We now come to the Concluding Rites of the Mass, the final elements that bring this great prayer of the Mass to a close.  The General Instruction of the Roman Missal does not give much in the way of explanation of this part of the Mass, only the elements that comprise these rites:

To the Concluding Rites belong the following:

• a) brief announcements, should they be necessary;
• b) the Priest’s Greeting and Blessing, which on certain days and occasions is expanded and expressed by the Prayer over the People or another more solemn formula;
• c) the Dismissal of the people by the Deacon or the Priest, so that each may go back to doing good works, praising and blessing God;
• d) the kissing of the altar by the Priest and the Deacon, followed by a profound bow to the altar by the Priest, the Deacon, and the other ministers.  (n. 90)

Although I could say something about each of these items, let me focus on point c), the Dismissal.  There are four options given by the Roman Missal for the Dismissal, and they all begin with the same word: “Go.”  As the GIRM mentions, our going has the character of being sent “to do good works, praising and blessing God.”  Although the Mass in ended, our giving glory to God has not.  My favorite Dismissal option expressed this beautifully: “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”  Having encountered God’s word and having been nourished by His Body and Blood, we are equipped to go and live the Gospel in our daily lives.  The Mass is not one hour a week, totally separated from our daily lives.  No, the Mass is integral (necessary) to our lives as Catholics.  Here is how Father Timothy Gallagher, OMV, describes it in his book, A Biblical Way of Praying the Mass: The Eucharistic Wisdom of Venerable Bruno Lanteri:

He sends us, Venerable Bruno writes, as apostles. The word “apostle” means exactly this, “one who is sent.” Venerable Bruno sees in Acts 15:26 the portrait of an apostle: Paul and Barnabas are men “who have dedicated their lives to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We are apostles when, in our vocations as husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, in our various professions in the world, and in our life in the Church, we have dedicated our lives to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. When the words “Go forth, the Mass is ended” are proclaimed, we receive the call to exit the church and reenter the world in this way, as apostles. In a very real sense, the end of the Mass is a beginning. 

(p. 86 of Kindle version of book)

This year-long series focusing on trying to pray the Mass better is, very fittingly, also coming to a conclusion.  It has been my great joy to share these reflections with you, reflections which I hope have helped you to enter into this greatest prayer better.  It is my hope that, as we come to the conclusion of these reflections, this will not be an end, but as with the Dismissal at Mass, a beginning.  May it be just the beginning of a journey into a deeper intimacy with Jesus in the most beautiful gift we have as Catholics, the Holy Mass.  If, down the road, we find ourselves losing that fervor for the Mass, falling back into our autopilot ways, not getting much from the Mass, let us take one final piece of advice from our friend, Venerable Bruno Lanteri.  Though these words speak more specifically about our struggles with sin, I think they apply well to our struggles with keeping our hearts focused in prayer at Mass.  He uses his favorite phrase, Nunc coepi, which translated means “Now I begin” or similarly, “Begin again”:

If I should fall, were it even a thousand times, I will not lose courage, I will not be troubled, but I will always say immediately, with peace, Nunc coepi [“Now I Begin.”]  

Father Alford     

Feast Day: June 2^nd 

Emperor Heraclius was in a pickle. He was the emperor of the Byzantine, Eastern, Roman Empire, 610-641 A.D. Constantine, about 300 years before, had declared Constantinople, then called Byzantium, the capital of the entire Roman empire (East and West, which he had reunited after decades of each having their own emperor). In the 600s the empire was again split, so Heraclius was emperor in the East and under attack from Persia. He exhausted his empire trying to repulse that invasion, and then found himself beset by a human tsunami from Arabia. Islam had arisen, and the Byzantine empire was shredded by their attack. Heraclius lost Syria, Armenia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and the Muslim territories were stretching towards Constantinople itself. He needed his people to be unified, but at that time they were anything but. 

The wide variety of peoples under his rule, though in name all Christian, were widely divided in their common faith in Christ. Quick overview: The Church had expended enormous effort in multiple ecumenical councils to clarify what it meant to believe that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Nicaea I, in 325, condemned Arianism and declared that Jesus was “begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father” = Jesus is fully God. Constantinople I, in 381, condemned Apollinarianism and declared that Our Lord has a human body and soul = Jesus is fully human. The Council of Ephesus, in 431, condemned Nestorianism and declared that Jesus is one person, with both a divine nature and a human nature = Jesus is not multiple persons. Chalcedon, in 451, condemned the monophysites, and declared that Jesus’ divine and human natures were distinct, but united; not confused or blended together, but also not divided. 

Heraclius’ problem was that he still had Nestorians in Syria and Mesopotamia believing that Jesus was two persons. And he also had Monophysites on the other extreme in Egypt and Armenia who believed that Jesus’ divinity entirely engulfed his humanity. The emperor wanted to come up with some middle-of-the-road doctrine that would bring everybody back together. He proposed something termed “monoenergism” (which argued that Jesus’ divine nature and human nature had a single energy), though eventually he would promulgate a refined version of this called “monophysitism” in 638, which stated that Jesus’ divine nature and human nature had one will. It allowed him to keep the Nestorians happy (who want to keep Jesus humanity and divinity strongly separated), and the Monophysites happy (who wanted to merge Jesus’ natures together).

The leading bishops of the world fell in behind him. They wanted unity just as much as the next guy and the theological problems raised by a Savior Who does not have a human will seemed small in comparison with the Persians and Muslims threatening everybody’s lives. Even Pope Honorius I weakly went along with Heraclius, avoiding conflict and agreeing that his vocabulary wasn’t absolutely a problem, failing to address the devastating theology underneath it.

And then Pope Severinus I was elected Bishop of Rome and refused to sign Heraclius’ statement. His successors, John IV, Theodore I, and then Martin I all held firm against immense pressure from Heraclius and his successors, Constantine III, Heraclonas, and then Constans II. That final emperor simply told the Pope to stop talking about how many wills Christ had. If he was quiet on the issue, all would be well. But Martin I would not back down. He convened a synod in 649 in Rome, and promulgated its canons as an encyclical, utterly rejecting Monothelitism. The gentle Holy Father was arrested, carried in chains to Constantinople, and the Emperor forced the clergy of Rome to elect as his successor Eugene I. (Martin, it should be said, did acquiesce to Eugene’s election so he was not an antipope. That staunch, exiled Bishop of Rome would die shortly thereafter, the final pope to have been martyred)

Constans had his man on the final, and highest, patriarchy of the Christian world, reputedly someone who would finally agree to his watered-down compromised Christology. The newly elected Pope received a letter from the patriarch of Constantinople which he was asked to sign off on. It was vague, obscure, muddying the theological waters just enough that if you squinted it wasn’t all that heretical. The holy, but wavering pontiff read it out before his clergy and laity at St. John Lateran, and the good people of God in Rome stood up before their Holy Father and said they weren’t going to let him leave until he absolutely rejected it. The common folk could smell the heresy mixed into the verbose document better than he, and they would have none of it. Eugene I faced byzantine delegates and sent them packing. They threatened to roast him alive just as soon as the emperor had things under control back home, though he was saved from this fate by the invasion of Crete by the Muslim armies. He was saved from a worse fate by those good, faithful people of Rome.

Fr. Dominic has found his faith strengthened countless times by good and staunch families and brother priests. Sometimes it is the devotion of someone while receiving Holy Communion that reaffirms my faith in the Eucharist, or when priest-friends have simply reminded me of Christ’s strength when I am trying to go through life under my own effort.

Having taken some time for quiet prayer, after receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, the liturgy brings the Communion Rite to a conclusion with the Prayer after Communion.  This prayer, similar to that of the Opening Collect, though brief in nature, can be a profound prayer to express in words what we desire in our hearts, having just welcomed the Lord anew into ourselves.  The General Instruction of the Roman Missal describes this prayer in this way:

To bring to completion the prayer of the People of God, and also to conclude the whole Communion Rite, the Priest pronounces the Prayer after Communion, in which he prays for the fruits of the mystery just celebrated. (n. 89)

Perhaps the best way to appreciate this prayer is to look at a couple of examples, the first of which I will take from next Sunday’s Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, also known as Corpus Christi.  Here are the words the Church gives us to conclude our prayer on that solemnity, words which I think summarize what we desire every time we receive Holy Communion:

Grant, O Lord, we pray,
that we may delight for all eternity
in that share in your divine life,
which is foreshadowed in the present age
by our reception of your precious Body and Blood.
Who live and reign for ever and ever.

Another example that I find particularly beautiful, and which highlights how this sacrament of charity commits us to greater love of God and neighbor, comes from the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, which will be celebrated the Friday after Corpus Christi.  Here are the words of that prayer:

May this sacrament of charity, O Lord,
make us fervent with the fire of holy love,
so that, drawn always to your Son,
we may learn to see him in our neighbor.
Through Christ our Lord.

In last week’s bulletin article, I encouraged the importance of taking time for silent prayer after receiving the Eucharist.  I provided some examples, but I can also suggest that this Prayer after Communion can also be something we pray personally, before praying it communally, such that having reflected on the words briefly in silence, they will be all the more fruitful when we hear them proclaimed by the celebrant as we bring the Communion Rite to a close.

How beautiful indeed are these prayers that our Mother, the Church gives to us to pray during the Mass!  I want to repeat something I wrote about the Opening Collect, words which I think apply equally as well to the Prayer after Communion.  “In addition to praying with the readings of the Mass as a good way to prepare for Mass, praying with the Prayer after Communion can also be very fruitful, so do not overlook these gems that the Church offers to us as sources of rich reflection and meditation.”

Father Alford     

Bl. Juliana of Liège

First stop: Bolsena, Italy, 1253 AD. A German priest, Peter of Prague, was on his way to Rome. He was almost there, just 60 miles away, and had stopped in that little town to celebrate Mass at a small church dedicated to the martyr St. Christina. The fact was he was on pilgrimage to Rome because he was struggling to believe that the bread and wine became Jesus’ Body and Blood when he spoke the words of consecration. 

It was only a few decades before that the Fourth Lateran Council – among a whole lot of other things – had formally used the word “transubstantiation” to describe the change that happened to the bread and wine at Mass. Of course, even the simplest Christian and dozens of the greatest bishops and fathers of the Church from the earliest days of the Church had believed that when Jesus said “this is my Body”, and when the priest said it, it was true, it happened. But that radical truth is not easy to understand, and so a smattering of theologians over the centuries had tried to rationalize it away, leading to the aforementioned clarification from Lateran IV. In any case, Fr. Peter was no theologian, nor heretic, but as he prayed those perennial words “hoc est enim Corpus Meum” [“this is My Body”], his heart still questioned. 

And then the host began to bleed.

Second stop: Orvieto, Italy, April 27^th, 2015 AD. The bishop of Orvieto, a small city a dozen miles west of Bolsena, was finally receiving the results from a project that experts had been conducting during that entire season of Lent. You see, when Fr. Peter had found his Mass interrupted by the very visible presence of Jesus’ Body and Blood, he had done the sensible thing and humbly gone to the bishop in Orvieto to confess his doubt, and ask what ought to be done with the blood that he dripped from his trembling hands upon the altar and corporal. The bishop, with Pope Urban IV tagging along since he was actually living there at the time, hastened to see the miracle for themselves, and brought it back in great solemnity to the bigger city. Within a year Urban IV would be the first Pope to instate a universal feast day for Holy Roman Church, enlisting St. Thomas Aquinas, to formulate prayers for the Mass and Office of that day, with Tantum Ergo spilling from choir lofts and congregations ever since.

Fast forward 800 years, and Ester Giovacchini, an expert in conservative restoration and ancient fabrics, was concluding her presentation to the modern Bishop of Orvieto, with the results of her microscopic examination of that same corporal. Like his predecessor, his own faith was rekindled. It is not wine stains that spot the ancient square of linen, but plasma and serum of human blood dating back to when Fr. Peter’s shaking hands held that bleeding host. 

But the feast of Corpus Christi predated Lateran IV’s First Canon, Urban IV’s “Transiturus de hoc mundo”, Thomas Aquinas’s “Pange Lingua”, or Peter of Prague’s doubt.

Third stop: Liège, Belgium, 1198 AD. A little girl, Juliana, was orphaned when both her parents died, and so ended up with her sister being raised at the Norbertine convent of Mont-Cornillon. The quiet, bookish, girl loved to read the theology of Augustine and Bernard, but also to care for the sick and lepers – hers was a deep faith, combined with a deep charity. As a young lay woman, she began having visions of the moon, marred by a dark spot, as she prayed to Jesus about its meaning, she came to know that the Church needed to better celebrate the gift of the Blessed Sacrament. Turmoil was all around. In Juliana’s life, a corrupt priest ran her out of town the simple dwelling of a nearby anchoress. But it was that pious woman who convinced Juliana to share her hope with the bishop, to help draft a set of prayers and hymns for such a feast, all of which was also shared with the Archdeacon of Liège, Jacques Pantaléon. 

He went to the Council of Leon I some decades later, impressed Pope Innocent IV, was sent to negotiate various big and important situations in Germany, Jerusalem, and France. And then was elected Pope Urban IV, who found himself on one important afternoon staying with the Bishop of Orvieto.

When St. Thomas Aquinas finished his office for the great feast of Corpus Christi, the first antiphon of vespers for the evening before Corpus Christi – the very first line to be chanted around by every priest and nun and layperson around the Christian world – was not written by the great Dominican. He knew he could do no better than what had been already penned by a little-known pious lay-woman up in Belgium:

Animarum cibus Dei | Food for souls
sapientia nobis | the wisdom of God has offered to us
carnem assumptam proposuit in edulium | for the flesh that He has assumed
ut per cibum humanitatis | so that through the food of humanity
invitaret ad gustum divinitatis | He may invite us to taste of divinity.

– Fr. Dominic can resonate with Peter of Prague. How is it that God would love us so much to become food we can eat … would love me so much as to enter the world in my hands?! Perhaps rather than questioning, we would better to emulate Juliana and simply smile when His Love surpasses our mind’s capacity to understand, and our heart’s capacity to love.