The Beauty of Good Catholic Liturgy

I have regularly been following Mass from the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham    The Shrine is blessed by the presence of wonderful Franciscan priests who say the Mass reverently and give wonderful teaching.     I usually watch the 9.30 Mass from the Slipper Chapel.   Prior to the Reformation pilgrims would have stopped there to clean or change their shoes, or put on slippers or walk barefoot to the Shrine of Our Lady in Walsingham.

What makes the Mass in the Chapel special is that the priest faces the East with the people, for it is from the East 'we await the coming of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ'.   The priest faces East as the leader of the Community, one of the Community, confessing his sins as one of the Community,  offering the sacrifice with the Community for it is also their sacrifice, but with the special assurance at his ordination by his Bishop, that when he says the words of Christ over the bread and wine, Christ through Him will change them into his own flesh and blood.    

This was the liturgy of the Church long before the Middle Ages.   Indeed You will find no Council of the Church which defined that the consecrated host was the flesh of Jesus, and the wine was his blood.    As the Protestant Historian HND Kelly wrote in his book the Doctrines of the Early church, from the beginning the Church took a realist approach to the Mass.   They were guide by the prophet Malachi who in 1:10 of his book wrote "from the rising of the sun until its setting my name is great among the gentiles and everywhere there is made an offering, a spotless victim"   St Ignatius of Antioch, a contemporary of the Apostles,  condemned those who did not receive the bread because they did not believe the bread was the flesh of Jesus.   This came down from the early writings wecall tradition which the Catholic Church has for too long neglected.      

      

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