How to Participate in Mass - Full Active Participation at Mass

How do you participate in Mass?
1. Dress in formal clothing. Mass is meant to be attended in your “Sunday best.”
2. Come a few minutes early. Get to the church at least ten minutes early.
3. Avoid bringing food or drinks into the church.
4. Turn off your phone.
5. No gossiping during Mass
6. Receive Communion with Reverence
7. Bring toys for small children.

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True “active participation in Mass” refers to a “‘contemplatively engaged participation’ in the saving work of our redemption” that is interior before it is exterior (The Mass and Modernity: Walking to Heaven Backward, 319). It is a participation in the mysteries of the sacraments and not a mere performance of external signs.


Active participation in the Mass: Though many of us simply assume that "active participation" is the equivalent of "doing something," it is not. The saintly Pope who conceived the phrase “active participation in the Mass” and used it first was Pope Saint Pius X. This is how he explained it: “If you wish to participate in the Mass actively, you must follow with your eye, heart, and mouth all that happens on the altar. Further, you must pray with the Priest the holy words said by him in the Name of Christ and which Christ says by him. You have to associate your heart with the holy
feelings which are contained in these words and in this manner you ought to follow all that happens at the altar. When acting in this way you have prayed Holy Mass." In a very moving
reflection, quoted forcefully by Vatican II, Pope Pius XII portrayed the dispositions with which one should take part in the Holy Mass; that is, it should be with “the dispositions that the Divine
Redeemer had when He sacrificed Himself — the same humble spirit of submission — that is, of adoration, love, praise, and thanksgiving to the great majesty of God ... so that we reproduce in
ourselves the condition of victimhood, the self-denial that follows the Gospel's teaching, whereby of our own accord, we make the willing sacrifice of penance, sorrow, and expiation for our sins.”
First, active participation means the interior participation of all the powers of the soul in the mystery of Christ's Sacrificial Love. It also means, that the mind and heart are awake, alert and
engaged during the Eucharistic celebration. Secondly, Participation involves exterior action: saying things and doing things. We are talking about the bodily gestures and sacred signs we use during the course of the Mass, that is, the relationship between soul and body in liturgical prayer. In other words, it must be the whole person who carries out the liturgical activity. Full, active participation at the Eucharistic liturgy involves conscious presence, praying, singing, acting in union with the whole assembly. This presence includes communal silence, and an openness to receive the grace of God. In a particular way, conscious presence also means listening with attention and reverence to the proclamation of the sacred Scripture, “for they make up an element of great importance in the liturgy” (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 29). In his 2007 apostolic
exhortation on the Eucharist, Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict XVI said: “It should be made clear that the word ‘participation’ does not refer to mere external activity during the
celebration. It also means 'greater awareness of the mystery being celebrated and its relationship to daily life.' Fruitful participation in the liturgy requires that one be personally conformed to the mystery being celebrated." This means we should be internally disposed of as well externally active.