The Mass is worship

Read the Catechism in a Year

Catechism in a Year: Day 162

Side note: Sorry for the mistake yesterday! The answer was incorrectly inserted from a different day. You can view the corrected reading for yesterday here. Today's reading is below as usual. Peace be with you! -mw
Part Two: How We Celebrate the Christian Mysteries
- Section One: God Acts in Our Regard by Means of Sacred Signs
-- Chapter Two: How We Celebrate the Mysteries of Christ
Question 180: Why is the Mass sometimes referred to as a “worship service”?

A worship service is in the first place a service that God performs for us—and only then is it our service offered to God. God gives himself to us under the form of holy signs—so that we might do the same: give ourselves unreservedly to him.

Jesus is there in Word and sacrament—God is present. That is the first and most important thing about every liturgy. Only then do we enter the picture. Jesus sacrifices his life for us so that we might offer to him the spiritual sacrifice of our life. In the Eucharist, Christ gives himself to us, so that we might give ourselves to him. Thus we take part in the redeeming and transforming sacrifice of Christ. Our little life is burst open and led into the kingdom of God. God can live his life in our lives.

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Question 181: Why are there so many signs and symbols in the liturgies?

God knows that we men are not only spiritual but also bodily creatures; we need signs and symbols in order to perceive and describe spiritual or interior realities.

Whether it is red roses, a wedding ring, black clothing, graffiti, or AIDS armbands—we always express our interior realities through signs and are understood immediately. The incarnate Son of God gives us human signs in which he is living and active among us: bread and wine, the water of Baptism, the anointing with the Holy Spirit. Our response to God’s sacred signs instituted by Christ consists in signs of reverence: genuflecting, standing while listening to the Gospel, bowing, folding our hands. And as though for a wedding we decorate the place of God’s presence with the most beautiful things we have: flowers, candles, and music. In any case, signs also require words to interpret them.

Dig Deeper: Corresponding CCC section (1145-1150) and other references here.
Recommended Listening in preparation for Easter: Three Days that Changed the World by Fr. Hector R.G. Perez