Mass (liturgy)
central Christian liturgical ritual
Mass is the main Eucharistic liturgical service in many forms of Western Christianity. The term Mass is commonly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran Churches, Western Rite Orthodoxy, Old Catholicism, and Independent Catholicism. The term is also used in some Anglican churches, and on rare occasion by other Protestant churches.
In Lutheranism, the term Mass is used for the Eucharistic liturgy, especially in the Nordic countries, though in North America, the term Divine Service is used in common parlance. For the celebration of the Eucharist in Eastern Christianity, including Eastern Catholic Churches and Eastern Lutheran Churches, other terms such as Divine Liturgy, Holy Qurbana, Holy Qurobo and Badarak (or Patarag) are typically used instead. Other Christian denominations may employ terms such as or worship service (and often just "service"), rather than the word Mass.
Etymology
The English noun Mass is derived from the Middle Latin missa. The Latin word was adopted in Old English as mæsse (via a Vulgar Latin form *messa), and was sometimes glossed as sendnes (i.e. 'a sending, dismission').
The Latin term missa itself was in use by the 6th century.
“Mass (liturgy)” enters the record as central Christian liturgical ritual. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mass, liturgy and central can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6783971. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mass (liturgy)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.