Hi, I'm Edward Sree, and welcome to all things Catholic Catholic where real faith meets real life.

Do you ever feel like you're just going through the motions at the mass. You show up at the

liturgy, you know it's important, you know it's sacred, you want to give your

best, but you find your mind wandering and you find yourself standing up, sitting

down, making the sign of the cross, and saying right words you know and with your spirit and thanks be to God

But you're not fully paying attention you wonder if you're fully there a whole mass might even go by and you leave wondering what did I really give my best to Jesus in this

liturgy if you want to encounter Christ more if you want to give more of yourself to Christ in the

liturgy I want to share with you one beautiful insight from the

Mass itself, a certain prayer in the Mass that I know has inspired and challenged and encouraged

me in my own participation in the liturgy, and is a line that comes at the beginning of the second

half of mass known as the liturgy of the Eucharist. It's a prayer where the priest says,

lift up your hearts and I want to unpack what that means and practically

how it can help us to lift up our hearts not just at that moment but throughout the mass to lift our hearts

up to God. Now years ago I wrote a book called

The biblical walk through the mass,

and it just walks through all the different prayers and rituals of the mass.

And I had been teaching on the mass for a long time,

but the book challenged me to do more research to go a little bit deeper into the

biblical roots and most especially to learn from the many Saints and Church fathers who had reflected

on the liturgy a lot longer than I had been doing and I'm so grateful for them because they opened up so many new insights for me.

Parts of the Mass I honestly didn't give that much thought to like this line here, lift up your hearts.

I, you know, I always say here lift up your hearts I you know I always say

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