Posted July 21, 2008 Book: The Mass is Never Ended: Rediscovering Our Mission to Transform the World Author: Gregory F. Augustine Pierce Ave Maria Press. Notre Dame, IN. 2008. Pp. 126 An Excerpt from the Introduction: The main thesis of this book is that in the Catholic Church we already have such a liturgy. It is call the Mass, which can be loosely translated as “The Sending Forth.” Specifically, the Dismissal Rite at the end of Mass is supposed to send the entire congregation out into the world: “The Mass is ended. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” This means we should carry out the mission of Jesus to proclaim and inaugurate the kingdom of God. When seen through the lens of the Dismissal, the entire Mass is aimed at this sending forth, and every single person in the congregation is being sent on a mission that is truly worthy of his or her life. How we will carry out this mission is primarily through our work: on our jobs, with our families, and through our community and civic involvement. To accomplish this mission, we will need a spirituality that will both raise our awareness of the presence of God in our workplace and allow that awareness to inform how we will act. I call that kind of spirituality “The spirituality of work,” and this book concludes with a description of that type of spirituality. An Excerpt from the book: Walter Cronkite, the venerable television reporter, anchorman, and commentator, feels that the one date from our age that will be remembered five hundred years from now is July 20, 1969. That is, of course, the day that a human being first walked on the moon. Cronkite believes that by the year 2469, humans will be living on other planets and will remember July 20, 1969, as the day that humankind broke away from being tied to the Earth. If so, then it will have certainly been, as Neil Armstrong said, “One small step for man, one giant step for mankind.” Whether you share Cronkite’s belief is not the point. Just imagine for a moment that he is correct, that someday we might be living on other planets. It might even be that we had polluted Earth so badly that people could not live here at all. If that scenario were to occur, we would have to accept that it was “God’s will.” But we would also have to admit that it was brought about by the work of human hands, minds, and spirits. We would have gotten to the other planets through our creativity and intelligence and good work, but we would also have destroyed our planet through our selfishness and stupidity and bad work. Thus it is with God and our work. We are either on the same page, pulling in the same direction, trying to ascertain and then do God’s will in our daily lives, or we are opposing the divine spirit, trying to do things our way, worrying only about our self-interest in the narrowest of terms. The spirituality of work is a spirituality that tries to keep us aware of the presence of God and allow that awareness to influence how we do our work. With the spirituality of work, we can conquer the stars. Without it, we can destroy our very nest. Table of Contents: Part 1: A mission worthy of our lives 1. Vocation and mission for all 2. The Kingdom of God 3. Mission impossible Part 2: The mass as a sending forth 4. The sending forth 5. The coming back 6. Preparing to be sent forth again 7. Transubstantiating our gifts 8. Food for the journey Part 3: The spirituality of work 9. Sustaining the sending forth 10. God and work 11. Jesus and work 12. The church and work 13. The Christian spiritual tradition 14. Getting into the world 15. A spirituality for the sending forth