October 10, 2021 - Pastor Message
04/24/2024THE MASS EXPLAINED PART 8: SILENCE
“Be silent before the Lord God! For the day of the Lord is near; the Lord has prepared a sacrifice and consecrated his guests” (Zephaniah 1:7).
While not a distinct part of the Mass in the same way as the Liturgy of the Word or the Concluding Rites, periods of silence are built into the Mass throughout. They provide us with opportunities to enter into the Mass more personally and to let the grace of our prayer penetrate more deeply into our hearts and minds, like rain gently falling on a field.
The first opportunity for silence is before we even start the Mass. As we gather together and wait for Mass to start, we can take some time to silently pray and reflect on what we are about to celebrate, especially in the presence of Christ in the tabernacle.
The next opportunity for silence is just before the opening prayer, or collect. The priest invites us into the prayer by saying, “Let us pray.” We then have a moment to silently offer our own personal prayer intentions for that Mass, which the priest then gathers into one in the formal opening prayer.
During the Liturgy of the Word, we ideally take a moment for silent reflection after each reading, thinking about the Word of God that we just heard and what it means and praying to God to help that Word bear rich fruit in our lives and our community. The same is true again after we receive Holy Communion, as we take the time to silently reflect on the mystery of Christ’s Body and Blood that we have received and pray asking God that the grace of the sacrament may grow in us, our families, and our world.
The final moment of silence comes after Mass is over. While it can be difficult to be silent as everyone is greeting each other and moving toward the door, it can be a helpful spiritual practice to spend a few moments of quiet prayer and reflection after the recessional hymn concludes, even doing so once you get home if the church is a bit too hectic. This silence offers the chance to go back over the whole Mass in our minds, gathering all of the graced moments together in our thoughts and prayers, and thanking God for the blessings he has given us in that Mass as well as preparing us to celebrate them again at the next Mass. In our noisy, busy world, silence is a rare and precious commodity. May we take advantage of the silence built into the Mass to be refreshed, renewed, and reenergized by the grace of God, who comes to us in the silence.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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