The Mass, known more fully as the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the central liturgical ritual in the Catholic Church where the Eucharist is consecrated. The Church describes the Holy Mass as the source and summit of the Christian life. It teaches that through consecration by an ordained priest the bread and wine become the sacrificial body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ as the sacrifice on Calvary made truly present once again on the altar. The Catholic Church permits only baptised members in the state of grace to receive Christ in the Eucharist. Many of the Catholic Church's other sacraments are administered in the framework of the Holy Mass, such as First Communion, Confirmation, Holy Orders, and Holy Matrimony. The term Mass is generally used within the Latin Rite's celebrations of the Eucharist, while the various Eastern Rites use terms such as Divine Liturgy, Holy Qurbana, and Badarak, in accordance with each one's tradition. Since the publication of Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, the Roman Rite has been classified into two forms: the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, which uses the liturgy of the Missal issued by Pope John XXIII in 1962, and the Ordinary Form, which uses the Missal revised by Pope Paul VI in 1969. The term Mass is derived from the concluding words of the Roman Rite Mass in Latin: Ite, missa est . The Late Latin word missa substantively corresponds to the classical Latin word missio. In antiquity, missa simply meant dismissal. In Christian usage, however, it gradually took on a deeper meaning. The word dismissal has come to imply a mission.The Roman Rite Mass is the predominant form used in the Catholic Church and the focus of this article. For information on the theology of the Eucharist and on the Eucharistic liturgy of other Christian denominations, see Mass , Eucharist and Eucharistic theology. For information on the history and of development of the Mass see Eucharist and Origin of the Eucharist.
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