An Order of Mass and Communion

Formula Missae et Communionis appeared in Wittenberg in December 1523 as Luther's first full proposal for a reformed celebration of the Lord's Supper. It was written in Latin for the clergy and addressed to Nicholas Hausmann, pastor at Zwickau, who had pressed Luther for guidance on what to do with the mass now that its theology had been rejected. The question was urgent. During Luther's absence at the Wartburg, Karlstadt and others had pushed through abrupt liturgical changes in Wittenberg, and Luther's Invocavit sermons of 1522 had pulled the congregation back toward patience. The Formula Missae is the constructive sequel to that restraint: a demonstration that the mass could be purged of what Luther considered its corruptions without tearing out the inherited shape of Christian worship.

Luther's governing move is surgical rather than demolitional. He states that it was never his intention to abolish the service of God but to cleanse the one in use of its additions. The ordinary and propers of the first half of the service are largely retained: Introit, Kyrie, Gloria, Collect, Epistle, Gradual, Gospel, Creed, with the sermon placed before or after. Most sequences are dropped, though he allows those for Christmas and Pentecost. The decisive cut falls on the Offertory and the Canon, where in his words everything begins to smack of sacrifice. He removes them entirely, so that the Preface leads directly to the Words of Institution, followed by the Sanctus, the Lord's Prayer, the Pax, the Agnus Dei, and communion in both kinds. The elevation is kept, with the caveat that it now testifies to Christ's presence rather than to a priestly offering. Private masses are ended. Those wishing to commune are to present themselves to the pastor beforehand and be examined on their understanding of the sacrament. Throughout, Luther insists that none of this is law: the order is offered for use, not imposed, and congregations are free to adapt it. He also voices his wish for German hymns and laments the shortage of poets able to supply them, a thread he would take up in the German Mass of 1526.

The work mattered because it set the pattern for the conservative liturgical path that most Lutheran territories followed. The church orders drafted over the next decades took its basic structure for granted, and it remains the clearest early statement of how the Reformation distinguished the sacramental meal from the sacrifice of the altar. For historians of worship it is a primary document; for Lutherans it is the root of their own Sunday service.

Who should read this: pastors, liturgists, and students of the Reformation who want to see exactly where Luther cut and where he held back, and why. It is a working rubric with theological commentary, not devotional prose, and readers looking for Luther's teaching on the Supper itself will find it more fully argued elsewhere.