incorporated in the great chorus of praise.                             

That is why the Preface to the Mass ends with these words: With all the choirs of angels in heaven, we join in singing. And we know that we are not alone, that we are joining in, that the barrier between earth and heaven has truly been torn open.

What we most need now, and why it is we go to Mass in the hope of attaining it, is to see and to touch that saving presence, giving witness by our own poor presence to the joy and thanksgiving awakened by contact with the living God—even if we show up but once a week, arriving a bit late each time we go.