**The mandate of the Mass**

**The mandate of the Mass**

Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky

Saint Isaac Jogues risked everything for the Gospel. As a Jesuit missionary to the New World, the Iroquois captured and tortured him, and he escaped back to France. In his zeal for the salvation of “indigenous peoples,” despite the horrors he endured, he returned to New England and died with a hatchet to his head.

If there are any contemporary saints fearlessly preaching the Gospel today in dangerous places like Afghanistan, or the Amazon, or Washington, D.C., the silence is deafening. Why the failure in zeal?

For many, prayer has become a kind of spiritual lust with pseudo-spiritual exercises: getting in touch with one’s feelings, feeling good about oneself, self-realization, and so on. Many of our “spirituality centers” reduce Catholic spirituality to self-absorbed narcissism.

Even when we take up the practice of any of the traditional spiritual exercises, there also can be an unwitting abuse and neglect of the purpose of prayer. The Three Ages of the Spiritual Life are the Purgative Way, the Illuminative Way, with the Unitive Way as the pinnacle of religious life. The exercises are challenging. It’s likely most of us struggle on the lower rungs of the purgative way ladder.

The Three Ages of personal prayer reflect the Mass celebrated by the Catholic community. The Penitential Rite is the purgative way. The Liturgy of the Word is the illuminative way. The Liturgy of the Eucharist – especially Holy Communion – is the unitive way.

The purgative way identifies sin, repents of transgressions, and resolves to live the way of Jesus. Virtue brings its rewards personally, within families, and in our communities. Habitual reverence, honesty, sobriety, and mutual respect bring happiness and peace of soul.

Of course, there is no guarantee that our acceptance of Catholic morality immediately translates into virtue. Human weakness rooted in Original sin undermines our efforts. We cannot claim victory over our vices just because we know the difference between right and wrong. But we can all agree that the purgative way is the baseline for authentic progress in our spiritual lives.

The illuminative way provides us with a deeper understanding of the Triune God, preparing us for our union with Him. Locating ourselves within this second age is challenging. But the Liturgy of the Word of the Mass elevates an attentive soul to this level.

The Mass and reception of Holy Communion is the objective “source and summit” of the unitive way. But we may find it difficult to avoid distractions and fully appreciate the precious gift of the Eucharist we receive. Regardless of our struggles in prayer, Catholics who worthily receive the Sacrament receive an abundance of grace in the unitive way of the Mass.

Our goal is heaven, of course. But it should include the desire for others to join us on the road.

The foundation of our spiritual lives includes the renunciation of sin, contemplation of the mysteries of God, and a desire to be in union with Him. We must direct the “energy” and self-improvement we receive from our devotions to fulfilling our vocation – single, married, priest, or religious. We also must strive to proclaim the Gospel within our immediate families (where the subject is often taboo) and beyond our households.

Saint Paul highlights this duty: “For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Corinthians 9:16)

Yet, we can be so timid that those in need of our witness may have no idea where we stand on contemporary hot-button moral issues. Somehow, as long as we tend to the sanctity of our families, we feel we’ve done enough. We relax in the tranquility of our private spirituality, and we surrender our communities to Godless secularism. But evangelical zeal entails taking risks, however tentative, witnessing to the Faith.

Rev. N.T. Wright -- the Anglican bishop and New Testament scholar -- identifies how soft we have become in taking risks for the Gospel. He writes: "Wherever Saint Paul went there was a riot. Wherever I go, they serve tea." To avoid unpleasantness, we commonly isolate our religious convictions and effectively reduce our prayer and worship to a sterile and selfish self-help exercise.

Flannery O’Connor describes a dinner party she attended with distinguished author Mary McCarthy and her husband. As an emerging writer, O’Connor could have damaged her career by offending a celebrated author. She took the risk:

I was once… taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater. (She just wrote that book, A Charmed Life). She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual… Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host… she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the “most portable” person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.

[From The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, Sally Fitzgerald, Editor]

Isaac Jogue’s spiritual life did not cease with his completion of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. He knew his fearless proclamation of the faith fulfilled his prayers and completed the mandate he received at Mass: Ita Missa est. Our spiritual life is incomplete without some form of apostolic zeal -- according to our state of life – that even risks our reputation in polite company.

Even in his day, the example of Isaac Jogues was a tall order. If there isn’t anyone to take his place, perhaps a few Catholics are willing to disrupt an occasional dinner party, according to the example of Flanner O’Connor, with the Gospel truth.

How about something courageous like: “Are you going to Mass on Sunday?” “No, I don’t like the priest.” “Neither do I, but it’s the Third Commandment.”

“May you attain full knowledge of God’s will through perfect wisdom and spiritual insight. Then you will lead a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way. You will multiply good works of every sort and grow in the knowledge of God. By the might of his glory you will be endowed with the strength needed to stand fast, even to endure joyfully whatever may come.” (Colossians 1:9b-11)