The Te Igitur

March 4, 2026 - 2nd Wednesday of Lent

Last week we spoke in general about the divisions of the Roman Canon. In this reflection we will focus on the Te igitur which is the beginning of the Roman Canon and comes immediately after the Sanctus.

The first words of this section of the Roman Canon sets our sights on the person to whom we are addressing our prayer of the Mass. These words “To you, therefore, most merciful Father” remind us that the prayer of the Mass is directed to the Father himself. It is the Father who has sent his Son and the Holy Spirit to us so that we might be recreated by His grace and have the power to live out the Christian life by the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity. It is in this power of the Holy Spirit that we “make humble prayer and petition.”

The word “to pray” can be distorted for us. It simply means to speak. So, our intention here is to do the unthinkable, that is, to speak directly to God the Father. This is a gift that he has given us when he gave us his Holy Name whereby we can call upon Him as our Father. In our mind we should recall the words of Christ who instructs us in His prayer to address God as “Our Father who art in heaven.” All prayer, in this context, is a conversation with God and those who are near to God. But, specifically here we are addressing the Father.

The word “petition” sets our mind on one of the things that we will be doing in this conversation. We plan to ask the Father for something. Again, this should recall to our minds the words of Christ who tells us that we should ask the Father for those things that we need, because he is a loving Father who desires the highest good for each and every one of us. The nature of our petition will become clear in the later parts of the Canon.

We make these prayers and petitions “through Jesus Christ” His Son, “our Lord.” As Christians we are taught to always ask for things in the name of Jesus. Christ Himself taught us this very thing. We are to ask for things in His Name so that they might be granted. It is through the Hypostatic Union, that is, His joining of our human nature to his divine nature that we are granted access to the life of the Blessed Trinity. It is fitting, therefore, that we invoke his Holy Name when we desire anything from God.

The first petition that we make is to ask the Father to “bless these gifts, these offerings, these holy and unblemished sacrifices.” We are firstly referring to the gifts that have been placed on the altar, namely, the bread and the wine. However, we also bring ourselves, our intentions, and our needs to the sacrifice. As we prepare for Mass we should bring all of those things in our life and symbolically place them on the altar with the oblata, that is the bread and the wine, so that they might be consumed by the fire of God’s mighty love as an acceptable sacrifice to Him.

These words should also bring to mind the sacrifices of the Old Testament where an unblemished lamb was to be offered on the altar in the Temple in Jerusalem. It also foreshadows the nature of this sacrifice by the True Lamb, the Lamb of God, who puts an end to all bloody sacrifices in His own blood shed upon the Cross. It is this self-same sacrifice of Christ that we are joining our actions to at this moment. It is His sacrifice, and His sacrifice alone that “takes away the sins of the world.”

The words of the Canon then direct our mind to consider for whom we are offering this sacrifice. Here we are instructed to make our intention for the whole the Church for the sake of Her peace, that same peace proclaimed by Christ after the Resurrection, for her defense, as Christ promised before his Ascension to be with His Church always, and that He, the Father, might guide the Church by his gentle governance.

But, we do not do this alone. We proclaim to God that we are making this prayer and these petitions in the unity that He established by Christ when He formed his Church and gave over its governance to the Apostles. We express this unity by stating that we are joining our prayer with the Holy Father, the successor of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and with our local Bishop, himself being the Apostle of the place where we are currently offering this Mass.

In the past we would also name the Catholic monarch and even his vassal nobles at this point. However, in the modern era where a Catholic monarchy is rare we simply include the general statement “and all those, who, holding to the truth, hand on the catholic and apostolic faith.” This includes all of those in our lives and those ministers of the Church and society who work to establish the Kingdom of God here and now, at this time, and in this place until Christ comes in his glory at the final recapitulation of all things at the end of time, as the Apostle John foretells in his Acopolypsis.

In our next reflection we will examine the Commemoration of the Living and see how we are to set our intention to an even greater specificity of unity than what we have already begun.

In Our Holy Father Dominic,

Fr. Gabriel, OP

Pastor