January 13, 2026 // Columns

The Transformative Power of Our Participation at Mass

Father Mark Hellinger

On the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, we will pray this wonderful Prayer over the Offerings: “Grant us, O Lord, we pray, that we may participate worthily in these mysteries, for whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is accomplished. Through Christ Our Lord.” The other time that we hear this prayer is during the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday. There are three basic points of the prayer worth considering: participation, celebration, and the work of our redemption.

Indeed, if we think of the work of our redemption, we are put into the heart of the Christian mystery: the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. Liturgy – the word itself – means a public work, a work for the people. In this sense, we can recall the important teaching of Lumen Gentium that the Mass is the source and summit of the Christian life, precisely because at Mass the work of our redemption is accomplished in a unique way. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it in paragraph 1069, “Through the liturgy Christ, our redeemer and high priest, continues the work of our redemption in, with, and through His Church.” The passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ are the acts by which redemption has been accomplished, and so we are redeemed only by participation in that mystery.

This is why it is important for us to understand what the celebration actually is. In some catechesis, Mass can often be reduced to the reenactment of the Last Supper, which limits it terribly. In fact, the use of this Prayer over the Offerings in the Holy Thursday liturgy helps draw this out even further. This is because the Mass of the Lord’s Supper is not an isolated event – it seamlessly flows into the transfer of the Most Blessed Sacrament and into the Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday, notably lacking a dismissal rite.

Mass, the Church’s central liturgy, is the celebration of the whole Paschal Mystery – including the Last Supper but also the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Son of God. It is Christ who celebrates the Paschal Mystery, as the Catechism also makes clear: “‘Seated at the right hand of the Father’ and pouring out the Holy Spirit on His Body which is the Church, Christ now acts through the sacraments He instituted to communicate His grace. The sacraments are perceptible signs (words and actions) accessible to our human nature. By the action of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit they make present efficaciously the grace that they signify” (No. 1084).

Our greatest task, then, is to participate in the mystery Christ celebrates that accomplishes our redemption. It is essential, though, that we understand the primary meaning of participation in the context of this prayer and the Church’s own understanding. In order to understand it, we do well to recall the Catechism’s point about where the reality of the mystery is focused: “In the earthly liturgy, we share in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy City of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle. With all the warriors of the heavenly army we sing a hymn of glory to the Lord; venerating the memory of the saints, we hope for some part and fellowship with them; we eagerly await the Savior, Our Lord Jesus Christ, until He, our life, shall appear, and we too will appear with Him in glory.”

To participate in the primary sense is to draw from a greater source – or in our case, to draw from reality itself. Thus, participation has first to do with our interior sentiments toward the reality we come to in the Mass. To participate worthily first has to do with being in communion with the Church, the Body of Christ – living under the law set forth by the Church and therefore being in visible communion. From there, our participation can have the vital link of the communication of grace in attaching ourselves to the mystery made present before us. Worthy participation, therefore, has less to do with our actions (not only following along but also ministries we might engage in) and more to do with the reality of our hearts. Thus, even a distracted person striving to draw from the mystery placed before him or her by Christ in a way could “participate” in the sense meant by this prayer more than someone who is, for example, serving in a ministry during a Mass.

This prayer gives us a program of prayer for the time leading up to Lent – to allow the grace and life of God, made present to us perfectly in the Mass, to overtake us, to transform us, and to draw us into deeper communion – with the Church and, through that communion, with God Himself.