The Purpose of the Mass

[00:00:01] The Mass is the most important activity Catholics engage in. Yet I've found that most Catholics don't really understand its purpose. We're going to break that down today. Welcome to crisis. [00:00:28] So I think if you ask the average Catholic what's the most important spiritual activity you can engage in, I think most would say the Mass. I think Catholics instinctively recognize how important attending Mass is. I'm talking about, of course, practicing Catholics, Catholics in name only, who. Who don't attend Mass obviously don't know how important it is. [00:00:49] That being said, though, I think there are a lot of misunderstandings of what the actual purpose of Mass is. And I think it's. I think there's a lot of reasons for these misunderstandings. Poor catechesis, the way Mass is celebrated, just our general misunderstanding of God and how things work with our relationship with God. But I do think that it's important, very important, that we understand the most important thing we do. We understand why we're doing it. [00:01:20] What is the purpose of Mass? I know as a Catholic myself for over 30 years now, I've. [00:01:26] I might have known book knowledge when I first converted about what Mass is for, but I think it's taken time over the decades to really understand its purpose. So that's what I wanted to talk about today. Now, before I get into the purpose of the Mass, let me just kind of debunk some of the more common things that people think are the purpose of the Mass. Now, they might not explicitly say this, but they act like it and they kind of imply it, and they do things based upon these misunderstandings. So the first thing, the Mass is not the Mass is not. The purpose of the Mass is not community building. [00:02:03] It's not an opportunity for Catholics to get together and to build up their parish or build up their relationships with their fellow Catholics. That's not the reason we go to Mass. [00:02:18] This, I think, is a very common misunderstanding of many Catholics. They kind of think that we get together on Sunday mornings because that's what groups do. I mean, the Kiwanis Club meets, the Freemasons meet regularly. The whoever meets regularly. The Knights of Columbus meets regularly. You know, the parish should meet regularly, and so we'll do it at Mass. That's not the purpose of the Mass, though. [00:02:40] The purpose of the Mass is also not catechesis. [00:02:44] This is another common misunderstanding, particularly as it applies to the homily. People think, okay, and this is, by the way, this, I think, is a. [00:02:54] A misunderstanding that is influenced by Protestantism, because often Protestant services, their Sunday morning services often are heavily into the teaching. Like you'll see sometimes you'll drive by Protestant church and you'll see on their board it'll say like a six part series on the Book of Revelation or whatever the case may be. [00:03:20] And it's clear that this is for during their, their service on Sunday mornings, what they would call their worship service. [00:03:29] It's a teaching opportunity. And if you look at how long the homily is their sermon is compared to the rest of the service, you can see that's the primary purpose, that's not the primary purpose of the Mass. You might learn something. The priest in his homily might give you some very good catechesis that might help you. [00:03:47] But that's not the purpose of Mass. [00:03:50] Another purpose, another non purpose, another thing that's not the purpose of Mass is evangelization. [00:03:56] Now I've, as you probably know, I've been involved in evangelization for many years, Directory of Evangelization, wrote book evangelization. And this is something I think is not explicit. Like I don't think most Catholics would say, oh, I think purpose of the Mass evangelization. But they act like it because they're so consumed with what will people think, especially those who aren't well catechized, aren't practicing Catholics when they come to Mass. What will they think? We have to make sure that Mass is celebrated in such a way that it doesn't turn them off, that it attracts them to the Catholic faith. That's not the purpose of Mass though. It's not evangelization. As somebody who's who believes very deeply in the importance of evangelization, the Mass is not about evangelism. I wrote an article years ago at 1 Peter 5, I want to say maybe 10 years ago now about this and I go back to it every once in a while because I see this come up over and over again. So the purpose of Mass is not evangelization. [00:05:00] The purpose of the mess also is not to make people feel good. I don't think many people would say this explicitly, but you feel like that's what they're actually thinking. [00:05:07] Like they are going because they want to feel good. Like the reason they go is because it gives them like a spiritual warm fuzzy or something like that. [00:05:17] And in fact, if it doesn't give them a spiritual warm fuzzy, they might be upset at the priest who celebrated the Mass or maybe the music director who didn't give uplifting music, didn't perform uplifting music, whatever the case may be. [00:05:33] And so that's not the purpose of the Mass. Your feelings are actually irrelevant to the purpose of the Mass. [00:05:41] Now, I want to be clear. [00:05:43] All these things I said, that is not the purpose of the Mass. They might be corollaries to the Mass. In other words, somebody might be evangelized by going to the Mass. The famous story, of course, of the. [00:05:58] The representatives of Prince Vladimir back in the, in the 10th century, who are going to the different places and they go to Constantinople and they see the Divine Liturgy and they come back and they say, we don't really know what that was, but we didn't know if we were in heaven on earth because it was so beautiful. They were evangelized by a beautiful liturgy, in other words. And you know, I know people like this today, they go to a sublime Mass and it evangelizes them, but that's not the purpose of the Mass. It just happens to do that. It's a corollary. Same with catechesis. You might get a good homily, you might feel good after a Mass spiritually, that's okay, that's good. [00:06:41] It might build the community. [00:06:44] The community might grow stronger and closer together, particularly at donuts afterwards. [00:06:51] The point is, I'm not saying these things should not happen at a Mass. What I am saying, though, is the purpose of the Mass is none of these things. And in fact, I would argue that if a parish or a priest makes that the purpose of the Mass, then it won't happen and neither will the other things. The corollaries only happen when the Mass is celebrated for the proper purpose. When that happens, then these other corollaries could happen. Now it might not happen. I mean, you might have a beautiful. A Mass, beautifully said, that's done, all the right reasons. And nobody's evangelized, nobody feels good or whatever. I mean, those are things that are subjective and they depend on a lot of factors. [00:07:39] But if you, if your Mass, for example, in the Protestant world, there's something called seeker friendly services. [00:07:47] The point is, you make the service such that seekers, people who are not believing Christians, it's friendly to them so that they might be evangelized. [00:07:56] If you make a seeker friendly Mass, you're not gonna. It's not gonna work. It's not gonna really work to evangelize or do any of the other things. So you don't want those as the purpose, but they could be corollaries of what? What when you celebrate the Mass. So what is the purpose of the Mass? [00:08:12] Well, technically, there's four. There's four purposes. [00:08:17] And the easiest way to Remember them is the acronym acts, A, C, T, S. [00:08:23] What does that stand for? [00:08:25] Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving and Supplication. So Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving, Supplication. So let's go through each of the four. [00:08:37] The first is Adoration. It comes first for a reason, because that's how you spell Acts. No, it really is. It's the idea. It's. This is the primary purpose is to give supreme worship and honor to God. [00:08:49] This is the key point that we so many people have forgotten today is that the Mass is not man centered, it's God centered. [00:09:01] Everything about the Mass should be directed towards God. [00:09:07] It's the whole. You might hear it said, like the horizontal versus the vertical. The horizontal meaning you direct it towards the people in the pews, you direct it towards those who are attending. The vertical, you're directing it towards God. The Mass is always directed towards God. [00:09:22] Again, there might be corollaries that help the people in the pews. They should be. [00:09:26] But the purpose, the primary purpose is this. A, the adoration, giving supreme worship and honor to God. Now what does that mean? [00:09:35] It essentially, and there's different ways you can do it, but essentially what it's saying is, is that in the Mass we are acknowledging God is God and we are not. I think it was St Catherine Siena who said that. [00:09:49] Somebody in the comments, correct me if I'm wrong, if it was some other saint, but I think it was St. Catherine who said that first. [00:09:53] The idea though is that we acknowledge our complete and utter dependence upon God. That without him we are literally nothing. [00:10:04] If he did not keep us in existence, we would cease to exist immediately. [00:10:09] Plus all the many things that he has given us and we, we adore. But it's even, not even that. I take that back, not my last statement. [00:10:19] It's not as much that we, we, we are. [00:10:22] We worship and honor him because of what he's done for us. We worship and honor him simply because of who he is. [00:10:30] He is God. He is existence itself. He is essence itself. He is everything. [00:10:36] And so that's what we're doing. We and our worship, of course, is pitiful in comparison to who he is. That's of course why he gave us worship in the Mass in which Christ is the priest who's actually celebrating it. Like what I can. [00:10:54] My acknowledgment of God's greatness. My honor given to God is nothing in comparison to what he actually deserves. [00:11:01] And no human could create a worship or honor of God that really would be worthy of God. Now, it doesn't mean we shouldn't do. [00:11:10] Just means that we can't do anything worthy of Him. However, in his great mercy, he has given us something that is worthy of him, and that's the holy sacrifice of the Mass. [00:11:20] And so when we go to Mass, our thoughts should not be, what will I get out of this? Oh, I hope the music is good. I hope the music uplifts me. I hope Father hits one out of the park on his homily. It really should be as should be or thought should be. I want to glorify God. I want to give him honor and praise. I want to acknowledge him as a supreme creator of the universe. That's the primary purpose. That's number one, adoration. But there are some other purposes of the Mass. The second is to see contrition. [00:11:52] So in contrition, basically what we're doing is we're saying we're sorry. [00:11:59] We're. [00:12:00] This is focus, this purpose is focused on contrition for sins. We are acknowledging we're not worthy, like I said, of giving him worship, that he deserves that we are sinners. [00:12:12] We cannot truly be in his presence without his mercy. [00:12:20] You see this in potential right at the beginning of Mass. I think it's. Personally, I think it's more clear in the traditional Latin rite in the Novus Ordo. I also think it's very clear in the divine, Eastern divine liturgies, because in. In the. Yeah, the prayers, it's for the altar in the tlm in which the priest first acknowledges his own sinfulness, but also the people do through Psalm 42. And then, of course, in the Divine Liturgy, you have all the Lord, have mercy, Lord. I mean, they're saying, lord, have mercy a million times. [00:12:49] They're acknowledging their sinfulness. [00:12:51] And so the sacrifice of the Mass, the purpose is to basically call upon God's mercy, to ask for his forgiveness for our sins and in a certain way, to make satisfaction for the debt caused by sin. Now, I know people get hung up about this. You know, some of the Eastern. Our Eastern brothers and sisters get hung up about this. But also, like, I think some moderns, like, oh, God, you know, a debt to God that doesn't, you know, it's very legalistic and stuff like that. But the fact is our sin does cause a certain debt on the ledger. I'm going to just channel St. Anselm here and embrace it, because I do think it's. I do think you can go too far with this terminology, with this way of looking at things. But I still think it's a very valid way of looking at things in that when we sin, we have created a debt, so to speak, we owe to God. And unfortunately, Saint Anselm makes very clear we can't repay it because we have sinned against an infinite being. [00:13:50] And so it would take infinite satisfaction to repay that debt, something we cannot do. [00:13:56] However, the God man, Jesus Christ, who is both God and man, he can. He can make that satisfaction. How does he do that? His death on the cross. [00:14:08] Now, the Mass, of course, is that representation of his death on Calvary. It's not a new sacrifice. It's not a repeat of the sacrifice. It's a renewal. In a sense, it's a representation. [00:14:23] I tell young people, when I'm teaching my kids or other young people, I always like to say it's kind of like a time machine. When you go to Mass, you're going back to the foot of Calvary and you are participating, actually the Last Supper and the foot of Calvary. The whole action is one action. It's one action, the Last Supper, Calvary, and you're entering into that. [00:14:46] And so that is making satisfaction for your sins. And so we contrition, acknowledging that we need to make satisfaction for our sins and that the Mass is the proper way in which that happens. And so contrition is the second purpose. So we had adoration. We have contrition. [00:15:03] The T. The third one is Thanksgiving. [00:15:07] I think most Catholics these days know, because it's repeated ad nauseam, that the word Eucharist means in Greek, Thanksgiving. [00:15:16] And so in this purpose, we are. I mean, that's why it's called the Eucharist, is because we're giving Thanksgiving to God. [00:15:24] We are thanking him for all he's done. I mentioned in the first purpose, the adoration, that's not really in that time, we're kind of acknowledging what he's done for us. We just acknowledging him who is who he is, not necessarily what he's done for us in Thanksgiving. That third purpose, it's much more about what has he done for us. And that's the acknowledgment more deeply of we wouldn't exist without Him. We wouldn't have any of the good things that we have without Him. We wouldn't have the bad things that we should be thankful for. Here's a real challenge for us Catholics. When you're thanking God at Mass or anytime, you should thank him for the bad things, too, because they're opportunities to serve Him. They're opportunities to prove your love for Him. They're opportunities to. If you've fallen down, to get back up. [00:16:14] I think you can even thank God for your sins. [00:16:18] I think you can thank God for your sins. I've seen spiritual writers say this, so it must be true only in the sense that you're thanking God, that your sins allowed you to recognize how weak you are and how much you need Christ. [00:16:33] And your sins also are an opportunity to get back up and prove your love to God, that you're willing to get back up and serve Him. [00:16:41] But anyway, so Thanksgiving, though, we thank him for our life, for all of creation. We thank him for his redemption of humanity. [00:16:50] We thank him for all the good things that flow from Him. [00:16:54] All the bad things that happen in life are not from him, but he allows them, and often he allows them. So good things might happen. So we're just Thanksgiving. [00:17:04] And this is something I, you know, our Lord really did emphasize and I think we de. Emphasize today. I mean, think about the. The pair. Not the parable, but the story of the 10 lepers who were healed and only one came back. [00:17:16] And Christ praised the one who came back. Christ did not praise people very often, but he praised that one, that man, because he gave thanks. [00:17:26] This, honestly, I feel. I think it's true for me, I think personally, but I just think in general, for everybody, if we had a more thankful heart, I honestly think most of our. [00:17:37] A lot of our problems would go away in the sense that we cause our own problems by just not being thankful for things. So anything goes bad, we're just immediately, like, upset and complaining about it. But really, we should be thankful for the opportunity to serve God in whatever he gives us, whatever he allows to happen to us. So Thanksgiving. So adoration, contrition, Thanksgiving. The fourth and final purpose is supplication. [00:18:02] Another word for this is petition. Asking God. [00:18:07] There's nothing wrong with asking God for anything. One of the things I love about the story of the wedding at Canaan is this is God's first miracle. Christ's first miracle. [00:18:18] And he does it for something that is just like a convenience in a sense. [00:18:24] I mean, to solve an embarrassing situation. [00:18:27] It's not like some, like he healed a paralytic rose, raised somebody from the dead, or stopped the storm or anything like that. [00:18:37] He just was like, hey, you know, these people are in a pinch. They're going to be embarrassed. I'll help them out. [00:18:42] Our lady was involved in that as well. But the point is to. This is that we can ask God for anything. Now, obviously, it would always should Be with the attitude of asking God his will be done. But it's okay to ask for specific things. In fact, the more specific you are, the better. But in the mask, we ask God generally for general contentions for the church, for the world, for peace, for the parish, things like that. But all. And that's kind of wrapped up in the Mass part of the prayers for the Mass. [00:19:16] But also we have our personal intentions when we go to Mass, we absolutely should be pouring out our personal intentions to God. Maybe you have a child who's sick, maybe you have a relative who's fallen away from the faith, maybe your job, you lost your job or you have a crappy job and you don't. You really want to change jobs. Whatever it is, the Mass is a perfect opportunity to ask God, because that's one of the purposes, is to ask God for things. [00:19:41] Supplication, petition. [00:19:43] So those are the four purposes of Mass. But I think honestly, this is kind of to repeat, but I would say we can kind of put that all together and say, the purpose of the Mass is to glorify God. The purpose of the Mass is to glorify God. That's why we're there. [00:20:01] Another way to put this is it's not about you, it's not about me. [00:20:06] When I go to Mass, it's not about, okay, let's make sure Eric Sammons is taken care of. Let's make sure he's happy with how things go. [00:20:16] Let's make sure he walks away feeling good about himself or more educated about the faith. No, it's 100% about God. [00:20:24] This is why, I mean, everybody who follows this podcast at all knows I attend traditional at Mass. [00:20:32] I think the traditional at Mass, I wish it was the norm, it was the ordinary form, whatever you want to call it, of the Roman Rite. [00:20:40] But I would say this no matter what, even beyond that, I would say that I think is understanding the purpose of Mass is why it's a tragedy that Mass is not celebrated ad orientum everywhere. If you look at the history of the liturgy, it's always celebrated at Orientum, both East and West. This is not some modern thing that came up. It's, it's, it's ad orientum is the way Mass is celebrated. Why? [00:21:04] Because we've always understood that the purpose of Mass is to glorify God. That's God centered. God directed. Not man centered, not man directed. As soon as you turn the priest around the face the people, you have sent a humongous signal to everybody there, to the priest and to the people. [00:21:24] It's about us. It's about. Because we're having a conversation. [00:21:28] We're having this communal meal. We're just kind of hanging out together. [00:21:33] The priest, when he's celebrating mass, who is he talking to? [00:21:36] He's not talking to you. He's not talking to me. He's talking to God, which is why he should be turned around, facing the altar in the same direction, facing as the people, so that he is directed and it's very clear to everybody. He's talking to God. He's not talking to me. He's not talking to you. [00:21:55] I, I've been asked this before, and I say if there's one thing, only one thing you could change about how the masses celebrate, you're not allowed to say, okay, just go to tlm. You're not allowed to say, yeah, do this, do that. That always has been the thing. I would say, yes, I know there's other things that are important, like communion in the hand. I wouldn't, I wouldn't want that. And things like that. Altar rails, all this stuff. But it'd be adorantum, which is why it's so sad that bishops have, have like banned it basically in the Novus Ordo. I mean, a bunch of bishops basically are like, you can't celebrate adorantum because that's. I think that's, that's a travesty. Because I do think it is teaching the people by their by action that the mass is man centered. It's man directed, not God centered. [00:22:41] Another thing I want to note is because it's man centered. I mean, because it's God centered, not man centered. [00:22:49] I also think it's important to recognize it doesn't matter if the mass offends people. [00:22:57] In fact, I would say the mass properly celebrated probably will at times offend people. Now, the purpose isn't to offend people. [00:23:04] If you're a priest or something, you're trying to offend people. You know, that's kind of silly. It's kind of dumb. [00:23:11] But there should be people. When I say offend, I mean people who are just like turned off by it. [00:23:17] I mean, you hear this not infrequently. People these days, people will go to the traditional mass, for example, and they're just like, ah, that was. Yeah, I didn't like it. Couldn't hear what the priest was saying. It was all in Latin. I didn't understand it. I couldn't follow along, okay, I could talk to you and kind of help you understand it better. So those Things weren't the case. But ultimately, I don't care. [00:23:44] Ultimately, that's a you problem. [00:23:46] That's not a God problem. It's not a church problem. It's not me problem. It's a you problem. [00:23:51] Now, that being said, of course, in our efforts at catechesis and evangelization, we should be teaching Catholics, we should be helping non Catholics to understand the purpose of the Mass, why we do things the way we do, so that those things won't happen. [00:24:05] But we don't change the Mass. That's the key. We work to change the person. [00:24:11] That's ultimately what Catholicism is all about, is changing the people, changing me, changing you. [00:24:18] We don't change the Mass in order to make people more comfortable. [00:24:23] And there's no question modern people, Catholics particularly, who have never attended traditional at Mass, and their whole experience of Mass has been the Novus Ordo celebration irreverently and kind of man focused. [00:24:35] When they go to tlm, it's understandable that they are initially put off. I know some are not, but some are. It's understandable. And like, don't judge them for that. [00:24:45] Don't be like, okay, these are terrible people. No, it's because of their poor formation. It's not their fault. [00:24:51] But the key is, like I said, we don't change the Mass for them. We, we improve their formation. [00:24:58] Another thing, a couple other things I wanted to mention about the Mass that I think are important, that aren't exactly the purpose of the Mass, but they're important aspects of understanding the Mass. The first one is the whole debate I've heard for years between is the Mass a meal or a sacrifice? [00:25:17] Traditionally, of course, the emphasis has always been on the sacrifice. In recent decades, it's been much more on the meal, the communal meal. [00:25:24] I've always thought, and you know, call me a modernist if you want to, I've always thought it's just both. [00:25:31] It is, yes, it is a sacrifice, obviously, but it's also a communal meal, because it's what I was saying before. [00:25:39] What is the Last Supper? The Last Supper is where Jesus gives us. He begins his. His passion sacrifice that he's going to offer up on Calvary. It begins there, does not begin at Calvary. It begins at the Last Supper. [00:25:55] And what he's doing is he is instituting the means by which we participate in. We can receive that redemption. Remember, Christ redeemed the whole world on the cross. Every human being who's ever lived, ever will live, was redeemed at Calvary. But redemption does not Mean salvation. [00:26:14] Redemption just means that salvation is now open to these everybody. [00:26:20] Calvary made redemption, made salvation open. Thereby it redeemed us. Salvation, though, is us participating in accepting that and, and uniting ourselves to Christ so that we can receive salvation. Well, how do we do that? Primarily in the Mass, which is through receiving the Eucharist. It's in receiving the Eucharist that we enter into that. And so, yes, the Mass is a communal meal. Somebody clipped that and called me a heretic. That's cool, A modernist. But Mass is obviously also a sacrifice. And I do think in modern times, the emphasis has been too much on the meal. And so I do think we should go back to emphasizing the sacrificial nature of the Mass. That's why I think it'd be good to call it the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass more commonly. So just to remind people it's not just the a meal. It is a meal in which we receive the Eucharist of body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ so that we can participate in his sacrifice on Calvary. [00:27:19] Another thing I, I think is I, I've. This is more recent for me. I mentioned this on my interview with Keith Nestor a couple weeks ago. I guess it was about a month ago or so, but I thought about this more and more over the, over the past few years, is that Mass is a spiritual battle. [00:27:37] It's a spiritual battle. It's our greatest weapon. [00:27:41] Our whole life is combat. This is something we have to recognize. We live very cushy lives, especially us American or Western Catholics, modern. [00:27:51] But Mass is ultimately a spiritual batter. I like to think for those of you who attend churchlight Mass, you know, like on Sunday, the Sunday Mass, we do the asparagus beforehand and then in the priest in different vestments. And then what he does is he goes off to the side, but up at the altar in the sanctuary, and he changes his vestments. He puts on the vestments for Mass. [00:28:15] I read somewhere, and it stuck with me, the idea of seeing that and this happens in the Eastern liturgies as well. [00:28:22] He's putting on his armor to go into battle for us. [00:28:26] He's going in and he's going to battle Satan. [00:28:31] That's what the Mass ultimately. I mean, the Mass ultimately glorify God. But what I'm saying is, is like it's a battle against Satan because we're living in a constant combat. And so this is our way. We're bringing out the heavy artillery and by glorifying God, adoring him, saying we're Sorry for our sins, thanking him and asking for his help. [00:28:51] We're combating Satan. [00:28:55] I know a priest who, after the McCarrick scandal, he changed at his main. He had. He celebrated Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo. And he. And the main Mass, it was the Latin, was the Novus Ordo on Sundays, and he changed it to the Latin Mass. And part of the reason was he felt that we need, he needed, like to really bring out the spiritual big guns. [00:29:16] And so. But the Mass is a spiritual batter battle and it is our great greatest weapon. And we, I said on another podcast recently that how the rosary is our greatest weapon, but that's for us lay people personally, that we can do at any time. But the Mass is really our greatest battle. We need to recognize that. And when we're going into Mass, when we're going to Mass, we are supporting the priest, so to speak, as he battles the devil to glorify God. And so look at it as a spiritual battle as well. In which this is, this is all the problems in the church today, all the problems in the world today. [00:29:53] The Mass properly celebrated, everybody participating in the way you're supposed to participate, active participation in a true meaning of it. [00:30:03] Not everybody goes up in the altar and lecter or eucharistic minister or whatever, but we're entering into the mysteries internally, you know, in our souls. [00:30:13] That's how we defeat these things first and foremost. Yes, that does mean we'll go out and we'll do things like podcasts or whatever, but. But ultimately it's the Mass. [00:30:23] So why does all this matter? [00:30:25] Because all. Because you see a lot of activity in the church at parishes. [00:30:32] You hear about conferences, you hear about evangelization efforts, you see books written, you have podcasts given, you have people on X defending the faith. You see all this stuff. I engage in a lot of that myself. You know that none of it matters though, without a foundation in the Mass, without a foundation of properly celebrating the Mass, and in fact it has real direct consequences. I think I've told this story before. I can't remember though. [00:31:00] I was director of Evangelization for diocese in Florida for five years. [00:31:04] One of my biggest frustrations was we would hold an event, we would maybe have a talk at a parish, we would do some outreach to reach out to fallen away Catholics. We might have a conference or whatever the case may be, and you would get somebody or more, hopefully more than one person who would be more interested in their faith. Either they were kind of practicing, now they're going to recommit or they didn't practice, now they're going to come to the church, whatever the case may be. [00:31:29] And the problem was I knew nine times out of 10, by nine, nine out of 100, they're going to a parish that was lukewarm and how it celebrated the Mass and that was going to have a great impact on their faith. [00:31:45] So I get them, not me, the Holy Spirit and others, you know, who were involved would get them ready to take a deeper step into the faith. And then that Sunday they would go to a Mass that was very man centered and how it was celebrated. [00:32:01] And I just feel like over time I knew that they, that would, they would lose a lot of what they, what they had potentially gained and they would fall away again. [00:32:13] And so not only does the Mass give us, you know, the whole idea of source and summit of our faith, not only does it give us the grounding, the, the, the graces we need to go out and do things to help the church, help the world, but also they are what, when we're bringing people to, back to the church, they are what helps them to grow in holiness themselves. [00:32:39] And so it really does shape us. And I do think how the Mass is celebrated, the subjective elements, how the priest celebrates it, the music like that, I really do think it, it has a big impact. [00:32:51] I've said this before and I'll say it again. [00:32:54] Attending the traditional Latin Mass regularly has changed my view of God. [00:33:01] Now I was never, I mean, I was Protestant and so I did have a little bit of the Jesus is my best friend attitude. As a Protestant, the church I went to wasn't so into that. But at the same time, you know, I definitely had it. [00:33:15] And as a Catholic, I, my first 15 years or so, it was still there and it was kind of talked about. I mean, that's kind of how I was presented to faith by a lot of people. [00:33:28] But attending the church like Mass really changed a lot in that this idea of, you know, he is God and I am not. It got me to read more traditional spirituality books, which of course emphasize that a lot more. But just that idea of God isn't just my friend. He is the creator of the universe, he's also the judge and he is all holy. And what does his holiness mean? I mean, everything that happens in traditional at Mass, it recognizes the holiness of God. And I think when you just look at him as like your buddy who's going to help you out when you're having a little problem, you know, footprints in the sand or whatever, it's like, it's very hard to see His All Holiness and how far away we are from it. And so if we understand the purpose of the Mass and we attend a parish where the priests in the parish understand the purpose of Mass, I really do think it can impact us greatly. And so I think it really matters. And so because of this, I think the liturgy wars matter. People always say, oh, there's a liturgy wars always going on online. [00:34:28] Well, you fight about what's. I'd rather have liturgy wars than fights about whether or not, I don't know, women should always wear skirts or something like that. Something I don't really care that much about. Don't get me wrong. I believe in modesty and all that stuff. But the point is, is, like, the liturgy, the Mass is the most important thing we do. So, yeah, I'm gonna fight about it some. Now. Obviously, we do it in charity, and we don't personally attack people or anything that. But, yes, it is important to defend and to explain what the liturgy is right here. I mean, this. This podcast episode is, in a sense, a salvo in the liturgy wars. [00:35:08] And so I do think it's important because it's the most important thing that we do. We can't just act like, oh, I'm not going to care about that. I just. My Mass is valid. [00:35:16] That's all that matters. No, it matters a lot more than just it being valid. It matters that it is. [00:35:24] It glorifies God, that gives glory to God. That's ultimately the most important thing. So, okay, I'm going to wrap it up there. I just. I've been feeling this is an important topic to cover because I just feel like I see all the time Catholics who don't understand how important the Mass is and what the. But more importantly, what the purpose of the Mass is. So I think we understand that we go a long way to reforming the church and overcoming the crisis that's in the church and in the world today. [00:35:51] Okay, that's it for now. Until next time, everybody. God love you. And remember the POD.