How Do I Pre­pare for Mass? 

A few of us are say­ing, “I pre­pare by get­ting my fam­i­ly to church, with the least amount of fight­ing.” All of us have, at one time or anoth­er, had the expe­ri­ence of being there at the begin­ning of Mass and feel­ing many miles away. It can seem that we are total­ly dis­tract­ed by every­thing, any­thing going on around us, and by a long list of things, emo­tions, mem­o­ries, that find their way into our con­scious­ness the minute Mass starts.

This very com­mon expe­ri­ence offers us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reflect upon what we can do to make our expe­ri­ence of Mass much rich­er, enjoy­able, and help­ful for our faith life.

It starts with an atti­tude
If I think about going to Mass mere­ly as “ful­fill­ing my Sun­day oblig­a­tion,” I’ve already low­ered the bar ter­ri­bly to begin with. The Church - the whole Peo­ple of God - asks us to come togeth­er to give thanks and praise to God and because the Mass makes us who we are as Church. The Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil’s Con­sti­tu­tion on the Sacred Litur­gy tells us that the Eucharist (which means “Thanks­giv­ing”) is the “source and the sum­mit” of our faith life. Our faith life comes from the litur­gy and when we cel­e­brate the litur­gy well, that cel­e­bra­tion is the best expres­sion of our faith life. The Con­sti­tu­tion sought to renew the litur­gy so that we might all have “ful­ly con­scious and active par­tic­i­pa­tion” in it. How dif­fer­ent this vision is from “attend­ing Mass”!

We can think about prepar­ing for the litur­gy the way we’d pre­pare for any­thing we want to par­tic­i­pate in ful­ly. If we are going to a new movie that is out, we might read sev­er­al reviews and get con­nect­ed with the buzz about the movie. If we are going to sport­ing event, it always helps our involve­ment if we stay up to date with the teams and know some­thing about the play­ers and some of the team stats. If we are going to a com­mit­tee meet­ing or a neigh­bor­hood orga­ni­za­tion gath­er­ing, we’d typ­i­cal­ly get our­selves ready to know the issues and be ready to par­tic­i­pate in the event.

The trou­ble is with the Mass is that we don’t tend to think about our gen­uine par­tic­i­pa­tion in it. We can have a lot of expe­ri­ence of not “get­ting any­thing out of it,” when we don’t pre­pare to be engaged in the actions of the litur­gy and give our­selves to them. So, we are going to briefly reflect on some pos­si­bil­i­ties for doing just that.

It starts at home
Think­ing of the Eucharist as a cel­e­bra­tion for which we need to be ful­ly con­scious and in which we will active­ly par­tic­i­pate starts with know­ing what we will be cel­e­brat­ing. If we’re going to an eth­nic fes­ti­val, we have a dif­fer­ent inte­ri­or sense, depend­ing upon what we’re going to. If we’re going to an Irish­fest cel­e­bra­tion, and we’re Irish, all kinds of things will align our spir­its with that cel­e­bra­tion. We might tell our chil­dren some fam­i­ly sto­ries and we will have mem­o­ries to recount of past cel­e­bra­tions. If we are going to a Cin­co de Mayo cel­e­bra­tion, in the Unit­ed States - com­mem­o­rat­ing the vic­to­ry of Mex­i­co over the French at the begin­ning of the Amer­i­can Civ­il War - and our fam­i­ly is not very famil­iar with the his­to­ry of this cel­e­bra­tion and what it means for the Mex­i­­can-Amer­i­­can com­mu­ni­ties in the U.S., we will look up this infor­ma­tion and share it with our fam­i­ly so that we are ready to enter into the cel­e­bra­tion. In both exam­ples, know­ing the cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal back­ground of the cel­e­bra­tion helps so much to enjoy the sym­bol­ism and take part in it more fully.

What’s going on with this litur­gy and how do I find out?
Often the pre­vi­ous week’s parish bul­letin will help us know what the next Sun­day is all about. In addi­tion, there are web sites, like our Online Min­istries site, which pro­vide reflec­tions, a Week­ly Guide, and spe­cial sea­son­al helps, to get to know what is going on, as well as helps to under­stand the Litur­gi­cal Year. Grad­u­al­ly, we will grow in a sense of the rhythms and the con­text of the whole year and we won’t want to miss what is com­ing up in the weeks ahead. And, we we do ful­ly par­tic­i­pate, the rela­tion­ship between the litur­gy and our lives grows.

Is this a Sun­day of Advent or Lent? Is it a spe­cial solem­inty or feast - like the Holy Trin­i­ty or Christ the King? Is it one of the Sun­days of Ordi­nary Time? Even­tu­al­ly, we will get to know how these sea­sons work and how the read­ings work in those seasons.

Read­ing the Col­lect or open­ing prayer of the Sun­day
After the intro­duc­to­ry rites at Mass, the Priest will invite us all to pray, by say­ing “Let us pray.” He includes a bit of silence for us to do that. Often, we aren’t ready to pray, so we stand there in silence or watch the serv­er fetch the book for the priest to lead us in prayer. In actu­al­i­ty, as the name of the prayer implies, the Priest’s prayer “col­lects” or “gath­ers” our prayer in this prayer he says. We’d make two sug­ges­tions for our prepa­ra­tion for Mass on Sunday.

One is, as I’m get­ting dressed or get­ting ready to go to Mass, we can ask our­selves, in effect, “What do I want to pray for when the Priest invites us to pray?” The point of the ques­tion is not to list all the peti­tions which might be on my mind - from the health of my loved ones to world peace. What is it that is form­ing in my heart as a gen­uine desire for God to give me dur­ing this Mass? If I have no desire, no expec­ta­tion com­ing to the litur­gy, my chances of get­ting some­thing from it are less­ened. We might, for exam­ple, say, “I’m going to ask the Lord, in that brief moment when the Priest invites me to pray, to say some­thing like, ‘Lord, let me pay atten­tion today and let me par­tic­i­pate more ful­ly in the way I engage in the read­ings, the homi­ly, the prepa­ra­tion of the gifts, in my respons­es, in my singing, in the devo­tion with which I receive Holy Com­mu­nion, and in my sense of leav­ing Mass with a sense of Mis­sion.’ ” That’s a lot to ask, but as time goes on, if we devel­op this habit, we will focus these requests and be com­fort­able know­ing what to do when we are invit­ed to pray.

The sec­ond oppor­tu­ni­ty we have is to read the Col­lect for this Sun­day’s Mass, so that we know how the Priest will col­lect our prayers and how the Church frames the prayer for this day and week. This Col­lect prayer can be found in a Missal or a paper missalette. The upcom­ing Col­lects can be found at a link on our Pray­ing Ordi­nary Time home page and with a link on the Week­ly Guide for Dai­ly Prayer page each week.

Read­ing the read­ings in advance
When we have read the read­ings in advance - with a missalette or online on a site like ours - we know what cel­e­bra­tion we are going to. First of all, it helps us hear them, but know­ing in advance what we are lis­ten­ing for. It also helps us see the con­nec­tion between them. For most of the Sun­days of Ordi­nary Time, for exam­ple, the Gospel is tak­en from Matthew, Mark or Luke - read in con­sec­u­tive years - pret­ty much, one sto­ry after anoth­er through­out the gospel. The First Read­ing, tak­en from the Hebrew Scrip­tures, is cho­sen on those Sun­days to con­nect with the Gospel - either by theme or mes­sage - prepar­ing us to hear the Gospel. The Respon­so­r­i­al Psalm allows us to cel­e­brate some­thing of the mes­sage of the First Read­ing. The Sec­ond Read­ing, tak­en from one of the let­ters of the Apos­tles or from the Acts of the Apos­tles, in not direct­ly con­nect­ed with either the First Read­ing or the Gospel. It is, for our nour­ish­ment, a pret­ty con­tin­u­ous read­ing - from week to week - through the let­ters of ear­ly Church.

As we read the read­ings - and this does­n’t take very long and we don’t have to wait until Sun­day morn­ing to do it - we can begin to till the soil of our hearts by ask­ing our­selves, “What is the Good News here for me, for us?” We can then ask, “What is the chal­lenge here for me, for us?” Final­ly, we can ask, “How will this mes­sage help me cel­e­brate at the table of the Lord this Sun­day?” As we do this, week after week, it becomes eas­i­er and rich­er for our celebration.

Arriv­ing is part of the jour­ney
If we go to the church, con­scious­ly aware that we are being drawn there by the Holy Spir­it, and if we have a sense that we are approach­ing some­thing very spe­cial and impact­ful on our lives, we can pre­pare our­selves and our fam­i­ly to enter the church in this spir­it. It is dif­fer­ent from enter­ing a muse­um or a movie the­ater. We are enter­ing the house of God in which we become God’s Peo­ple, giv­ing God thanks and praise for God’s tremen­dous love and for the nour­ish­ment we are about to receive.

Holy Water
The first sym­bol which greets us at the door is water which has been blessed. When we dip our hand in the water and sign our­selves with it, we can expe­ri­ence a sense that we are enter­ing this church, re-con­nec­t­ing with our iden­ti­ty as Bap­tised into Jesus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion. If we do this inten­tion­al­ly, it adds mean­ing to our jour­ney into the celebration.

Gen­u­flect­ing
It is a rare and spe­cial rit­u­al we do next. When we approach our pew or seats, we look up at the place where the Eucharist is reserved - usu­al­ly sig­ni­fied by a red vig­il lamp - and we gen­u­flect, rec­og­niz­ing that we are before our God and Sav­ior. If we real­ly let that ges­ture have that lev­el of mean­ing, we will do it con­scious­ly, slow­ly and mean­ing­ful­ly. We can also say, “Lord, thank you for your Spir­it’s draw­ing me here today. Thank you for the love we are about to cel­e­brate togeth­er.” The Eucharist is there as a bridge between cel­e­bra­tions of the Eucharist - the pres­ence of our Lord in our midst, con­nect­ing the last Eucharist with this one. And, we reserve the Eucharist so that we can bring this sacra­ment of com­mu­nion to our broth­ers and sis­ters who are sick or dying.

A few moments before the actions begin
Just like all for­mal prayer, it is real­ly impor­tant to ask for the grace we desire dur­ing this Eucharist. We have lots of things to ask for. We know peo­ple who are sick. We may be hav­ing finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties. Our mar­riages may be strained. We might be heart sick about strug­gles our adult chil­dren are hav­ing. We have many needs. Our focus at this moment is to ask for the grace we need dur­ing this next hour, at this Eucharist. We might pray, “Lord, let me enter into this cel­e­bra­tion of your love for me. I know that if I let you love me and give me your Good News, and its chal­lenge, and if I let you fill me with your life-giv­ing Body and Blood, I will have deep­er peace and courage, hope and a sense of mis­sion to return to my every­day life, in your Spirit.”

We are now pre­pared to enter into and par­tic­i­pate in this Mass.