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The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth?
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Dr. Scott Hahn has a fantastic book on the Mass called The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth. Here it is on Amazon. I'm a former Southern Baptist myself and this book answered every single one of my questions.
Mass became an event I looked forward to when I learned about Catholic teaching on the Eucharist, and then again even more after reading The Lamb’s Supper by Scott Hahn (Amazon link here). Thankfully this was very early in my life as a Catholic.
Focus your prayer on developing virtue. Ask in prayer to become a man of virtue. My simple prayer:
Lord, make me the man you want me to be; make me a man of virtue.
I say it many times a day every day. Sometimes I say it when I’ve done something less than good. Sometimes I say it when I’ve done something good and my pride begins to flare up. Sometimes I think of it spontaneously and I just say it while driving, walking, working, or playing golf. Anyhow, thinking a lot about being a man of virtue, which to me is doing the right thing for the right reasons by God’s grace, has been a real help to me. God bless you.
Relative to the new covenant, shadowed by the old, the new Jerusalem is the heavenly kingdom, the destination of the new exodus we are on, Jesus being the New Moses who is leading us there, from the slavery and bondage of sin.
For a more traditional understanding of the book of revelation, consider the book, “The Lamb’s Supper” by biblical scholar and theologian Dr Scott Hahn.
The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385496591
> The Lamb’s Supper reveals a long-lost secret of the Church: The early Christians’ key to understanding the mysteries of the Mass was the New Testament Book of Revelation. With its bizarre imagery, its mystic visions of heaven, and its end-of-time prophecies, Revelation mirrors the sacrifice and celebration of the Eucharist.
If interested, you can borrow the audiobook for free on Hoopla.
One of my favorite books, that introduced me to the roots of the Mass, <em>The Lamb's Supper</em>, by Scott Hahn. His knowledge and ability to show the Biblical roots of the Mass helped kick-start my love of the liturgy. Despite being raised Catholic, I learned loads that I hadn't known - it is still one of my favorites!
For a more orthodox understanding of the book of revelation, consider the book, “The Lamb’s Supper” by biblical scholar and theologian Dr Scott Hahn.
The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385496591
> The Lamb’s Supper reveals a long-lost secret of the Church: The early Christians' key to understanding the mysteries of the Mass was the New Testament Book of Revelation. With its bizarre imagery, its mystic visions of heaven, and its end-of-time prophecies, Revelation mirrors the sacrifice and celebration of the Eucharist.
If interested, you can borrow the audiobook for free on Hoopla.
It’s something that you should accept on faith / intellectually assent to, if you were to be a devout Catholic, even if you find it difficult to believe.
Ask yourself why you could believe that God and man became one in Christ, or believe in a Virgin birth, or in a resurrection, but the real presence of the Eucharist is unbelievable? All these beliefs are “bizarre”, if you can accept one you can accept the rest.
FYI, the real presence of Christ God in the Eucharist dates to the origin of the Church and was written about as literal in non-scriptural texts provided by the direct successors of the apostles (ie, they knew the apostles, or knew the people that knew the apostles).
The real presence in the Eucharist is intimately tied with our understanding of the mass, the crucifixion, and the ongoing and eternal sacrifices we offer to God for the world. The mass is the perfection of a holy sacrifice, but instead of unblemished lambs we offer Christ himself to the Father, provided by the Holy Spirit. Consider looking into the below book or searching information on the internet to understand the mass.
https://www.amazon.com/Lambs-Supper-Mass-Heaven-Earth/dp/0385496591/ref=nodl_
Focus your search on finding the truth. Since your parents may be a hindrance to your conversion (from their perspective, they are likely trying to protect you), spend time learning about the faith and about the history, especially the church fathers.
You may want to look into “Catholic apologetics”, which is a defense of the faith but a great learning tool for how/why the Church is the true faith. There are tons of resources for free on the internet.
People often recommend the catechism…it’s accessible online but very long and potentially a dry approach; you can be a good Catholic without reading it.
We need the Church for the sacraments, in particular Eucharist and reconciliation. We also need the clergy who offer the sacrifice of the mass which is central to our worship (as with the Orthodox). Focus your attention on these topics.
My suggestion: Focus on learning about the mass, it’s origins and evolution. Consider reading the below book (extremely good). The mass is a fundamentally mystical/transcendent experience, regardless of how “bad/dry/boring/ordinary” it can seem. But this is really the most important thing the Church can offer you and the world.
https://www.amazon.com/Lambs-Supper-Mass-Heaven-Earth/dp/0385496591/ref=nodl_
Of interest is Scott Hahn's book The Lamb's Supper. It compares points of the Roman Mass to elements of heavenly worship as described in the Apocalypse of John (Revelations; because "apocalypsis" is Greek for "revelation"). The same elements can be found in almost all Eastern services as well.
While I will not dissuade you from going to RCIA and exploring Roman Catholicism more, I would suggest also looking at Orthodoxy if only for the experience.
And, the priest gave you a rosary?! I've never had a RC priest do that before. ;) Then again, I was christened a Catholic and went to Mass several times as a kid, though I was raised in the Baptist church.
God bless you in your journey!
It's important to understand the Mass, and Scott Hahn's <strong>The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth</strong> is an excellent way to learn more about it.
So many problems, besides the ones already raised:
- Jesus was Jewish. He would have gone to a temple service, which was highly structured: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3140264?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents ... why would we do any differently?
- Jesus did not say "Listen to Christian rock in remembrance of me." He did not say "Start a Praise Band in remembrance of me." The thing he asked of us is to observe the Eucharist in remembrance of Him (or, if you like the King James translation which says the same thing).
- Look at the churches that split prior to Protestantism. The Catholic mass looks a lot like the service you'd see in Orthodox churches, or Coptic churches. Catholics and Copts split in 451, that is, before the end of the Roman Empire and when the first sack of Rome was still a living memory. A sacramental worship on Sunday is clearly more authentic (as in, true to the original).
- How did the first disciples worship? "They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer."
- The mass was made to represent heaven on earth. What could be more spiritually alive?
- Scott Hahn told a story (it's somewhere on YouTube) about how he tried to discover "authentic" worship, like the early Christians, when he was a Protestant pastor. Scott Hahn reads a ton, so there was a lot of research in how to actually to do this. It lead him down a path that looked a lot like a Catholic mass, including having Lord's Supper every week.
- In every mass, we call to mind Holy Thursday (through the Eucharist), Good Friday (in remembering our sins and in making the sign of the cross) and Easter. What could be more spiritually impactful than calling to mind the most important days in the life of Jesus?
it has everything to do with using the liturgies that have direct antecedents the Jewish worship, were written by the church fathers , and directly incorporate elements of worship in scripture (like incense) over modern rock concert worship.
There are many good books on how the liturgy came to be, here is a more popular one and a more academic one:
https://www.amazon.com/Lambs-Supper-Mass-Heaven-Earth/dp/0385496591
The Lambs Supper by Scott Hahn is good The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385496591/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_A4GDQB0TXQ9WP3H85TQ6
The Lamb's Supper by biblical scholar and theologian Dr Scott Hahn https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385496591/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_8AR107TDKAYFQS4Z08EN
It’s also available to borrow as a free audiobook on Hoopla.
The mass should reflect what it is. For a good intro into what the mass is, I'd very much recommend Scott Hahn's "The Lamb's Supper".
TL;DR : when we're at mass, the Heavens open and we're surrounded by the saints and angels, who worship the Eucharist with us. When we're at mass, we see the crucified Christ on the crucifix above the altar- but He isn't there. Rather, He is what appears to be merely bread and wine, but is truly the crucified Christ on the crucifix.
If you would feel more solemn if the crucifix above the altar was truly the cross and corpus of the Lord, how much more solemn should we feel that the Eucharist is exactly that? The Eucharist is a more true Crucifix than any Crucifix. ( This image sort of demonstrates what I'm trying to say )
Here's what the Catechism says about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass:
>"At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet 'in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.'"
>...by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.
>[We can call the mass] The Holy Sacrifice, because it makes present the one sacrifice of Christ the Savior and includes the Church's offering... The Holy and Divine Liturgy, because the Church's whole liturgy finds its center and most intense expression in the celebration of this sacrament; in the same sense we also call its celebration the Sacred Mysteries. [Emphasis original]
> In the New Testament, the memorial takes on new meaning. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ's Passover, and it is made present the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present.
>The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit:
>>[Christ], our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper "on the night when he was betrayed," [he wanted] to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands) by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re-presented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit.
> The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: "The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different." "And since in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner. . . this sacrifice is truly propitiatory."
I agree with JMJF1209.
There are a few things that can help with boredom:
You could go to Mass a few minutes early and spend the extra time asking Jesus to make you more aware of his presence. He is the Word of God, so he is present in a special way when people are reading the readings out loud, which can make the readings feel more "alive" to us because we are hearing them instead of seeing them. He is present in the tabernacle where there are consecrated hosts. He is present where two or three are gathered in his name (we can guarantee that there will be at least two people at Mass since you're not the priest). Also he will be present on the altar partway through Mass and then people will receive him; you should not, if you have not been to confession after time away; but you can think about what is going on in the other people (usually when we eat food, we turn the food into "us"; but like the "in Soviet Russia" jokes, when we eat Jesus, he turns us a little bit more into him. Practice being more open to the idea of that happening to you, in the future.)
You can learn more about the Mass. There is a Scott Hahn book https://www.amazon.com/Lambs-Supper-Mass-Heaven-Earth/dp/0385496591 for example (fair warning, I have to ignore his sub-headings within a chapter because they are usually puns; and I like puns (as much as the next person who read the then-entire Xanth series in her misspent youth) but they are kind of really jarring to me in this sort of a book.)
You can invest a little bit of time in your relationship with God ("how is your prayer life?") outside of Mass. If we play an instrument at school, we are supposed to practice it every day at home; otherwise we are not going to get much out of a concert; at home, we can sometimes mess around and have fun with it (though yes sometimes it is a tedious-but-necessary slog), and in the concert we all play the same piece together which is (if you are competent) also fun but a different kind of fun; if we never practice, and at the same time we expect the concert to feel like the playing-on-my-own kind of fun, then we are going to be doubly disappointed because we will not really experience either kind of fun. Get a good basic book on prayer such as https://www.amazon.com/God-You-Prayer-Personal-Relationship/dp/0809129353 or https://www.amazon.com/Time-God-Jacques-Philippe/dp/1594170665 (both are short, take a look and pick whichever one appeals to you.)
I recommend this book to go with it. It's small and easy to read.
Dr. Scott Hahn has a fascinating book called the The Lambs Supper. He, along with many commentators over the centuries argue that a large portion of the book of revelation is a "play by play" on the specific way in which the early Christians worshiped as a community, specifically, the celebration of mass.
Revelation is chock full of Jewish Numerology that would have made perfect sense to early Christians but appear like gibberish to any non christian who happened upon it. For Example, 7 is a perfect number in Jewish Tradition. Horns signify Power, and Eyes signify knowledge. The lamb who was slain is Christ who is Omnipotent (Perfect in Power) and Omniscient (Perfect in Knowledge).
Tradition, starting with St. Irenaeus in the 2^nd century, regularly holds that the four living beasts that surround the throne are the 4 evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).
As an aside, the Catholic Church included the Book of Revelation in the Bible by the 4^th Century and it would seem ridiculous for the Church to include it if the book actually claimed that the Church herself was the whore of babylon. And, technically speaking, although Rome sits on 7 hills, the Church's seat of government(the Vatican) sits only on one.
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