The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth

Love every seconds. Especially enjoyable as it is narrated by the author itself.

One of my favourites

Awesome Book!

Excellent book

Reading

No words! Read this book during my RCIA class and it opened my eyes to the mystery of the mass

カトリック信者であれば、あまりに慣れ親しみすぎて、ふとするとミサの価値を見落としているかもしれません。 プロテスタントの礼拝は、牧師の説教中心ですが、カトリックのミサは、祭壇上におられるキリストの現存とそのキリストへの礼拝が中心です。 しかも、黙示録の中で描かれている天国での礼拝が、そのままミサでは再現されています。「聖なるかな、聖なるかな、聖なるかな」、「神の子羊」等々。 著者であるスコット・ハーン氏は、元長老派の牧師で、誰よりもアンチカトリックでしたが、カトリックの教条を知れば知るほど、また、初期の教父たちの残した著書を調べれば調べるほど、そこに真理と２千年前から変わらない伝統を発見し、論駁できないことに困惑します。そして、ミサにあずかったことが決定的回心の瞬間となります。まさに聖書を愛するプロテスタントとしてミサを見つめるとき、聖書に書かれてあることが逐一ミサの中で実現しているからです。 カトリックに偏見を抱いてしまっているプロテスタントだけでなく、ミサのおどろくべき価値に気付いていないカトリックにとっても必読の書です。

This book helped me to see the Mass with so much more beauty and meaning than before. This was especially helpful as I had become callus to the Mass.

Ce livre montre le lien entre l’Écriture Sainte et la pratique catholique de la Messe - il montre notamment que les catholiques, loin de 'mépriser' la Bible comme cela leur a été reproché, la "vivent" pendant la Messe. C'est aussi un excellent livre pour ceux qui, en lisant la Bible, ont eu du mal à comprendre l'Apocalypse. C'est écrit dans un anglais très simple, proche du langage parlé, et donc assez accessible même sans avoir un excellent niveau d'anglais.

I recently went through the Catholic Church's RCIA program and converted to Catholicism. During my time in RCIA I read many current books on Catholicism and found they ranged in quality from excellent to total rubbish. This is one of the books I would put firmly at the higher quality end of that scale. The author is a former Protestant minister (the book doesn't specify the denomination although I'm guessing Lutheran by reading between the lines of a few comments in the book) who converted to Catholicism. From his knowledge of Protestant theology, he brings an interesting perspective to his commentary on Catholicism. In this book he examines the historical, Scriptural and theological origins of the Catholic Mass. It all fascinating material. The explanations of the Mass presented in the Church's RCIA classes are very basic compared those presented in this book. I made a list of the points raised in this book about individual components of the Mass and took it to Mass, checking off the points as they came up in the Mass. It was a very interesting exercise that left me with a far greater appreciation of the Mass than I got from the Church's RCIA classes. The second theme of the book is an interpretaion of the Book of Revelation suggesting that Revelation is basically an instruction manual for early Christians regarding Mass and other fundamental rites and practices of the early Christian Church. It's a very interesting interpretation that is well worth reading. In short, an excellent book that is well worth the attention of anyone wanting to explore the origins and meaning of the Catholic Mass in greater detail than you typically get in Church, certainly in far greater detail than the Church's RCIA classes.