A listener named Jesús wonders about a Mass ritual and asks, “Why do priests and deacons kiss the altar before Mass?”
Father Dave details how at the beginning of Mass, the priests and deacons process in, bow or genuflect towards the altar, then kiss it. “In the worship space, the altar is the primary symbol of Christ and Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. That’s not to say that it’s the same as Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist,” he says.
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“During the course of Mass, the altar serves a dual purpose. It has symbolism from well before the time of Christ back into the Old Testament times, and even in other religions,” Father Dave continues. “The reason why we use the word ‘altar’ is that of its two main functions, both as a table that we gather around a meal, but also something that was the source of sacrifice — meaning killing, slaughtering, and spilling of blood, usually of an animal.”
Father Dave describes in detail how this sacrifice would be offered. “I want to be graphic to reinforce what an altar really is. You would then kill the animal and it would bleed all over the altar, and many altars had literally a little trough to collect the blood, and the blood was used in sacrifice,” he says. “To us, that’s gross or barbaric, but that’s really what an altar is. So when we say it is an altar of sacrifice, we don’t mean that in a Catholic parish in the 21st Century, we wrangle up a tied up goat and place it on there [to kill it]. What we believe is that Christ was our ultimate sacrifice, the once for all, meaning that no sacrifice ever would have to be made ever again.”
“We would never again have to kill animals upon an altar in order to ‘appease God’ or to make up for our sins, because of Christ becoming human and sacrificing himself, giving his life and dying on the cross — that is the ultimate sacrifice,” Father Dave continues. “The altar really is what we call multivalent. It has many meanings, and one of them is a table and we’re participating in a meal, but we’re also participating in Christ’s death on the cross symbolized by this altar of sacrifice.”
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Father Dave describes how at the Church of Saint Paul the Apostle, where he lives and regularly celebrates Mass, there is art of Christ hanging on the cross in his line of sight during the consecration. “When I’m looking at the Eucharistic elements on this altar table and then raising them up, I’m looking past the host, which is now becoming the true presence of Christ, and I’m seeing this scene of Christ giving himself. That’s really what’s going on at Mass,” he says. “We’re not just telling the story that it happened many years ago; We’re actually making present on this altar the sacrifice that happened…that’s why it’s an altar and not like a table that we would sit around.”
“At the most symbolic and theological level, the altar is the symbol of Christ present to his people here as we’re gathered for Mass, and that altar represents the act that saved us from our sins,” Father Dave concludes. “[That is why] we go so far as to bend over and kiss that altar which represents the ultimate sacrifice of Christ for us on the cross.”
