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Pax Tecum
Why does the Sign of Peace take place after the Our Father, right before Holy Communion? It almost seems to be in a bad location at Holy Mass. At the large parishes I’ve been at through the years, things got loud and disruptive. I would start singing the Lamb of God at the top of my lungs to get people to be quiet. And sometimes I’d get dirty looks for interrupting the community ritual of back slapping and shaking of hands.
Pentecost Sunday’s gospel passage tips us off on the placement of the Sign of Peace at Mass.
Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
Christ said “Peace be with you” twice in this passage, which was on the day He rose from the dead. He said it again eight days later, when He had Thomas put his fingers and hand in His wounds. Thomas Aquinas and others noticed that Christ only said “Peace be with you” after His resurrection. This is why the Sign of Peace takes place after the consecration at Mass, when the glorified Body and Blood of Christ have been made present on the altar.
Something interesting we should know is that for most of Catholic history this part of Mass was just known as “The Peace.” It was not a sign of peace. It was the real, actual thing. And the priest did not say, “The peace of the Lord be with you always.” Instead, he said, Pax tecum. That is Latin for “Peace be with you.” Why did he say that? Well, the priest said, “Peace be with you,” because that is what Christ said. And Christ is the priest at Mass.
In Persona Christi
I made sure our first communicants learned this lesson, using pictures from the Baltimore Catechism. The ministerial priest has an awesome responsibility of standing in persona Christi, “in the person of Christ,” giving voice to His words. This is why it was a centuries-old rubric (no longer used in modern times) that the priest keep his eyes down when giving the peace to the congregation.
I keep my eyes down, and through the years I’ve been lectured for doing so by certain people. They tell me Fr. Friendly over at St. Typical’s has beautiful blue eyes and he smiles and looks at everybody while giving the Sign of Peace. He even leaves the altar to go down and shake a few hands. But Fr. Drew is rigid and rude. They’ve told me that, after all, it is not just the priest’s Mass; it is the people’s Mass, in which they should feel welcomed to actively participate.
But it was a good rule for a priest to keep his eyes down. It was a good rule because it prevented confusion over who was actually offering Holy Mass. Understand: Kevin Drew is not the one who offers Mass. Kevin Drew cannot change bread and wine into God’s Body and Blood. And Kevin Drew cannot give the peace of which Christ spoke, a peace the world cannot give. (See John 14:27.)
The Reversal of Babel
Speaking of confusion: Did your mother ever tell you to “quit your babbling”? That comes from Genesis (Pentecost Vigil reading) which states: “The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words.” But then people became filled with the deadly sin of pride, wishing to glorify themselves instead of God. So they built the Tower of Babel, based on the Hebrew word balbalah, which means “confusion.”
The Tower was built with the idea that people could reach up to heaven by their own efforts and put themselves on the same level as God. The Lord then punished the people by confusing their languages. No longer able to understand one another’s speech, they were scattered abroad.
The Jews, who had been scattered over the whole world, came together in the Holy City of Jerusalem fifty days after Christ’s resurrection. But the babbling, the confusion, had ceased. That particular Pentecost was the reversal of the Tower of Babel. Once again, if just for a few moments, mankind was on the same page, speaking the same language.
Putting Ourselves at the Level of God
It’s interesting about people trying to put themselves on the same level as God: Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, who died in 1786, was a man who had no use for religion. But after attending a Solemn High Mass, he told the celebrating priest, a German cardinal: “The Calvinists treat God as an inferior, the Lutherans treat Him as an equal; but the Catholics treat Him as God.”
Why would this Prussian King, a non-religious Protestant, say something like that? Well, the Calvinists and other so-called reformers replaced high altars, priesthood, and sacrifice with tables, presiders, and meals. Their presiders, or ministers, were situated behind the tables and looked at the people the whole time. Naturally, that kind of worship became more and more focused on the people, instead of God.
Tragically, this is what has happened in the Catholic Church in our modern day, a time of great confusion in which both the moral order and belief in the Holy Eucharist (those two things go together) have collapsed.
Pope Benedict XVI, before he became pope, wrote:
The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle…it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is closed in on itself. The common turning toward the east was not a “celebration toward the wall”; it did not mean that the priest “had his back to the people”; the priest himself was not regarded as that important.
Freedom from Confusion
Friends, Christ is the priest at Mass. There is now great confusion about this in our modernized, self-enclosed, circled-up world that worships itself. It’s an insane world. How could it not be? It treats God not just as an equal, but as an inferior.
And now, understand something very important, something that’ll change your life if you never heard it before. It is this: It is the priest’s Mass. And the priest is Christ. It is not the people’s Mass. The holy and mystical sacrifice made present for us is Christ’s act, not ours. We don’t make it happen; He does. He, the author of life itself, makes His glorified Body present on our altar. If Christ is not the priest, then we are just passing out crackers and a good feeling at communion time. Why get out of bed and dressed up for that?
If you truly understood this, you’d never miss Mass for the rest of your life. Understand this, and with a spirit of gratitude you will get to Mass early and prepare yourself with holy fear for the sacred mystery—for at Mass you receive real peace, not just a sign of it. And you receive real heavenly food in Christ’s Body and Blood, not just a sign of it.
Understand this, and you will successfully work out your salvation. You will live and die for Christ. Then, after your time scattered abroad in earthly exile, you will pass out of this world and arrive in the heavenly Jerusalem, where everyone speaks the same language—not just for a few moments but for eternity.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
