10/1/2023

Fr. Karl and I will be gone October 2 – 5 with other priests of the diocese for Assembly Days. Please note that Mass on October 2nd will be moved from noon to 8:05 AM so that we can get away early to travel to Assembly Days at the Lake of the Ozarks. We will have communion services instead of Mass on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at the normal Mass time: 8:05 AM. Wednesday we will have adoration as usual.
A communion service is not the same as a Mass. There are books written on this topic explaining the depth of what happens at Mass. I will simplify it by saying that the Mass is a sacrifice, and a communion service is not. In coming to earth as a man, Jesus

1) wanted to be PRESENT with us,
2) wanted to express His SACRIFICIAL LOVE, and
3) wanted to invite us to COMMUNION with Him, thus “divinizing” us, raising us to His level of existence. We do not become Gods, but we can come to love as he did, giving of ourselves totally. That happens when we are infused with the Holy Spirit.

In a communion Service, Christ is PRESENT to us, though from a Mass that happened at another time. He is also entering into COMMUNION with us as we receive His Body in the consecrated host. What is lacking is the SACRIFICE. In the Eucharist, we offer bread and wine and whatever else we want to offer from our lives (money, intentions for us and/or our loved ones, prayers for the dead, etc.), and in the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, there is offered primarily Christ’s Perfect Sacrifice along with our sacrifices. We entrust ourselves and our lives and our intentions to the Lord for transformation in a SACRIFICE. That does not happen in the same way in a communion Service.
In the absence of a priest, it is the best we can do, and it is a lot – presence and communion are big deals. But a communion service lacks the sacrificial dimension that is so important in the Eucharist. The priesthood that Fr. Karl and I have received enables you to exercise your priesthood by offering the SACRIFICE of the Mass with us. Our priesthood enables your priesthood. Without our priesthood, a lay person cannot offer the SACRIFICE of the Mass. That is why we ordain someone like Fr. Karl and/or myself, so that we can offer the SACRIFICE of the Mass with you – your need justifies our ordination. Together we go to God, through Jesus Christ.
I just wanted to explain the difference, so that you do not think that Mass and a communion service are the same. They are not. The communion service does not have the structure of a sacrifice, while the Mass does. In summary, at Mass:

1. We offer Christ and our gifts to God (bread, wine, $, intentions, …). The Offertory procession represents this. The smaller, personal gifts are combined with the ultimate gift: Christ’s sacrifice of self for us both atones for sin and shows us what love is.
2. God accepts gifts in the form of the priest who stands in the person of Christ.
3. God transforms the gifts at the epiclesis and consecration of the Mass.
4. God gives us back this transformed gift, the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ and are given back to us to divinize us. All this happens as a result of the one sacrifice of Christ to which we are made present in the Eucharist, but not in a communion service.

I hope this is not too confusing. It points to the great gift that the Eucharist is.
It is a joy to be your pastor.

Father Albert, O.S.B.