My Favorite Ways to Celebrate Eucharist

 What follows is my own subjectivity. Objectively, every Eucharist is equally, absolutely, objectively, formally Perfect:  participation in and reenactment of the unitary Paschal Mystery: Last Supper, death on Calvary, descent, and Resurrection.  But in our personal subjectivity, we are fragile, distracted, inattentive, preoccupied. It is marvelous that some expressions awaken and enliven us, drawing us into the Mystery.

20. - Mass in a Benedictine monastery: austere, simple, basic.

19. - Any mass with a bishop.

18. -Relaxed, informal celebration in family home, reunion, gathering of some sort.

17. - Mariachi mass, Cuernavaca, Mexico, 1968.

16. - In my pre-Council, altar boy days, and occasionally in my adult life, when I was alone with the priest, in a side altar or crypt, as if the priest was there to bring Christ to me personally, even as I represented the entire Church.

15. - Mass in a beautiful basilica, cathedral, church or chapel.

14. - Altar boy, in the old days, at 6 AM mass: communion before mass for those going to work, 20 minutes.

13. - Mass with tens or hundreds of priests in procession, with rousing music, manifesting the splendid virility of the priesthood.

12. - Old funeral mass, all black, Dies Irae, solemn, silent.

11. - Caribbean mass: lively music, huge smiles, warm spirits.

10. - Neocatechumenal mass: especially Kiko's "crusader music," exhortations, echoes.

9.- Two masses with Pope John Paul and one with Pope Benedict.

8. - Ordination masses and first masses, including "first blessings" and kissing of priestly hands.

7. - Mass in retirement homes of Maryknoll and Jesuit priests, many in wheel chairs...men who have given their entire lives to Christ and the Church.

6. - The Latin Mass: Gregorian chant, tons of altar boys (some in their 70s), up and down about 20 times. 

5. - Charismatic mass: praise music, praying in tongues, passionate preaching, prophesies, raising of hands.

4. - Mass with hundreds of men.

3. - Mass with thousands of people, especially young people and families.

2. - Sunday mass in an ordinary parish.

1. - Daily mass: 3-minute homily, 30 minutes, simple, solemn, serene.

The shape of the mass is exquisitely simple: reception of the word; priestly offering of the sacrifice, reception of communion. It is inexhaustible. It properly is expressed in a multitude of ways. It is source and summit of the Church; center of history; heart of the world; purpose of Being.