Go deeper, for parents
Why the Mass?
Where Jesus asks us to celebrate it, and how the first Christians did.
What your child reads
At the Last Supper, the night before he died, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to his friends, saying: “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19). So the first Christians did it straight away. They met to “break bread” together, above all on Sunday, the day Jesus rose (Acts 2:42; Acts 20:7). The Church has kept doing it ever since, all over the world. Every Mass is us doing what Jesus asked (CCC 1341–1343).
Jesus’ command
At the Last Supper Jesus said: “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19). St Paul hands on what he “received from the Lord”, with the same command for the bread and for the cup: “Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:23–25). So the Church teaches that Jesus “instituted the Eucharist as the memorial of his death and Resurrection, and commanded his apostles to celebrate it until his return” (CCC 1337). Teaching
More than remembering
The command “does not only ask us to remember Jesus and what he did”. It is about the liturgical celebration of his memorial, “by the apostles and their successors” (CCC 1341). That is why a priest presides (Two kinds of priesthood), and why the memorial makes his sacrifice present (The Mass as a sacrifice). Teaching
“Unless you eat”
Jesus also said: “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you” (John 6:53). The Church hears this as the Lord “urging us to receive him in the sacrament of the Eucharist” (CCC 1384). Teaching
The first Christians did it at once
“From the beginning the Church has been faithful to the Lord’s command” (CCC 1342). In Jerusalem the first believers “devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers” (Acts 2:42; Acts 2:46). They met “on the first day of the week” to “break bread” (Acts 20:7; CCC 1343). St Paul wrote that “the bread that we break” is “a participation in the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:16), and that each time “you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). Teaching
Before the year 100: the Didache
The Didache (“The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles”) is a short handbook for Christians, usually dated before the year 100 (Catholic Encyclopedia). It gives the prayers of thanksgiving to say “concerning the Eucharist”, and tells Christians: “every Lord’s day gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure” (Didache 9 and 14).
Seen from outside
Writers who weren’t Christians saw the same things. The Roman historian Tacitus writes that “Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus” (Annals 15.44): the death the Mass proclaims. Pliny the Younger, the Roman governor of Bithynia from 111 to 113, put Christians on trial and reported to the emperor Trajan what they did. They met “on a fixed day before dawn” to “sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god”, and afterwards came together again “to partake of food—but ordinary and innocent food” (Letters 10.96). Pliny doesn’t say what the meal was, but a set day, worship of Christ and a shared meal match what Christians wrote themselves.
The same shape for nearly 1,900 years
Around the year 155 St Justin described a Sunday Mass to the Roman emperor: readings, a homily, prayers, the bread and wine brought up, the great prayer of thanksgiving, the people’s “Amen” and Communion. Its basic lines “have stayed the same until our own day” (CCC 1345). The Eucharist is still celebrated “everywhere in the Church with the same fundamental structure” (CCC 1343). Teaching
Why together, and why Sunday
Christians gathering for the liturgy “dates from the beginnings of the apostolic age” (CCC 2178): “We should not stay away from our assembly” (Hebrews 10:25). Sunday, the day of the Resurrection, is “the foremost holy day of obligation” (CCC 2177). Teaching
Questions children ask
- Did Jesus really tell us to go to Mass?
- He told the apostles to do what he did at the Last Supper: “do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19). The Mass is how the Church does it, as he asked (CCC 1337, 1341).
Words to avoid
“It’s just a Church tradition” (Jesus asked for it, CCC 1337); “Jesus never mentioned it” (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24–25); “We go only because it’s a rule”: the rule follows from his command and his invitation (CCC 1384, 2177).