Just for Caturday: Excerpt from Tale of a Mission Cat (Sula) - The Altar
(photo by Lisa Lavignano) THE ALTAR The altar is the most important part of the church. The altar is where the priest celebrates the Mass, offering the Sacrifice (body and blood of Christ). Without an altar, there cannot be a Mass. What happens at the altar is mysterious and highly spiritual. The priest consecrates the host (bread) and the wine, blessing it by prayer and asking the Holy Spirit to descend upon it to change it into the body and body of Christ. This change is called transubstantion. Altars have been used in worshipping God for a very long time. At first, they had to be made of stone, but that is not the case today. If you read the Old Testament, you will read that God’s chosen people, the Jews, in the old days, San Juan Bautista Mission long before the time of Jesus, used altars to offer to God sacrifices like lambs, or, yikes!, (almost) Isaac, Abraham’s son. That’s a story of incredible trust, the kind of trust that helped Abraham to be the...