_Mass._--The term _mass_, which survives in Candlemas, Christmas, Michaelmas, is from the Latin _missa_, which was in the 3rd century a technical term for the dismissal of any lay meeting, e.g. of a law-court, and was adopted in that sense by the church as early as Ambrose (c. 350). The catechumens or unbaptized, together with the penitents, remained in church during the Litany, collect, three lections, two psalms and homily. The deacon then cried out: "Let the catechumens depart. Let all catechumens go out." This was the _missa_ of the catechumens. The rest of the rite was called _missa fidelium_, because only the initiated remained. Similarly the collect with which often the rite began is the prayer _ad collectam_, i.e. for the congregation met together or collected. The corresponding Greek word was _synaxis_.
After the catechumens were gone the priest said: "The Lord be with you, let us pray," and the service of the mass followed.
In the West, says Duchesne (_Origines_, p. 179), not only catechumens, but the baptized who did not communicate left the church before the communion of the faithful began (? after the communion of the clergy). In Anglican churches non-communicants used to leave the church after the prayer for the Church Militant. Ritualists now keep unconfirmed children in church during the entire rite, through ignorance of ancient usage, in order that they may learn to adore the consecrated elements. For this moment of homage to material elements ritually filled with divine potency may be so exaggerated as to obscure the rite's ancient significance as a communion of the faithful in mystic food.
_Ideas of Reformers._--The 16th-century reformers strove to avoid the literalism of the words "This is my body," accepted frankly by the Roman and Eastern churches, and urged a Receptionist view, viz. that Christ is in the sacrament only spiritually consumed by worthy recipients alone, the material body not being actually chewed. This is seen by a comparison of other confessions with the Profession of Catholic Faith in accordance with the council of Trent, in the bull of Pius IV., which runs thus:--
"I profess that in the Mass is offered to God a true, proper and propitiatory sacrifice, for the living and the dead, and that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly really and in substance the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that there does take place a conversion of the entire substance of the bread into the body, and of the entire substance of the wine into the blood, which conversion the Catholic Church doth call Transubstantiation. I also admit that under one of the other species alone the entire and whole Christ and the true sacrament is received."
