Love Remembered: The Meaning and Beauty of the Mass

In the past it was taken for granted that the mass was meaningful and important but today this assumption is widely questioned. People ask themselves, Why should I go to mass if I do not understand it or if I am bored by it? The vision that made the mass so meaningful and important for people in the past seems to have faded What Jesus wants us to remember and renew at mass is the vision he gives us there of the extraordinary nature of his love and of its beauty. It is a vision of the greatest love the world has ever known and it inspires our desire to worship or always and everywhere to give God thanks and praise . This book seeks to re-discover the extraordinary nature of this vision the mass reveals to us and the wholehearted response it calls out of us. We will examine why the mass is the most profound expression of all we believe as well as the most profound way of responding to this. We will see why the mass is the most beautiful work of art in the world, in the intensity and depth of the love it reveals and the way it gives of responding to this love. The main point of the book is to make the mass more meaningful and attractive for people. It focuses on the mass as more Grace than Worship, more on a vision of the mass as something spectacularly beautiful than on the ritual of the mass. The ideas of the book are presented within the context of my own story and in that of the stories people tell. Through the exercises with which each chapter concludes I hope that the theoretical knowledge the book conveys may become more practical, personal and intimate. The book is aimed at an audience of people who want a deeper, more personal and practical knowledge of their faith. A special interest of the book is that October 2004-2005 has been designated by the Church as a time of special interest in the mass.