Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
First Sunday of Lent, February 29, 2004 Deuteronomy 26:4-10 Romans 10:8-13 Luke 4:1-13	Listen to Audio

(Note: this homily was given at all the Masses addressing the concerns regarding some changes and modifications called for in the revised General Instruction of the Roman Missal.)

Not long ago, the Vatican issued a revised Roman Missal, the book that gives the prayers and directions for celebrating Mass. This is actually the third edition of the Roman Missal since 1970, when the new order Mass was first published, at the Direction of the Second Vatican Council. The General Instruction of this third edition of the Roman Missal was published in its official English translation last year.

There were a lot of newspaper articles and rumors of forthcoming changes that generated some controversy, but in actual fact this revised General Instruction of the Roman Missal calls for very few changes in the way we celebrate Mass. Most of its revisions clarify and explain the principles and the reasons for the various parts of the Mass. Therefore this General Instruction provides us with an opportunity for what I have called “fine tuning” our celebration.

Here at Our Lady of the Assumption we have a reputation throughout the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for celebrating liturgy well, in a variety of styles, from simple and contemplative to a lively and dynamic youth-oriented Mass that . . . uhm, well . . . rocks. We are careful here to be sure that all our liturgies are in accord with both the spirit and the content of the Church’s documents on the liturgy – those that come from the Vatican as well as from the US Bishops and our own Cardinal Archbishop.

I myself was trained in liturgical theology and practice in the 1970’s in Rome, and have served as an advisor and resource person for the liturgy office of the Archdiocese for nearly the whole of my almost thirty-six years as a priest. For a time I taught liturgy at St. John’s Seminary and in the training program for the permanent deaconate. Recently I also went to several regional presentations in other parishes, under the auspices of the Archdiocesan Liturgy Office, to speak about the new General Instruction and its implications for parish life and worship.

I have also been working closely with our own parish liturgical ministers in “fine tuning” our celebration of liturgy so that we may better serve you in our parish celebration of liturgy. Everything that your priests and all the other ministers do in liturgy has only one goal – to help you, the people of God, the members of the body of Christ assembled for worship, to participate well in our celebration of the Mass.

What does “participation” mean? One of the classic principles of the Second Vatican Council is that every Catholic has the right to “full, conscious, and active participation” in the sacred liturgy, and that pastors have the responsibility “to ensure that all the faithful take part fully aware of what they doing, actively engaged in the rite, and enriched by its effects.” (SC 11) This full, conscious, and active participation must first of all be interior – it arises from our prayer and leads to our prayer. But personal, private, individual prayer at Mass is not all there is. We are called to pray together, and our personal prayer is placed at one another’s service so that our prayer together rises to the Lord.

One of the significant new paragraphs in the revised General Instruction says, “A common posture . . . is a sign of the unity of the members of the Christian community gathered for the sacred liturgy. It both expresses and fosters the intention and spiritual attitude of the participants.” (GIRM 42) Put another way, we as Christians are one in Christ, and the liturgy both expresses this oneness in Christ and deepens it.

There is only one somewhat major thing that the church is asking of you in the new General Instruction, and several other things that are either minor or simply what we are already doing.

Here’s the major change: the church is asking all of us to remain standing during the whole Communion rite. The means standing from the Lord’s Prayer until all have received Communion. Previously the General Instruction was somewhat ambiguous about whether to kneel or stand for the invitation to Communion, when the priest says “This is the Lamb of God.” That ambiguity has been cleared up – it is official now in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles that we are asked to remain standing through the whole time. And I ask that we begin doing that as of today.

Why is this? Because receiving Holy Communion is not a private matter. We as the body of Christ, approach the table of the Lord together, in procession, and the outward sign of unity – our oneness with each other in Christ – lasts through the whole Communion procession. We are asked not to “drop out” of the spirit of the procession, but to remain outwardly united in posture with each other until all have shared in the same sacrament. Our outward unity arises from our faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and our conviction that Christ is not divided – we stand in solidarity with one another because we are all receiving the one Christ, and we are all together members of his one body, being nourished together with his sacrificed body and blood.

This also calls for a renewed sense of reverence in the way we receive. Our first act of reverence for Christ has to be our reverence for one another, attentiveness to one another. The Church asks that our posture for receiving communion be standing, not kneeling, and the sign of reverence for the body and blood of Christ be a simple bow of the head as we approach the minister of Holy Communion before we receive.

We continue to have the option of receiving the host in the hand or on the tongue as you prefer. I would ask, however, that you think carefully about how you receive the host in Holy Communion. If you are receiving in the hand, extend your left hand, palm up, with your right hand under it. When the minister of Holy Communion has placed the host on your palm, step to the side, and pick the host up with your right hand and place it in your mouth. If you are left handed, you may find it more natural to reverse hands. But please don’t cup your hands together or grab it from the minister’s hand – allow him or her to place it in your palm.

If you choose to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, please be sure to open your mouth sufficiently and extend your tongue flat and relaxed beyond your lower lip so that the minister can place the host on your tongue without danger of touching your tongue or your lips. If you ever experience the minister of Holy Communion touching your tongue or your lip, I would suggest when you go home that you practice extending your tongue in front of a mirror. You really don’t want to leave your saliva – or lipstick – on the minister’s fingers as a gift to those who receive after you.

After all have received Communion, then there will be a substantial and unhurried time of silence for our own personal prayer, adoration and reflection. During that time, please feel free to kneel or sit as you wish. Our personal prayer concludes with the Prayer after Communion, spoken by the priest, which sums up our prayer of thanksgiving.

In connection with reverence for the real presence of Christ, in the sacrament and in his people, I have to bring up the subject of leaving early from Mass. I grant that there may be some very legitimate reasons, and I am not going to judge anybody. But you know as well as I do that convenience or habit is not a good reason, and if you have gotten in the habit of leaving before the end of Mass, I ask you to bring your motives before the Lord in prayer – honestly and sincerely.

Now, with regard to standing through the whole communion procession, what if that causes you pain? What if your feet or legs or hips or back are telling you that you need to sit down? By all means do so. What if your own personal spirituality says you need to kneel in prayer for a few moments immediately after you return to your pew? Listen to your heart. But at some point, after you have done that, I’d like to request that you also listen to voice of the Church, rejoin your brothers and sisters in standing until all have received Holy Communion. Will there be any enforcers or “liturgical police” monitoring compliance? Of course not. Nor, I hope, will anyone be made to feel out of place by choosing to follow your heart or your needs. Remember that our internal participation in the Mass is what’s important, our external participation is meant to express and to serve the engagement of our mind and our heart and our spirit in the sacred mystery of the Eucharist.

Finally, a couple of other clarifications. When the revised General Instruction was originally released in Latin two years ago, there was a big furor over an apparent restriction prohibiting the extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion from doing certain things, such as assisting in the priest in putting the consecrated bread and wine into the vessels for distribution at the time of the breaking of the bread, and assisting in purifying the vessels after communion. Those have been formally allowed by permissions from Rome or by pastoral decisions which our Cardinal Archbishop has the authority to make.

Also, it has been rumored that joining hands at the Lord’s Prayer, as has been our custom for many years, has been prohibited in favor of the so-called “orans” position, extending your hands individually as a sign of praise. While this is done in some places, it is not mandatory, and the revised General Instruction is completely silent on the matter. Therefore, what is not prohibited is permitted. My own experience is that the general sense of most of the Catholic faithful is that the Lord’s Prayer, which begins our preparation for Communion, is the family prayer of God’s people, praying to “Our Father” (not “my Father”) in union with his Son, Jesus, as Jesus taught us. What could be more appropriate for family members than to join hands as an outward sign that we are joining our hearts as well as our voices?

I pray that together, as God’s people, we may continue to draw closer in unity of mind and heart in offering God fitting worship in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which we gather to celebrate Sunday after Sunday.

© Thomas Welbers 2004