“The Latin Mass was a tissue of Scripture reading, from beginning to end, with its dramatic climax in Communion. It was divided into two parts: the Mass of Catacumens and the Mass of the Faithful, the old OCC. The first part was an instruction in the holy mysteries’ the second participation.”
As the Divine Liturgies of Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy are to this day. The distinctions made in this article ring hollow to Orthodox ears; the question wouldn’t come up in Orthodoxy. Sometimes I think the West, in the past 40 years or so, set aside our shared Ignatian Eucharistic theology and forgot that we are, very findamentally, a liturgical people, gathered together with our bishops at the Liturgy and focused on Christ in the Eucharist.
The mass today, at least as it is sometimes celebrated, reminds me that in Geneva, John Calvin developed a service in two parts, that one devoted to the reading of the Word, to the singing of Psalms and preaching. The second was a service of the Lord’s Supper. He would have preeffred that both be done each Sunday, but his colleagues disagreed, and the first became the normal Sunday service. Luther retained something like the mass, and it seems that the liturgical reformers had something like his service in mind when they composed the New Mass.