On Christmas Day, we celebrated the Incarnation, the human, bodily birth of Our Blessed Lord into the world. During Holy Week, we commemorated His Passion, the suffering that His human body endured because of the weight of our sins.
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(Fr Augustine H.T. Tran attended seminary at the North American College in Rome, Italy and was ordained to the priesthood in 1998. He serves in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, and is currently in residence at St. John Catholic Church in McLean, Virginia, while he completes a Canon Law Degree at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He may be contacted via e-mail at [email protected].)
On Easter Sunday, we celebrated the Resurrection, the revivification of His body into its glorified state. This was the sign that the gates of Heaven had been opened for us once again, and it gives us hope for our own resurrection one day.
And, now we get ready to celebrate the Ascension, the rising of Christ's body into its exalted position at the right hand of the Father. Christ's mission as the Revealer of the Father, as the Teacher of mankind, and as the Redeemer of mankind is ended, but it has not yet been completed. It has been finished in Him as the head, but it has not yet been finished in His body, in His mystical body, which is the Church.
His mission will not be finished in the Church until the Parousia, until that last day when “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead”. But even now He sits at the right hand of the Father reigning gloriously as the King of kings and the Lord of lords, reigning with justice and love, reigning with mercy and forgiveness, reigning with truth and holiness, waiting patiently for that last day. But until that day, we, His mystical body, are called to continue His mission in the Church, to preach the Good News to all the nations.
That word mission comes from the Latin word “missa,” which can mean either “dismissal” or “having been sent.” They both have essentially the same connotation. When one is dismissed, one is being sent forth. This word “missa” is part of the final words that the priest or deacon says to the people at the end of Mass, and where the Mass got its name: Ite, missa est. It's an ancient formula that liturgists have tried to translate for centuries. The great 20th century liturgical scholar, Adrian Fortescue, argues that the proper meaning is “Go, it is the dismissal.” Whatever the literal translation, that sense of mission, that sense of being sent forth to continue the mission of Christ in the world is very strong in this Latin expression. We have three approved English translations of this formula, which you've all heard at the end of Mass: “Go in the peace of Christ”; “The Mass is ended, go in peace”; and “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord”. However, as you can see, none of these does Ite, missa est any real justice (just one more argument for preserving the Latin patrimony of our Catholic Faith). I'm sure you all remember the famous Ite of the Missa de Angelis:
(Chant) I…te……missa est.
To which everyone responded:
Deo gratias. Thanks be to God.
We respond by thanking God for nourishing us with His Body and Blood and then sending us forth to share that Body and Blood with all those whom we meet. In other words, we thank Him for commissioning us and giving us the grace we need to evangelize our faith, and, by doing so, we accept that mission. This is the final action of the Holy Mass (that is, of course, if we decide to hang around long enough to get the final blessing and receive this mission, but that's another matter in itself).
The Second Vatican Council stressed this vocation of the laity, this mission that you all receive at the end of Mass, this mission to sanctify the temporal order, that is, this mission to make the world a holier place by bringing your faith into it. We priests and religious do not live in the world, hence that is not our vocation. We are not in the office buildings, the courtrooms, the doctors' offices, the trading floors, or the oval offices. We support you with our prayer and fasting, and we nourish you with the Word of God and the grace of the sacraments; and then you take this Word, strengthened and fulfilled in this Sacrament out into the world. Our Holy Father has stressed this apostolate of the laity throughout his pontificate. In stressing the complementary roles of the clergy and the laity, he said last year to the bishops of the Antilles, “the premier place of the exercise of the lay vocation is in the world of economic, social, political and cultural realities. It is in this world that lay people are called to live their baptismal vocation.” This is the mission that you graciously accept when you say, “Thanks be to God” at the end of Mass. Deo gratias.
My challenge for you as we approach this great Feast is to ask yourself if you act with the same gratitude that you profess with your lips. Do you say what you mean and mean what you say?
On the 31st of May, we shall be celebrating the Feast of the Visitation — the day on which Our Blessed Mother, carrying Our Blessed Lord in her womb, visited her cousin Elizabeth. And when she did so, when she brought Jesus to Elizabeth, St John the Baptist leapt in Elizabeth's womb. According to Catholic tradition, it was at that moment that he was sanctified in her womb.
We're called to do the same thing. Our “missa,” our mission is to bring the Christ that we receive at Mass and carry in our bellies out into the world, to sanctify the world, just as John the Baptist was sanctified by being in the presence of the Christ child. And just as the Blessed Virgin was the hands and feet of Christ while He was still in her womb, we, too, are called to be the hands and feet of the Christ we carry within us.
The Ascension is the celebration, then, of the end of Christ's mission as the head and the beginning of the mission of His body, the Church. The beginning of the mission of the Apostles, and the beginning of our mission, the mission of His disciples.
Throughout these next nine days, we shall wait in anticipation of the coming of the Holy Spirit, in anticipation of the coming of the Paraclete, who will confirm our faith and give us the graces of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and fortitude, of knowledge and piety, and of a filial fear of the Lord. Those who have been confirmed have received these gifts precisely for evangelizing the world, precisely for bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ into the streets, into the offices, into the classrooms, and into the malls. Hence, for witnessing, and the Greek word for witness is “martyrion” so, for being a martyr for the faith.
Is this how we behave; as martyrs for the faith that has been handed down to us; as martyrs for the faith that has been entrusted to us? Or do we practice our faith only when it's convenient, when it's comfortable and doesn't require any sort of suffering or sacrifice? Or do we take our faith for granted, hiding it under a bushel basket, hiding it in the privacy of our rooms, in the privacy of our homes, in the privacy of our cars, never sharing it with our neighbors, our co-workers, or our classmates?
The Good News is that Christ has given us all that we need to fulfill our mission in the sacraments of the Church. And, sitting at the right hand of the Father, He continues to watch over us, He continues to nourish us, and He continues to love us with a love beyond all telling. He's just waiting for us to love Him back with that same perfect love, with that same sacrificial love, with that same love that's borne out in obedience, in actions and not just in words.
Ite, missa est!
