Enter Rejoice and Come In …

Image featured:The colonnade of St Peter’s reaches out to embrace those coming to the church

This is the first in an occasional series of reflections on the parts of the mass

“Enter, rejoice and come in

Lift up your hearts to the Lord

Today will be a joyful day

Enter, rejoice and come in.”

I remember back when I was a kid, and we were just trying to get used to the revisions of the mass that came out of the Second Vatican Council, that a lot of the time it seemed like we would sing what we were doing. While it didn’t make for especially stirring liturgical music, it might have been a help in reminding us what we were supposed to be about. And the first part of the mass is most definitely about the act of coming together. About the transformation from being individuals going about our lives to becoming a congregation, an assembly at prayer. In fact early Christian churches had courtyards as places that marked that transition.

As we gather we greet old friends, welcome visitors and settle into our places for the Entrance Rites of the mass. In a sense our prayer has already begun in that time of welcoming. And that is the first place that we encounter the Real Presence of Jesus. Our church documents say that Christ is really present in the assembly come together.

Oftentimes in our parishes our gathering is brought together in a musical prelude which marks a time for some quiet prayer before the formal beginning of mass. It all comes together in song as the procession of ministers make their way to the sanctuary. The tone of the entrance rites vary depending on the time of year we are in. For instance in Lent we chant the Kyrie as a way of marking a penitential season while in Easter we have the sprinkling to remember how central baptism is to our celebration of the Lord’s resurrection. It all begins with the sign of the cross and a greeting from the presider taken from the writings of St Paul. It is brought to a close with a prayer called the “collect.” It is a prayer that is meant to literally collect all of our individual prayers and join them into the prayer of the community.

Among those personal prayers is what has come to be known as the “mass intention.” It is an old tradition for the presiding priest (and other concelebrating priests if there are any) to offer the grace that they would receive from the mass for the intention of someone else, often in return for a stipend. Each priest who is participating in a mass may accept a separate intention for that mass, although in our parishes there is usually only one. That individual prayer of the priest is joined with the individual prayer of each person there in the collect to conclude the entrance rites.

So in preparation for mass one of the things to think about is what your “intention” is for that mass. When the presider says “Let us pray” what are you praying for? Those prayers are joined together as we begin the mass and prepare for the Liturgy of the Word.

-Fr Lou