Maria Steen
The View
Pope Francis’ recent Urbi et Orbi address was the most poignant moment of his pontificate. There was something profoundly moving about the emptiness of St Peter’s Square. Next to a crucifix that witnessed the defeat of a plague in Rome in 1522, Christ’s Vicar stood alone in the rain and, in the darkening evening, implored God to come to our aid once more.
Across Ireland and the world, priests, in solitude, are doing the same. The Mass is being celebrated in empty churches. Priests are reciting a liturgy that invites responses from a congregation that is not there. And though it seems strange to us, it underlines the fact that the value of the Mass does not depend on us, nor on our participation. Rather, it is the other way around. It is we who depend on the Mass.
Oftentimes, we can be tempted into thinking that the mark of a ‘good Mass’ is the quality of the homily, readers, choir or the size of the congregation. But these days remind us of the true purpose of the Mass: to adore God as our creator, to thank him for his favours, to atone for our sins and to ask God for his blessing. In other words, the Mass is directed towards God, not towards us.
Benefit
While ordinarily we are required, under pain of mortal sin, to assist at Mass on Sunday, this is not to make the Mass efficacious, but rather for the benefit that we derive from it, and in recognition of the eternal debt we owe to Christ for redeeming us by dying once and for all on Calvary.
In these days, when the obligation to assist at Mass has been lifted, it is the priest who continues to adore God, to thank him, to atone and to ask his blessing on our behalf. The Mass, even when celebrated in private, remains as important as ever.
More than a century ago, confirmation of this fact came from a surprising source.
In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, the Irish secular courts were confronted with the question of whether a bequest of money for the saying of Masses could be ‘charitable’ within the meaning of the law, when the Masses were to be celebrated in private. The answer depended on whether a private Mass could confer a ‘public benefit’. Initially, the courts said that it could not.
Charitable gift
In 1876, the Irish Court of Exchequer Chamber decided the case of Attorney-General vs Delaney. It held that a bequest to Dr Delaney, the Bishop of Cork, to have Masses said for the repose of the souls of the donor and her deceased relatives, was not a valid charitable gift.
The court was led by the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Christopher Palles. Palles, who would go on to become the longest-serving judge in Irish legal history, is a fascinating figure in his own right. He was educated at Trinity College and went on to enjoy a stellar career at the Bar and then on the Bench. That much would have been unexceptional in his day. What was unusual about Palles was that he was a Catholic, and a devout Catholic at that.
He lived in the house (still standing) at the junction of Leeson Street and Fitzwilliam Place in Dublin, in which he had his own private oratory. Yet in Delaney’s case he accepted that the requirement of ‘public benefit’ necessary to make a bequest charitable was missing in the case of private Masses. It could come only from the ‘edification’ of a congregation.
In 1906, the issue arose again in the case of O’Hanlon vs Logue, in which the Irish Court of Appeal overturned the decision in Delaney’s case. Palles, who was again a member of the court, gave a lengthy judgment explaining why his opinion had changed. He said: “The element of charity, in its most extensive, indeed its truest sense…is piety to God. There is no doubt that, according to the Roman Catholic faith, each celebration of the Mass involves the most perfect act of charity.”
In his concurring judgment, the Lord Chancellor, Sir Samuel Walker, said: “It is settled by authority which binds us that where there is a direction to celebrate Mass in public, the gift is a valid charitable one; but what makes it charitable is the performance of an act of the Church of the most solemn kind, which results in benefit to the whole body of the Faithful, and the results of that benefit cannot depend upon the presence or absence of a congregation.”
Let us now give thanks for the thousands of loyal priests who, in our country and around the world, continue to celebrate the Mass”
The holy sacrifice of the Mass is offered to God; its efficacy is undiminished by the fact that we are physically absent. This aspect of our Faith is perhaps most obvious in the liturgy of the traditional Latin Mass, in which the priest only rarely turns towards the congregation (if present). He is the leader of the Faithful assembled, representing the people of God, with all oriented in the same direction: their gaze fixed on the altar and towards God.
Let us now give thanks for the thousands of loyal priests who, in our country and around the world, continue to celebrate the Mass as the most perfect act of charity, for the benefit of the whole body of the Faithful.
Cynical eyes might have perceived Pope Francis as a frail, old man, speaking to no-one. But when he carried the Blessed Sacrament into the Roman night to confer a benediction upon the city and the world, the eyes of Faith saw the beauty, salvific power and healing strength that the Eucharist, administered by God’s chosen men, brings to the world.
In 1876, Bishop Delaney gave this evidence to the court, which did not carry the day then, but did so 30 years later, and ever after: “The Mass is a true and real sacrifice offered to God by the priest, not in his own person only, but in the name of the Church whose minister he is. Every Mass, on whatsoever occasion said, is offered to God in the name of the Church to propitiate his anger, to return thanks for his benefits and to bring down his blessings upon the whole world.”
Amen. Never in our lifetime has the Mass been needed more.