by Scott Hahn
SCOTT HAHN
The Mass as Heaven
on Earth
DOUBLEDAY
New York London Toronto Sydney Auckland
Contents
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
QUOTE
FOREWORD by Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel C.F.R.
Part One
THE GIFT OF THE MASS
INTRODUCTION
Christ Stands at the Door: The Mass Revealed
ONE
In Heaven Right Now: What I Found at My First Mass
TWO
Given for You: The Story of Sacrifice
THREE
From the Beginning: The Mass of the First Christians
FOUR
Taste and See (and Hear and Touch) the Gospel: Understanding the Parts of the Mass
Part Two
THE REVELATION OF HEAVEN
ONE
“I Turned to See”: The Sense amid the Strangeness
TWO
Who's Who in Heaven: Revelation's Cast of Thousands
THREE
Apocalypse Then! The Battles of Revelation
and the Ultimate Weapon
FOUR
Judgment Day: His Mercy Is Scary
Part Three
REVELATION FOR THE MASSES
ONE
Lifting the Veil: How to See the Invisible
TWO
Worship Is Warfare: Which Will You Choose:
Fight or Flight?
THREE
Parish the Thought: Revelation as Family Portrait
FOUR
Rite Makes Might: The Difference Mass Makes
Sources and References
Copyright Page
To Kimberly
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with Me . . . After this I looked, and lo, in heaven an open door . . .” —Revelation 3:20, 4:1
Foreword
Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel C.F.R.
THIS REMARKABLE BOOK brings together several powerful spiritual realities—all of them important to the believing Christian, and all of them apparently so diverse as to superficially appear unrelated: the end of the world and the daily Mass; the Apocalypse and the Lord's Supper; the humdrum of daily life and the Parousia, the coming of the Lord.
If you are a cradle Catholic like myself, Dr. Hahn is likely to leave you with a whole new appreciation of the Mass. If you entered the Church or are thinking of coming into full communion with it, then he will show you a dimension of Catholic Christianity that you probably never thought about—its eschatology, or teaching on the end of time. In fact, relatively few Catholics realize the link between the celebration of the Eucharist and the end of the world.
The salient feature of The Lamb's Supper is its moving and lucid appreciation of the reality of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the act of worship given to us by our High Priest on the eve of His sacrificial death. Dr. Hahn explores this mysterious reality with all the zeal and enthusiasm of a new convert.
I can only contrast this with my own experience—this year I will celebrate (quietly) my fifty-seventh anniversary as an altar boy. Yet when Scott called me and asked me somewhat cautiously to write a foreword to his new book, based on the very ancient eschatological interpretation of the Eucharist given by the Eastern Fathers of the second to the sixth centuries, I responded with “Well, of course, this is what I thought about the Eucharist for decades.”
The Mass, or, as it's more accurately called in the Eastern Churches, the Divine Liturgy, is so rich a reality that there are as many valid theological approaches to it as there are to the whole mystery of Christ Himself. The Eucharist is part of the great living mountain which is Christ, a simile drawn from the ancient saints of the Holy Land. This mountain can be approached from many sides. This eschatological approach is one of the most intriguing and fruitful.
I always feel a twinge of annoyance when I see in a college or a hotel a list of “religious services” and observe the Mass listed at 9 A.M. The Mass is not a religious service. When Catholics say morning prayer or the recitation of the rosary or even have Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, that's a service. It's something that we do for God, similar to the public prayer of any religious denomination. But the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist, the Divine Liturgy, is not precisely—in its essence—done by man at all.
Let me tell you, I've been a priest for forty years and I never conducted a “service” called a Mass. I was a “stand-in” for the High Priest, to use the words of Church teaching, I was there functioning in persona Christi—in the person of Christ, the High Priest of the Epistle to the Hebrews. People do not come to Mass to receive my body and blood, and I could not have given it to them if they did. They come for communion with Christ.
This is the mysterious element in all Christian sacraments—including baptism. For this reason, in case of great necessity anyone can functionin persona Christi to give baptism, because it is Christ who actually baptizes. It is Christ who forgives sin, Christ who prepares thy dying, Christ who ordains and who blesses the marriages.
Like Catholic and Orthodox Christians who think about it (as well as some Anglicans and even some Lutherans), I believe that Christ is the Priest of all the sacraments, just as He speaks to us from every page of Sacred Scripture. He ministers to us in every sacrament—and we experience in this way the vitality of His mystical body.
When you read Dr. Hahn's account of the Eucharist as the heavenly worship spoken of in Revelation, as he indicates so well, you should begin to tingle with the vitality of grace.
The Mass on earth is the presentation of the marriage supper of the Lamb. As Dr. Hahn points out, most Christians either sidestep the Book of Revelation and its mysterious signs or they spin their own peculiar little theories about who is who and where it's all going to end. As an inhabitant of New York City (the twentieth-century candidate for Babylon), I'm perfectly delighted with the prospect of it all ending soon, even next week. But I am tired of all these prophets of doom and their interpretations. Promises, promises! Early in this century, I lived through the careers of several guys who were on the short list of candidates for the big antichrist, and no show.
My love for Revelation is not based on all this Star Wars paranoia, but on the wonderful view of the heavenly Jerusalem in the final chapters of Revelation. These come as close as you can to describing what eye has not seen nor ear heard. Now with the reading and rereading of The Lamb's Supper, many other chapters are open to me much more clearly—describing in symbolic form what the eternal life of the saints may be like, to use St. Augustine's phrase.
It was St. Augustine, you know, who insisted on putting Revelation as well as Hebrews in the New Testament Canon at an African bishops' council held at the end of the fourth century. Again, to quote Augustine, we may in prayer by His great mercy “touch for an instant that Fountain of Life where He feeds Israel forever.” But apart from these special moments of contemplation, we may see symbolically at the daily celebration of Mass the realities of the heavenly worship of the High Priest and His mystical body.
I am grateful to Dr. Hahn for finding and bringing back to life this vision of the early Fathers of the Church. The only thing that we ever do in this world that is real participation in the life we hope to live forever is to worship with Christ at the Liturgy. However humble the appointments of the church buildings, however limited the spiritual insight of the participants, when we are at the Liturgy of the Mass, Christ is there and mysteriously we are for that moment standing at the Eternal Supper of the Lamb. Read carefu
lly this book, and you will learn how and why.
PART ONE
INTRODUCTION
Christ Stands at the Door
THE MASS REVEALED
OF ALL THINGS CATHOLIC, there is nothing so familiar as the Mass. With its timeless prayers, hymns, and gestures, the Mass is like home to us. Yet most Catholics will go a lifetime without seeing beyond the surface of memorized prayers. Few will glimpse the powerful supernatural drama they enter into every Sunday. Pope John Paul II has called the Mass “heaven on earth,” explaining that “the liturgy we celebrate on earth is a mysterious participation in the heavenly liturgy.”
The Mass is near and dear. The Book of Revelation, on the other hand, seems remote and puzzling. Page after page flashes bizarre and frightening images: of wars and plagues, beasts and angels, rivers of blood, demonic frogs, and seven-headed dragons. And the most sympathetic character is a seven-horned, seven-eyed lamb. “If that's just the surface,” some Catholics say, “I don't think I want to see the depths.”
Well, in this little book, I'd like to propose something outlandish. I propose that the key to understanding the Mass is the biblical Book of Revelation—and, further, that the Mass is the only way a Christian can truly make sense of the Book of Revelation.
If you're skeptical, you should know that you're not alone. When I told a friend that I was writing about the Mass as a key to the Book of Revelation, she laughed and said, “Revelation? Isn't that just weird stuff?”
It does seem weird to Catholics, because, for many years, we have been reading the book apart from Christian tradition. The interpretations most people know today are the ones that have made the news or the best-seller charts, and those have been overwhelmingly Protestant. I know this from my own experience. I've been studying the Book of Revelation for more than twenty years. Until 1985 I studied it as a Protestant minister, and, down through those years, I found myself engaged, in turn, by most of the fashionable and unfashionable interpretive theories. I tried every key, but none could open the door. Every now and then, I heard a tumbler click, and that gave me hope. Yet only when I began to contemplate the Mass did I feel the door begin to give way, a little bit at a time. Gradually, I found myself taken up by the great Christian tradition, and in 1986 I was received into full communion with the Catholic Church. After that, in my study of the Book of Revelation, matters became clearer. “After this I looked, and lo, in heaven an open door!” (Rev 4:1). And the door opened onto . . . Sunday Mass in your parish church.
Now, you may reply that your weekly experience of Mass is anything but heavenly. In fact, it's an uncomfortable hour, punctuated by babies screaming, bland hymns sung off-key, meandering, pointless homilies, and neighbors dressed as if they were going to a ball game, the beach, or a picnic.
Yet I insist that we do go to heaven when we go to Mass, and this is true of every Mass we attend, regardless of the quality of the music or the fervor of the preaching. This is not a matter of learning to “look at the bright side” of sloppy liturgies. This is not about developing a more charitable attitude toward tone-deaf cantors. This is all about something that's objectively true, something as real as the heart that beats within you. The Mass—and I mean every single Mass—is heaven on earth.
I assure you that this is not my idea; it is the Church's. Neither is it a new idea; it's been around since the day John had his apocalyptic vision. Yet it's an idea that hasn't caught on with Catholics in recent centuries—and I can't figure out why. Most of us will admit that we want to “get more” out of the Mass. Well, we can't get any more than heaven itself.
I should say from the start that this book is not a “Bible study.” It is focused on the practical application of just one aspect of the Book of Revelation, and our study is far from exhaustive. Scholars debate endlessly about who wrote the Book of Revelation, and when, and where, and why, and on what sort of parchment. In this book, I will not take up these questions in any great detail. Neither have I written a handbook on the rubrics of the liturgy. Revelation is a mystical book, not a training video or a how-to manual.
Throughout this book, you will probably encounter the Mass in new ways—ways other than the one you're used to attending. Though heaven touches down whenever the Church celebrates the Eucharist, the Mass looks different from place to place and time to time. Where I live, most Catholics are accustomed to the liturgy of the Latin Rite. (In fact, the word “Mass” properly refers only to the Eucharistic liturgy of the Latin Rite.) But there are many Eucharistic liturgies in the Catholic Church: the Ambrosian, Armenian, Byzantine, Chaldean, Coptic, Malabar, Malankar, Maronite, Melkite, and Ruthenian, among others. Each has its own beauty; each has its own wisdom; each shows us a different corner of heaven on earth.
Researching The Lamb's Supper has given me new eyes to see the Mass. I pray that reading this book gives the same gift to you. Together, let's ask for a new heart as well, so that, through our study and prayer, we may grow more and more to love the Christian mysteries that we have from the Father.
The Book of Revelation will show us the Mass as heaven on earth. Now, let's press on, without delay, because heaven can't wait.
ONE
In Heaven Right Now
WHAT I FOUND
AT MY FIRST MASS
THERE I STOOD, a man incognito, a Protestant minister in plainclothes, slipping into the back of a Catholic chapel in Milwaukee to witness my first Mass. Curiosity had driven me there, and I still didn't feel sure that it was healthy curiosity. Studying the writings of the earliest Christians, I'd found countless references to “the liturgy,” “the Eucharist,” “the sacrifice.” For those first Christians, the Bible—the book I loved above all—was incomprehensible apart from the event that today's Catholics called “the Mass.”
I wanted to understand the early Christians; yet I'd had no experience of liturgy. So I persuaded myself to go and see, as a sort of academic exercise, but vowing all along that I would neither kneel nor take part in idolatry.
I took my seat in the shadows, in a pew at the very back of that basement chapel. Before me were a goodly number of worshipers, men and women of all ages. Their genuflections impressed me, as did their apparent concentration in prayer. Then a bell rang, and they all stood as the priest emerged from a door beside the altar.
Unsure of myself, I remained seated. For years, as an evangelical Calvinist, I'd been trained to believe that the Mass was the ultimate sacrilege a human could commit. The Mass, I had been taught, was a ritual that purported to “resacrifice Jesus Christ.” So I would remain an observer. I would stay seated, with my Bible open beside me.
SOAKED IN SCRIPTURE
As the Mass moved on, however, something hit me. My Bible wasn't just beside me. It was before me—in the words of the Mass! One line was from Isaiah, another from the Psalms, another from Paul. The experience was overwhelming. I wanted to stop everything and shout, “Hey, can I explain what's happening from Scripture? This is great!” Still, I maintained my observer status. I remained on the sidelines until I heard the priest pronounce the words of consecration: “This is My body . . . This is the cup of My blood.”
Then I felt all my doubt drain away. As I saw the priest raise that white host, I felt a prayer surge from my heart in a whisper:“My Lord and my God. That's really you!”
I was what you might call a basket case from that point. I couldn't imagine a greater excitement than what those words had worked upon me. Yet the experience was intensified just a moment later, when I heard the congregation recite: “Lamb of God . . . Lamb of God . . . Lamb of God,” and the priest respond, “This is the Lamb of God . . .” as he raised the host.
In less than a minute, the phrase “Lamb of God” had rung out four times. From long years of studying the Bible, I immediately knew where I was. I was in the Book of Revelation, where Jesus is called the Lamb no less than twenty-eight times in twenty-two chapters. I was at the marriage feast th
at John describes at the end of that very last book of the Bible. I was before the throne of heaven, where Jesus is hailed forever as the Lamb. I wasn't ready for this, though—I was at Mass!
HOLY SMOKE!
I would return to Mass the next day, and the next day, and the next. Each time I went back, I would “discover” more of the Scriptures fulfilled before my eyes. Yet no book was as visible to me, in that dark chapel, as the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse, which describes the worship of the angels and saints in heaven. As in that book, so in that chapel, I saw robed priests, an altar, a congregation chanting “holy, holy, holy.” I saw the smoke of incense; I heard the invocation of angels and saints; I myself sang the alleluias, for I was drawn ever more into this worship. I continued to sit in the back pew with my Bible, and I hardly knew which way to turn—toward the action in the Apocalypse or the action at the altar. More and more, they seemed to be the very same action.
I plunged with renewed vigor into my study of ancient Christianity and found that the earliest bishops, the Fathers of the Church, had made the same “discovery” I was making every morning. They considered the Book of Revelation the key to the liturgy, and the liturgy the key to the Book of Revelation. Something powerful was happening to me as a scholar and a believer. The book of the Bible that I had found most perplexing—the Book of Revelation—was now illuminating the ideas that were most foundational to my faith: the idea of the covenant as the sacred bond of the family of God. Moreover, the action that I had considered the supreme blasphemy—the Mass—now turned out to be the event that sealed God's covenant. “This is the cup of My blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.”
I was giddy with the newness of it all. For years I had been trying to make sense of the Book of Revelation as some kind of encoded message about the end of the world, about worship in faraway heaven, about something most Christians couldn't experience while still on earth. Now, after two weeks of daily Mass attendance, I found myself wanting to stand up during the liturgy and say, “Hey, everybody. Let me show you where you are in the Apocalypse! Turn to chapter four, verse eight. You're in heaven right now.”
