A Century of Masses

The Homily for this Maundy Thursday at Fisher House.

2025 is no ordinary year. For the universal Church it is a Holy one, a Jubilee. But for our little corner of God’s earth, it has its own particular significance. A hundred years ago – to be exact on 4 May 1925 – Mass was celebrated for the first time at Fisher House.

The twentieth-century French theologian, Henri de Lubac, wrote, ‘the Eucharist makes the Church.’ The history of Fisher House confirms this. Whether it’s been celebrated in the two oratories that once stood on this site, or in the Fisher Room, which was for forty years a weekday chapel, or in this beautiful House of God, it is the Mass, which has brought together generations of students, Senior Members, and all who have found a home around our altar. It is the Eucharist which has formed our community and made us more deeply what we already are through baptism: the Body of Christ. Because we receive the Body of Christ to sustain the Body of Christ. Or as St Augustine once said during a Eucharist: ‘Be what you see and receive what you are’ (Sermon 272).

This is why the Reformation in this country forbade the Mass. Alongside the ordained priesthood, it’s what nurtures the life of the Church. Forbid it and, it was hoped, Catholics in England would die away. It’s why over thirty alumni of this university sought to become priests and accepted martyrdom. The Mass makes us. But how? The answer lies in the upper room.

As Church, we first entered the upper room on this night when Jesus gathered with the Apostles to celebrate the Passover. He took the usual meal and transformed it. He poured Himself into it and made it a one-off moment which we can re-experience countless times. Not that it’s only the Lord’s supper we re-experience. Like the Triduum, the Mass is a three-act drama: the Last Supper, the Sacrifice of the Cross, and Christ Risen from the dead. The Mass is a celebration, and, I say again, a re-experiencing of what Christ did and who He is: the risen, glorified Lord, who laid down himself for me, and gives himself to us, body and blood, soul and divinity.

But there was a second time the Church went to the upper room. After the Ascension of Jesus, we read in the Acts of the Apostles that they returned to Jerusalem and ‘went up to the upper room’ (1.13). There ‘with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus,’ (1.14) they devoted themselves to prayer. The Mass is not a spectator sport. It’s not something the priest does as we all watch. Together, we pray the Mass. Yes, the priest has his irreplaceable role as acting in the person of Christ, but the Church does not imagine him celebrating Mass on his own. It is a communal act. A work in which we all share. Which is why, at every Mass, the priest says to us: ‘Pray, my brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the Almighty Father.’

But that’s still not the whole story. For we also read in Acts, ‘When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place’ (2.1). Long has it been thought that that one place is the upper room and there the Holy Spirit first came upon the Church. Every Mass has its epiclesis, the moment when the priest lays his hands over the bread and wine and prays that the Holy Spirit will transform them and us.

Yes, if we linger in the upper room, we discover what the Mass is: the great work of the Holy Spirit, our greatest prayer, and where I can meet daily the sacrificed and risen Lord and be fed by him. Henry IV of France famously said ‘Paris is well worth a Mass.’ The king was right. Paris is worth a Mass. And so is Fisher House. And so is the whole universe.