The Mass your saint knew
What do a Roman girl of the year 300 and a French nun of 1897 have in common? The same Mass.
What is the traditional Mass?
The traditional Roman Mass, often called the “Old Mass” or “Tridentine Mass”, is the form of worship that shaped the Latin Church for many centuries. Much about it comes as a surprise today: the priest prays facing the same direction as the faithful, eastward, toward the Lord. Long stretches unfold in silence, and Latin, the Church’s ancient tongue, binds countries and centuries together. At its heart stands the sacrifice of Christ made present on the altar. If you experience this Mass for the first time, you need no commentary, only open eyes: its stillness carries you.
A Mass that grew over time
Honestly: a Roman martyr of the year 300 and a nun of 1897 did not hear word for word the same prayers. The Roman Mass grew organically over the centuries. Its heart, however, the Roman Canon, reaches back to the early Church and is prayed in it almost unchanged to this day; within it many of the early martyrs are named. The traditional Mass received the shape still celebrated today when Pope Pius V fixed it definitively in 1570, after the Council of Trent (hence “Tridentine”). Those who lived afterward, Philip Neri or Thérèse of Lisieux, say, knew it in exactly this form; the earlier saints knew the Roman Rite in unbroken continuity: essentially the same Mass, though not in every detail. Not a rigid monument, then, but a living tradition binding the centuries together.
The Holy Mass, explained by Certamen
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About Certamen
Certamen e.V. is a Catholic lay association in the German-speaking world. Its name comes from the Second Letter to Timothy: “I have fought the good fight”, bonum certamen certavi. The association seeks to open up the treasures of Catholic tradition anew, its liturgy, its saints, its teaching.