Transcript

We began reading the early church fathers along with, you know, the, uh, Saint Hippolytus who began unpacking the liturgy.

And even more, Saint Justin Martyr who described what worship was like in the early church back in the middle of the second century, and by then it had already become a permanent fixture.

And so I found myself coming away from my doctoral seminars wondering what, if any, residue might remain of the ancient liturgy of the early church that the fathers described in the Catholic mass.

I'd never gone to a mass, I'd never wanted to go, I'd been told not to go from high school years on because they're re-crucifying Jesus, which of course we're not doing.

You know, but it was a, a blasphemous sacrilege according to Martin Luther and John Calvin.

But when I got a campus bulletin in my mailbox, I remember reading that there would be a weekday mass in a basement chapel at noon.

So I thought to myself, I could skip lunch and go down to the basement like a, an observer with my Bible and a notebook.

And that's what I did.

That day I went down right around noon.

Walking down the steps I remember passing the holy water font, and I was about to dip my fingers.

It was And I don't know why, but Catholic cooties, I, I just was there as a journalist, an observer.

So I sat in the very back pew, you know, expecting maybe a few old nuns but instead, businessmen were coming in for their lunch break, housewives with their kids.

There were some bag ladies from the side streets of Milwaukee dipping their fingers, genuflecting, kneeling, praying, preparing for the holy sacrifice of the mass.

I saw no one who had recognized me, so I stayed.

And when the bell rang and this priest stepped out of the sacristy, everybody stood up except for that lone Protestant in the back pew.

I'm just jotting my observations.

And as I listen to the opening rite, it's exactly what Saint Justin Martyr described.

Then as I listened to the penitential rite and how all the people were asking God for mercy, and the priest was promising, assuring them of divine pardon, it's like a checklist.

And then as they all sat down, the lector got up and began reading from Bible and I was struck by the fact that the first reading was taken from the Old Testament.

In my Bible church, we hadn't had a reading from the Old Testament in at least a year and a half.

And then it was followed by a responsorial psalm.

And by the time we got to the Gospel, I didn't know exactly what to expect, but all of the people stood up except for me.

I wasn't sure why they were.

And then I realized they were standing out of reverence for the Gospel.

And I'm thinking, Why don't we do that?

I mean, we're the Bible Christians.

But when I heard the reading from the Gospel, it struck me as obvious that somebody had strategically planned the readings because the promises in the Old were what Christ was talking about fulfilling in the New.

And as they all sat down, I'm thinking to myself, This is where the early church fathers got it, from the lectionary.

The Old and the New were being read together in the first few centuries.

And then I sat back to hear a homily, and in less than two minutes, the homilist was done.

And I'll be perfectly honest and a little blunt, I was underwhelmed.

I'm like, Are you serious?

Is that the most you can do with those readings?

I was tempted to, you know, offer a little tag team ecumenical preaching, I'll take it from here and show you what the early church fathers would've done.

But thankfully every- for everybody else I didn't give into that temptation.

I just sat back and watched as all the action shifted away from the ambo, or the pulpit as we called it, over to the altar where the priest now stood.

And as I sat forward and I watched, I listened closely because the preface to the Eucharistic prayer followed by the Anaphora once again was a perfect match.

I had seen the checklist of about a dozen correspondences between the early church liturgy the ancient patristics describe and the Catholic mass.

As I'm listening to his prayer, I am hearing not only familiar phrases from their writings but parts from Scripture, especially from the Passover.

And I'm struck by all of this, and then I heard for the first time a Catholic priest pronounce the solemn words of consecration.

And as soon as those words left his lips, This is my body, and he elevated the host, I knew it wasn't bread any longer.

I knew that I knew it was really his body.

By the time he consecrated that chalice and I heard those words and he elevated that chalice, I could literally feel myself drooling with this holy thirst for his precious blood and I'm wondering, What's happening to me?

What's going on here?

And then suddenly a, a few moments later, all of the people around me began to chant as if on cue, Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.

Then they said, Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have the same thing a second time.

Then, Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, grant us peace.

They dropped to their knees.

The priest elevated the host and said a fourth time, Behold the Lamb of God.

And he went on to bless those who were invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb, and suddenly I knew right where I was.

I wasn't simply in a basement chapel for a weekday mass at noon.

I was in the back of the Bible in the Book of Revelation, where in Chapter 19:9 we hear about the marriage supper of the Lamb.

But I also recognized that in the Book of Revelation, Jesus is called many things, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Alpha and Omega.

But the one thing that he's called in that book more than all of the other titles put together practically is Lamb of God, Lamb of God, Lamb of God.

28 texts in 22 chapters and nobody had ever even tried to explain to me, why is that the primary title?

So while everybody else is going forward for Holy Communion, I'm going backwards in my Bible looking down and seeing Lamb of God, Lamb of God, Lamb of God there.

Oh wait, what is that?Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Hosts.

They must have memorized Revelation 4:8 as well, 'cause I had just heard that a few minutes earlier.

And as I'm seeing the, the Trisagion, the Holy, Holy, Holy, the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, I'm realizing that's what the early church fathers also described.

And as I'm turning the pages, I'm looking forward as the people have received and they're coming back, they're kneeling down, they're giving thanks, and I'm seeing there are candles, liturgical vestments, presbyters up there.

Oh, yeah, there are chalices on top of the altar just like there, and then the climax is the marriage supper of the Lamb.

And I never really put that together, but it occurred to me, if there's a marriage supper, who is the bridegroom?

Well, Jesus, of course.

But who is the bride of our Lord?

Well, the Church is.

I always thought the marriage supper of the Lamb was at the end of time.

Here it was at noon in a basement chapel, where Christ was saying to the Church through his priests what I could have said to Kimberly on our wedding night: This is my body which is given up for you.

Only Jesus was communicating that not just to my head, but to my heart.

It's all quiet.

Everybody's kneeling.

I'm looking down on the pages of the Apocalypse, looking up and seeing what has just unfolded before my eyes, trying to figure out, Where am I? In a basement chapel or in the heavenly Jerusalem?

For a Catholic Mass or for the Liturgy of the Angels and Saints?

Because they were the same songs, the Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lamb of God, the Alleluia, the Gloria, the same furniture, the same vestments, the same sacrifice of the Lamb.

It was quiet until the priest stood, and everybody else, and when he was done pronouncing the benediction, he stepped out, the people knelt, they left.

And about 10 minutes later, I was alone in the back pew of the basement chapel, again trying to figure out, Did I go downstairs or did I get whisked up to heaven?

And I'm just sitting there for about an hour, basking in the afterglow of these graces that had come so unexpectedly, asking our Lord, What do I do with this?