Ite Missa Est

Veneration of the Cross at St John the Evangelist, Calgary, Good Friday 2014

‘There is no Mass today. That which is done at the altar is but the summing up of what, in time, was begun yesterday, that Act which although it has its moments in time, is of the Eternal order of reality in itself, is not made more by that immersion in time but only made accessible and available to us men and for our salvation. As in the Incarnation God comes to and adds to man, not man to God, so in Holy Mass, ever is it that our emptiness is filled, our nothingness finds its sole accompaniment in Jesus, our poverty enriched by the Divine Liberality, our frailty charged with power from on high. Is it not in order to emphasise this that the Church today throws us back on the very Act and moment of the first Good Friday, bids us contemplate the Mystery of the Cross in all its stark reality, strips herself bare to leave us face to face with the Crucifix, would have us see with the eye of faith alone the profundity of the Divine Love, the malice of sin, the perfection of the Sacrifice, which exhibits the one and atones for the other, would have us seek nought else but to stand silent, worshipful, penitent, all-loving at the Cross with Mary, Mother of Sorrows, Magdalene, Queen of Penitents, John, prince of lovers, and those other few, known scarcely but by name, to whom. we, indeed, are more akin?

Ite Missa est. No translation is possible save in that word of Jesus, Consummatum est, which our It is finished fails to express. For here is not something finished in the sense of being ended, done with, and laid aside, but in the fullest sense of an act which had not only accomplished all that was necessary, filled out and completed the whole designed, but this in order that it may remain an abiding thing, of permanent value and use. The Cross is not the end of the Gospel but the centre, to which all tends, from which all flows. It is not a cul-de-sac but a way, the Way to Life, to freedom, to peace and joy’.

​Dom Bede Frost OSB, 1875-1947