4th Question: Celebrating

 Now this has been the major topic over the past 50 years.    There has been more deceit and dishonesty over that time on the Mass, than on any other subject.   It all started when the Bishops at Vatican II could not reach an agreement over what should be said in the vernacular and what should be said in Latin.   There was a major call from a minority, especially the German bishops, to use the vernacular of the local area, but no conclusion was reached.    However a couple of  years after the Council we were suddenly plunged by bullies in the Vatican and the deceit of bishops to use the vernacular and shamelessly told it was Vatican II.    Now let me say this, I do not care if the Mass is said in Latin, Greek, Hindu, or any other language.  I do not believe that God cares what language we use as long as we are sincere and love comes from our hearts as we acknowledge the Body and Blood of His Son and receive His flesh with reverence.   So at first I was not suspicious.    It was when the altar rails were removed, and people were told to stand and receive in the hand, that I as a young man began to doubt how sincere the people pushing this policy were.    Then of course the next thing was that the tabernacle was placed liturgically incorrect, and Christ had to be removed as far as possible from the presence of his people, after all He was not the head of the Church, and His presence was only to be found spiritually among the people.  Of course the weakness in this was that at the consecration the bread was changed into the 'flesh of Jesus', he was not present in the bread spiritually but as 'flesh', what we call today the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.   The enemy within of course would not accept this.   Suddenly the heretics were shouting against transubstantiation.     This of course was the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas, and his teaching on Substance and Accidents.   But I do not think St Thomas would take too much credit, for in the Creed written against Arianism in the fourth Century we read that Jesus was 'God from God, Light from Light.......CONSUBSTANTIAL  with the Father'.   It was taken from the Greek philosopher Aristotle who taught that everything was composed of Matter and Form.   No one is required to agree with Thomas but they cannot get away with the fact that teaching on the Real Presence was part of the Early Church.   You can find it on this blog, but those who want the 'New Church' will not bother to look.    I am not condemning the ordinary parishioners, but the bishops, priests and 'experts' who misled them.

But the Early Church also understood what Jesus meant when he said "This is my Body which will be offered up for you"  "Do this in memory of me".    He meant his body 'offered up' by them in the Mass and the Apostles understood the prophecy of Malachi 1:10.  "From the rising of the sun until its setting, my name is great among the nations, and everywhere there is offered sacrifice, a spotless victim"   As the Protestant Scholar HND Henderson narrated "I must be understood that from the very beginning the Church was realist in its approach to the Sacrifice"   Today there is never a moment of the day when somewhere on earth the Mass is being offered.    How great is our God!

One last thing.    We can praise God in dance on many occasions, but not during Mass when our we should be offering our souls and our lives  to God for our weakness to sin, and the love of Jesus in the most beautiful sacrament should be our only thought.