Mass: returning as tho having never left...

"Because the Holy Eucharist is, as Pius XII wrote, 'the

culmination and center of the Christian religion,'

our joy in the Eucharist is a climactic joy.  Everything else in our religion leads up to the Eucharist." - Bertrand Weaver, C.P.

  "The Mass can hardly produce its effects in us if we think of it as something separate from our daily life.  We turn away after Mass, not as something finished, but as from something begun.  If we have assisted at Mass  with the proper attitude, we have offered ourselves, everything we have, and everything we do, in union with our High Priest.  If the power of the Mass, and the joy of it, are to perdure, we have to continue offering ourselves in all the varied actions of our day.

    Nothing that concerns us should remain apart from the sacrifice which we offer together with Christ in the Mass.  Our work, whether pleasant or tedious, successful or unsuccessful, should be surrounded by the radiance of the Mass.  Our recreations, our taking nourishment, our sleep, all our social relations, should be affected by the Mass.

    If this becomes our way of acting, we return to Mass as though we had never left it.”

 

Bertrand Weaver, C.P.

JOY (pg 144), Sheed and Ward (1964)