“Please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome.”  “I’m glad to meet you.” “Please sit down.” “Can I offer you something to drink?”  Shaking hands, standing up when a lady enters the room, holding open the door for another. Manners, we call it.  We learn them when we’re young, and we teach them to our children.

 But have you ever considered that manners are much more profound realities?  They are rituals: words we speak and actions we take in certain circumstances whose purpose is to assist us in establishing and maintaining a right relationship with another person.

 Human beings have an innate need for ritual words and action.  We really can’t function without them.  Consider the job interview.  We all learn that when we meet the interviewer we must do certain things: stand straight, look the other person in the eye, shake hands, and say, “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”  To do otherwise means we might not get the job.

 We really can’t relate to each other without rituals.  Still less can we relate to God without ritual.

 We’ve talked about the Mass as the action of Jesus Christ, the High Priest, and we’ve talked about the Mass as the action of the ordained priest, and finally we turn to the Mass as the action of you, the assembly, a priestly people.

 In the Mass, both the assembly and the priest presiding over it join together in ritual words and actions in order to relate to one another and, above all, to God.  To God, who comes to meet us; who comes to join us to the Sacrifice of Calvary; who comes to draw us into and be a part of the heavenly liturgy – the eternal offering of the Son to the Father in the love of the Holy Spirit; who comes to bring us into His own life – the life of the Trinity.

 How should I respond to that?  What should I say?  How can I express myself correctly to the Lord?

 I don’t have to worry myself with all those thoughts about what I should do or say.  Neither do you.  It’s all provided – one big ritual prayer and conversation with God from start to finish, from the moment we cross ourselves at the beginning and invoke the Holy Trinity until the moment at the end, when we cross ourselves in blessing and thanksgiving and are sent forth to carry the Gospel to the world.

 Why can’t I just express myself naturally, why use the given words?

 Well, because there is the danger of error.  I could well fall victim to the temptations of the evil one and lapse into an error about the way I relate to God.  I could come to view Him or think of Him in a way that is not correct.  Then, I would endanger my soul.  On the other hand, the ritual prayers, the prayers given to us by the Church under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit are free of such error.  They provide us with the correct understanding of God, of who He is, and of what He does, and of who we are in relationship to Him and to one another.

 The Church has a phrase for this: lex orandi, lex credendi, the law of prayer is the law of belief.

 In other words, the ritual prayer expresses what the Church believes and knows to be true about God.  And, in turn, the prayer forms us in correct belief and understanding.

 Every prayer in the Mass, from the invocation of the Trinity with the sign of the cross, to the Collect, to the Eucharistic Prayer, to the prayer after communion, along with the Scriptures that are read, teaches us theological truth.

 But it’s boring, we always say the same thing.  Why can’t we be free to change what we say sometimes? We do always say the same thing, but that’s not burdensome or harmful to our freedom.  In fact, it is a great gift to our freedom. We always say the same thing so that we don’t have to worry about what to say, so that we can be freed from having to think about that and formulate our own responses, so that our minds and hearts and souls can soar up to meet God.

 And, of course, our ritual prayer is carried over into our ritual actions as well.  Human beings are not just souls; we are bodies as well.  Together, body and soul constitute a human being.  And both body and soul are redeemed by Christ and in relationship with God.

 And so we our ritual actions are just as important in expressing our understanding of God and our relationship with Him.

 And so we make the sign of the cross, for through the Cross our salvation was won.  We bow to the altar, because upon it the Sacrifice of Calvary is carried out.  We genuflect to the Tabernacle, because in it the King of the Universe has come down to dwell among us.

 In all these ways, the Mass meets the human need for ritual – it is God’s gift to us.  God doesn’t need it.  He could do just fine if not even a single one of us were here.  It’s for us, to teach us and instruct us about Him and about how much He loves us.  So see, and understand, and appreciate the ritual for what it truly is and for what it truly does for each of us.