A Reflection on Why it is Hard to Understand the Mass

Why it is hard for any youth to get interested about the mass?

We, as individuals are working in the material world. The material world is the environment where we are living. Structures like the school, the church or the home where different human activities are going on are where we operate as a person. As a person, we are a rational being. We can differentiate good and bad. And as a person we always consider ourselves as a person consisting of body and soul.

Living in a material world, as humans, we also interact with other human beings. We start with our families; then we go beyond our house’s fences and start to find friends. As we grow, we gain knowledge and experiences. Aside from the ordinary school, we also learn from the television, computers, gadgets and from all the people we encounter every day. With our interaction with the material world, we also encounter challenges, problems, and even to the point of getting hurt someone or disappointed by our own limitations. These are all stored in our memory and they influence us to be who we are. These influences has taught us to respond to our basic needs. There is a need to response to our basic needs in order for us to survive as a person, sometimes, we don’t realize it, it just happens naturally. These responses become our habitual responses and has become our attitude. As an attitude, our actions become subliminal or automatic in us.

A person is a bodied spirit. Through our body, we respond to the material world. Our body responses through our senses. We see the beauty and the ugliness of everything through our eyes, we can hear the wind blowing through our ears, we can smell fragrant of the flowers through our nose, we can taste the food through our tongue, and we can feel the changing weather through our sense of touch. Through these senses, we respond to our environment.

Now, why it is hard to understand God? Because God is not physically present in our time now. We cannot talk to God now physically. We cannot touch God now. There are so many questions like where is God? How God could help me if he is not around? Or if God is powerful, why can’t He change me now to believe? There are so many doubts that arise because God is beyond the realm of the physical world. God is a Spiritual being that’s why to understand God we need also to transcend by being spiritual. Let us not forget that as a person, we are body and spirit.

Our spirit works in our ‘will,’ our intellect is the seat of our will. Our intellect is our mind. Our experiences are stored in our mind. Out intellect process all our experiences, bad and good, and our will is where our freedom of choice lies.

Okay, let us simplify. Example, BED SCENE (not that! green minded people!) I mean, like in this scenario: It was 5:30 in the morning where an Altar Server’s alarm clock rung telling him or her to rise up for he or she will have to serve the mass at 7:00 am. Let say, he is Paul Quidong (this is only an example) That morning, it was cold, and when he looked outside it’s also raining. The sense of hearing woke up Paul. His sense of touch gave him a good feeling of coolness and invites him to linger more. But Paul realized that he would be late, so he forced himself to stand up, but by the window, he saw that it was raining and that gave him a good reason to stay home and continue sleeping. His senses gave him the facts. His mind process the gathered facts, his intellect would tell him things like these: first, it is good to serve in the mass and second, but it is not good to get wet in the rain. As person, we have the tendency to defend ourselves so we reason out in our favor which we call self-justification. The dilemma now is which of the reasons should Paul give importance, his bodily pleasure or what he ought to do being a committed Altar Server?

Our ‘will’ without conscience would decide in the favor of our own self. As a person, we know what freedom is since we have ‘free will’ but sometimes we don’t know what we mean about freedom. That’s why there are times that our ‘will’ is overpowered by our physical needs and desires. There are times that we are overpowered by our work and we become our work. Our work has now become more important than God. In the example, the busyness or work of Paul that attracts him is sleeping. But his ‘will‘ has told him that ‘I need to go because I am a responsible Altar Server.’

This is a common dilemma for all of us. There are so many temptations that we are in which can hinder us to do what we ought to do. Most of the time we even justify our wrong actions… we take it personally and we don’t realize that we are already succumbed by our own pride. We let ourselves be subjected to our personal whining until we gradually forget our commitment with God. We took our personal pride as our top priority instead of changing ourselves. We sometimes say, ‘Akin ito,’ ‘Ako,’ ‘Ko,’ always grabbing all the good things and always blaming others for our shortcomings.

You see, since that we are in the material world, we respond through our senses. We find pleasure through our senses. And what I mean pleasure, usually, we stick most of our time to whatever we are doing and we omit ourselves from doing other things. No balance at all. What I mean, we became so much attached or addicted to what we prefer to do and these things not only defray us from our other priorities in life but also disconnect us with God. This is now where Satan is working. Satan, the fallen angel, is working tirelessly 24/7 just to allure us into his temptation.

From our actions and speech, Satan would know what we long for. He would take note those things that will bring us to God. From there, he will plot temptations that will trap us from being reunited with God. Satan is active in our world and could use anything to catch our attention. When Satan found that we have a strong faith, usually, he will bring us more harm. If he can’t stop us to serve God, he would hurt even the people we love. If Satan knew that there are people who have the capacity to let others fall, he will intensify them by giving them power. Of all these, Satan only wants our soul. He wants us to be separated from the love of God.

The question, “Where is God?” If God is powerful, why He let us to be tempted by the Devil. Why He let sufferings and deaths? Why such a pandemonium?

Why does God allow the devil to test us? Everything happens in the hands of God. God is in control but God also respect our freedom. God gave freedom to everyone including angels. Satan is a fallen angel so he also has his freedom. We, as humans, also have our freedom. When God gave freedom, He gives it freely and out of love, when God gave freedom out of love, He won’t take it back. Satan uses his freedom to tempt us. For sometimes, we might think that God has forsaken us but in reality, God, Himself, is shielding us in the temptation of the devil. How could God protect us? It is by opening ourselves to God. We can only be helped if we ask God’s help. As I told you earlier, God respects our freedom. If out of freedom, we chose to be alone, God will respect that. No matter how God wants Himself to be with us, God will let us to walk away from Him. But since God is a loving God, He will still always look after us. God will remain watching our lives and will always be hopeful for us to call His name. There, we exercise our freedom, when we decide to call God to enter into our lives. In the long journey of life, no matter what we reached, there will always be emptiness if God is not with us, it is because all of us are meant to be united with God.

God let all these wicked things to happen in our lives for us to still choose Him no matter what ugly things happened in us. If other people would see us as a broken person, in the eyes of God, we always remain precious. Every time we call God to say sorry for all the things we have done becomes our homecoming to God. Every time we invoke God to enter in our ordinary lives become a reunion between us. Every time we pray, God listens. Every time we cry, God cries with us. God wants us to be strong in faith so that we can overcome all the temptations in our lives. Indeed, in one perspective, temptations become the test of our faithfulness to God. And this test is not just a one-shot-deal for the rest of us for it happens every moment of our life since Satan and his allies is really working hard for this they are tireless to achieve their goal, that is us being separated from God.

Now, we know that Satan can read us through our actions and speech; from there, he would plot his booby trap for us. But, beyond that what he really wanted to do is to read our mind. In our mind, there is our ‘will.’ Satan wants to influence our will and eventually, he wants us to be under his control. But actually, Satan cannot read our mind, the faculty of our intellect, that’s why he relies only through our responses to his distractions. When we become afraid, when we become excited, when we become weak… Satan would use all these data to influence us. He would manipulate everything around us just to divert our attention from God. We would even think that we are lucky for sometimes when we start to gamble on material things when do some acts that would corrupt our souls but would not be caught and would not be held responsible for a time… until the time that we become addicted and controlled by our habitual sinfulness and eventually put into shame… there we would realized that we were fooled by the devil… when it is already too late to step back and to retaliate. In our weaknesses, the devil will test us. In our fantasies, the devil will feed us. The devil will show us the shortcut to our happiness but it will destroy others because it will lead us to greed. The devil will teach us to be strong but he will make our hearts cold as a stone. The devil will offer us the grandeurs of the world but at the end it would still be empty promises because we become slaves of our passion for everything. The devil will teach us to hate God because of allowing pains and sufferings in our lives but he will… yes, he will tell us only nothing but the half-truth… for the truth is, Satan is the cause of all our woundedness and sufferings. The devil won’t tell these, he is a liar. The devil will disguise himself as a prophet who will promise to liberate us from our all that binds us. He will tell us that we are being enslaved by God and would justify our selfish desires us our freedom. He would destroy God in our mind and heart, and would place us in God’s place… Satan will blind us to believe that we become rulers of our selves by unleashing our inhibitions but we failed to realize that we are dictated by the whisper of the devil. Unknowingly, the devil is already manipulating our lives. When we do his commands, he becomes our God. In our weakness… the devil will hit us… he will use our sufferings to turn to him… he will use our anger to call his name… he will use our lustful thoughts to justify our lustful actions. These become happiness for us… every time we feed our ego… every time we justify our selfishness. How could we be free if we became so attached to the material world?

His place suffering but at the end he will destroy usWhen we become there he would hit us and eventually destroys us.

Our mind is the seat of our Soul. Only God can read our mind. Our mind where our soul seat is where our ‘will’ is. It is an intellectual faculty where God can communicate with us. It is a transcending part of our humanity where we can interact with our Divine God through prayers. Why it is transcending? Because our assent of faith is needed. We need to have a firm conviction that God hears our prayers. As persons, all of us have a ‘free will,’ God’s wants us to love Him with all of our freedom.

The Mass is the highest form of prayer. It is hard to understand the mass because our attention is being distracted and diverted by the devil. We may feel discomforts during the mass, we could be annoyed by our seatmates or our attention could be caught by others… and these are all happening within the mass. Sometimes, we just caught ourselves day-dreaming or fantasizing the previous thoughts we had in mind. The devil understand us in terms of memory by imprinting in our minds distracting experiences, like funny or lustful memories that we saw and heard; or sumptuous food, drugs and wines that appeal to our feelings and taste , thus, he would have a chance to steal our attention from God during the mass.

With these distractions, we need to train ourselves to learn to focus. Yes, the theology behind the mass is quite intellectual, but if we focus on whatever is happening inside the mass, we would realize that it appeal to our senses. The candles, symbolizes Jesus as the light of the world; the flowers, symbolizes joy of being Christians, the Choir singing represents the angels singing their wonderful hymn of praise, “the heavenly Gloria, Glory to God in the highest;” the readings are the words of the Lord being proclaimed; the priest, acting in behalf of Jesus; the Holy Host, which we take during communion becomes true precious body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ during the consecration. These, and more other, are the signs and symbols that should appeal to our physical senses but we failed to acknowledge because our mind is kept busy in processing other things like counting how many times the readers buckled or how many times the Altar Servers commit mistakes. The devil, himself, makes sure that he kept us busy so that we would fall into the temptation of being self-righteous perfectionists… by being workaholic and or over achiever… with these we would be diverted to the real meaning of life… to be in constant union with God. With this attitude inside the mass, we are physically present but our hearts become inattentive and absent for God. We missed the point, the point of being united with God.

If we see the mass as purely intellectual activity, we will soon get tired and later, get bored. We would even fail to acknowledge the presence of community around us. The risk of theologizing everything would also become a danger. We become less affective and we become less responsive to other. The danger is that we could equate everything to our personal experience that we took even the bible literally. We soon realized that we boxed everything and thus, we limit God. We should always understand that God is not a God who we can fashion to what we like Him to be. God is a free God who freely loved us from the beginning up to the end of our life. What we think of God, as human, would not totally represent God because our knowledge of God is very limited. What we understand of God is that God is a God of love. We can only see a glimpse of God’s beauty, God’s splendor and God’s ever mighty presence because our mind is a grain of sand compared to the mind of God which is a vast ocean. But since God is a God of love, He chose to reveal Himself to us. Through the ages, in the times of old, in a process where man can understand Him, God patiently unfolds Himself to us.

Until the time, God the Father, sent His only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ to dwell in our midst. The idea of God become a living experience. Jesus Christ was touched, seen, heard, embraced, felt and loved. Our relationship with God suddenly becomes a more tender relationship with Him. There was this marvelous interaction—the apostles were called and answered back, the first disciples followed and listened Jesus, Jesus become very intimate and so personal to those who touched Him... Jesus showed compassion… Jesus forgives sinners and Jesus even cried when Lazarus died. These were their first experience of Jesus, a man who became God and walked in the midst of the countless eye-witnesses who first believe that a Messiah was born of Mary, the Mother of God.

The mass is like that. A personal relationship to Jesus Christ who is again and again being offered in a bloodless sacrifice. In the Mass Jesus spoke through the Commentators, Lectors, Psalmist, Readers and Priests. With the choir, we express our inspirations that we have drawn from Jesus Christ. With the presence of everybody, Jesus Christ becomes present among us. When we participate in the Holy Communion, when we take the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, Jesus enters in our lives. When we let the Holy Spirit dwell in our lives, with our works, we become missionaries of God where we take Jesus and share Jesus wherever we go. Jesus is given to us by God, the Father. Jesus is made present in our midst by God, the Holy Spirit. With Jesus, God in three persons works in our lives.

When appreciating the mass could be our habitual attitude, we grow in spirit and wisdom. No matter how much trials in life would happen in us, we could still stay focus in loving Jesus. In the darkness of a soul, the Holy Darkness which is the final test of our spirit, there are no more immediate physical rewards to console us in our prayers. There is nothing but Spiritual dryness. For the moment… there is nothing to see, to touch, to hear or to smell… all seems to be void and nothing. There could only be multiple layers of pains and agonies that would really torment our faith and would shatter our humanly reason. It is an experience of being torn and being broken. It is a very dark experience where we would have nothing but faith. It is an assent of our mind, our ‘will’ to transcends our weaknesses… to totally let go of everything and let God do His will in us… It is a total unity between us and God. At the end, in this test of faith, there is seemingly darkness because God, the God of light has totally embraced us.

To explain this, we usually cling for something because of the immediate gratification that we are hoping for. Like, when we want an ice cream, we usually beg from our Mom and Dad. We stay with them and even annoy them just to catch their attention. To possess the ice cream, on the process, we did sacrifice some of our time. When we eat the ice cream, we become happy and most of the time we ask for more. This is the process of Satan, instant gratification.

In the mass, there is no instant gratification for our personal wishes. (It even takes a person to maturity in order to pray and adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament). God only answers easily if we pray for virtues since these virtues will bring us good attitudes that would be the gateway in attaining our life’s aspirations. In my long relationship with God, I realized that if I pray to God to grant me patience I become more open to life’s challenges which is, most of the time, a key to success. And more over, with God, I also become open to failures where there I derived endless reflections and has found so much a blessing. In reality, there is no magic in life, there are no real shortcuts… hardship and easiness of life, happiness and sorrows in life depend on how we see and understand life. We can see life as a lonely life if we choose it that way. What we think in our mind, becomes our actions… becomes our ‘will.’ We make Satan happy if we act this way.

Yes, all of us are broken, but this brokenness should not make us as cynical people. Yes, in our lives, we were once victimized, but we should not let this take away the smile in our face. Yes, we are suffering but we should not let these suffering and pains ruin our future and destroy other lives. If we see life as a very lonely and meaningless life, it is because we failed to listen to God when we pray. Prayer is a multi-faceted communication. God would like to speak to us only when we listen.

The mass become so dry for us because we are the only one directing the mass in our minds. We do not let God to reveal Himself to us every day in our lives. When we pray, we become tired because we are the only one talking… we only communicate what we want but we failed to listen to what God has planned to happen in our life. Conversion of the heart, a real metanoia, only happens if we empty ourselves so that could fill our cup of life with His life which is He is very willing to share with us. And I think, if we become open, if we free our mind… our will… our spirit… the, the Holy Mass would never be boring. It will always be a new wonderful and exciting experience. We would always long for the next Mass because we would realize that we have already built our friendship with Jesus our Lord. And to meet a very wonderful friend, such as Jesus, is a very exciting one.

The process of understanding happens in the intellect. The mind interprets what are experienced by the body. But if we end in the mind only, if we closed our minds, and become so stoic about others and focus only in the belief that ‘it is only me and my creator matter’ attitude, later we would be tired because we would fail to find deeper meaning of what we are doing. We missed the point that God has a big heart and He absolutely has big arms to embrace us all. If we closed our minds we would never appreciate the small things in our surroundings being sensed by our body’s sensual faculty—the sense of sight, touch, hearing, and smelling… the whole process of understanding become a self-righteous conviction of what we only believe that exist in our mind, thus, we separate ourselves from others and limit God within our capacity. Butterflies are beautiful, wild flowers are cute to look at, sampaguita are sweet to smell… this small things will make us realize that life is beautiful. It is true that if we do not train our mind to practice focus, we will fail to understand heavenly things since the Holy Mass is a heavenly banquet…since the heaven opens every time we celebrate the Holy Mass. But we should not also forget to appreciate God’s creations; they are gift of God to us to make our childhood a memorable one and to make our life a gift to others.

It will become hard to understand the Holy Mass if we let everything happens in our mind. It would really be boring and even frustrating. It would nice to imagine a perfect Mass with perfect choirs and perfect organist playing the instrument. It would be so delightful to see the Altar Server well behaving and sitting piously while listening to the homily of the priests. It would be soul inspiring to be with angelic persons like the ‘manangs’ and ‘manongs’ in the Church who are always generous and ready to help us. More, it would be a moment of grace to hear the entertaining homily of a saintly priest that would make us laugh in any given Sundays. But these are all illusions because all of us are struggling to remain faithful. These exist only in the core of an unrealistic mind where it expects no more human emotions which are always open to errors. A self-righteous mind who only appreciates perfection that has no heart and compassion-- a mind that doesn’t bother and doesn’t ask why… a mind that doesn’t care about the struggles of any person concern. It is a persecuting mind always pointing fingers on others and a mind that has forgotten that Jesus Christ is a compassionate God. We are loved by God by who we are. God, when He looked on us, he doesn’t see our weaknesses but our potentials. To tap these potentials, we need to go out from our closed world and be open to let other’s life to touch ours. All of us… before going to the Mass have fought our personal struggles. The Church is not only for those who are perfect but, specially, for those who are not. We cannot deny that the Church is our home, and it would be sad if from our home with God, we send someone out.

The mass could be more meaningful if we experience it as a total person… body and soul. We could start by appreciating the things around us as blessings from God. The Mass reflects our relationship with God. The mass is the highest expression of our prayer. It is true that there are times that we find that it is hard to pray. We need to train ourselves to develop a good attitude in praying because Satan would distract us through our senses. Sometimes, we even get frustrated because we experience that our prayer life becomes so dry. Some Saints in a part of their life, also entered a dark zone called ‘Holy Darkness.’ Holy darkness is a state of prayer life where there is no more physical gratification. Through their testimonies, we understand that we could still have faith even there are no more rewards for us to hope for. Here, if you are doing a mission, you have possibly reached already the state of self-giving… wherein you have reached the state of life that is totally dependent to God… the mission of Jesus Christ becomes the consolation itself. It is where you do your task no matter how irritating others would be, even how bothering and demanding I could be most of the times or even the Priests would constantly scold us, we still become humble to accept and continue our service to God. It is where we learn to sacrifice out of love.

Our generosity to give ourselves and at the same time our openness to any rejections are the daily tests that we encounter in our daily lives. No matter how we try to become holy, there were times where we usually slid back. It happens when we do not practice daily our good virtues. When we let ourselves be tempted for the first time by the devil, we could be trapped into his bait until we become so addicted to it.

As I reflect, we need a new and fresher way of looking onto the Holy Mass... a newer insight that would lead us to the understanding that the Holy Mass also empowers us. Every time the Holy Mass ended, the priest commissions us before we leave the Church. We were sent back to the world to become missionaries of Jesus Christ. As missionaries, we are encouraged to bear witness to Jesus Christ… to let the world know that Jesus Christ is living among us… that His words still reverberates in our lives as we await His glorious coming in the Advent of his time.

Sa misyon, ang laging tanong, “gaano ba ako kahanda na laging magbigay?” [In every mission, the question is 'until when should I give my sacrifices]. As missionaries, when we expect for something in return, we just become frustrated and disappointed because as missionaries, we receive, most of the time, nothing but more challenges and these, most of the time, they burn us out. In mission there are only few consolations and one of the consolation is to be with Jesus always in the Holy Mass. If we totally immersed ourselves in the understanding of the Holy Mass… from the enkindling of our faith with the words of Jesus Christ proclaimed in the liturgy of the Word; and from the rekindling of our faith again upon encountering Jesus Christ in the Liturgy of the Eucharist… we would transcend our limitations as we let God to do his ‘ ‘will’ in us… where our ‘will’ totally embraces the ‘will’ of God.

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This is in response to a question posted to me by the Santurio Eucaristico Youth last August 4, 2013: "Why Mass is so boring?"

"Now, I realized that most of the time, when we talk about our faith, we forgot to attack our real enemy... the devil."

Br. Dennis DC. Marquez, SSS