Mass in the Catholic Church

The Mass is the central liturgical service of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, in which bread and wine are consecrated and become the body and blood of Christ. As defined by the Church at the Council of Trent, in the Mass "the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross, is present and offered in an unbloody manner". The Church describes the Mass as the "source and summit of the Christian life", and teaches that the Mass is a sacrifice, in which the sacramental bread and wine, through consecration by an ordained priest, become the sacrificial body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ as the sacrifice on Calvary made truly present once again on the altar. The Catholic Church permits only baptised members in the state of grace (Catholics who are not in a state of mortal sin) to receive Christ in the Eucharist.

Many of the other sacraments of the Catholic Church, such as confirmation, holy orders, and holy matrimony, are generally administered within a celebration of Mass, but before the Second Vatican Council were often or even usually administered separately. The term Mass, also Holy Mass, is commonly used to describe the celebration of the Eucharist in the Latin Church, while the various Eastern Catholic liturgies use terms such as Divine Liturgy, Holy Qurbana, and Badarak, in accordance with each one's tradition.

The term "Mass" is derived from the concluding words of the Roman Rite Mass in Latin: Ite, missa est ('Go, it is the dismissal', officially translated as 'Go forth, the Mass is ended'). The Late Latin word missa substantively corresponds to the classical Latin word missio. In antiquity, missa simply meant "dismissal". In Christian usage, however, it gradually took on a deeper meaning. The word "dismissal" has come to imply a mission.

In Catholic teaching, the holy sacrifice of the Mass is the fulfillment of all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant. In the New Covenant, the one sacrifice on the altar of Calvary is revisited during every Catholic Mass. Jesus Christ merited all graces and blessings for us by His death on the Cross. These merits form an inexhaustible fountain of grace to nourish the supernatural life of souls. At Calvary, Christ not only merited all graces for people but also established certain channels whereby these graces may be obtained. These channels are the Sacrifice of the Mass and the other Sacraments.

The first Mass was instituted by Christ at the Last Supper, on the first Holy Thursday. The first Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was celebrated on the eve of the Passion. The unbloody sacrifice of the Last Supper is a memorial of Christ's bloody sacrifice on the cross. Thus, the Mass is a unifying event of the Last Supper and Christ's sacrifice on Calvary.

The Mass contains the four essential elements of a true sacrifice: priest, victim, altar, and sacrifice. Its Priest, Jesus Christ, uses the ministry of an earthly representative; its Victim, Jesus Christ, truly present under the appearances of bread and wine; its altar; and the Sacrifice is a mystic representation of the blood-shedding of Calvary. Thus, the Mass is offered for four ends: adoration, atonement, thanksgiving, and petition.

The classic study of the Mass is that of Josef Andreas Jungmann, the two-volume Mass of the Roman Rite or Missarum Solemnia. Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson trace the history of eucharistic liturgies from first-century shared meals of Christian communities, which became associated with the Last Supper, to second and third-century rites mentioned by Pliny the Younger and Ignatius of Antioch and described by Justin Martyr and others, in which passages from Scripture were read and the use of bread and wine was no longer associated with a full meal.

When in the fourth century Christianity was granted the status of a legal religion and was even viewed with favour by the Roman Emperors, the Christian celebrations took on a more formal appearance and were embellished by the use of vestments, lights and incense. Ex tempore prayers by the presider gave way to texts previously approved by synods of bishops as a guarantee of the orthodoxy of the content, leading to the formation of liturgical forms or "rites" generally associated with influential episcopal sees.