Yes, the First Eucharist of Christmas is Midnight Mass

As Christmas approaches, it is usual to find some online Anglican voices protesting at the use of 'Midnight Mass' to describe the First Eucharist of Christmas.  Usually these are robustly Protestant voices, angered by the use of a term which - it is contended - was entirely rejected at the Reformation.  At other times - perhaps rather more surprisingly - it can be a minority of Anglo-catholics, criticising its use in Anglican parishes which do not otherwise describe the Eucharist as 'Mass'. 

Let us begin with those Protestant voices.  That 'Mass' ceased to be used in the Church of England as a title for the Eucharist in 1552 is a fact. There was good reason for this in light of the significant differences between the Prayer Book Eucharist and the Tridentine Mass: communion in both kinds, denial of of the eucharistic sacrifice as a propitiatory sacrifice, use of the vernacular, rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation for more deeply Augustinian accounts of the Lord's presence in the sacrament. 

The prudent rejection of the word 'Mass' by the Elizabethan Settlement, however, cannot be assumed to have permanent application for Anglicans. This is not least the case precisely because another Protestant tradition continues to use this term for the Eucharist. In the words of the Augsburg Confession:

Falsely are our churches accused of abolishing the Mass; for the Mass is retained among us, and celebrated with the highest reverence.

Mindful that the Anglican churches of these Islands share a common life in the Porvoo Communion with Nordic Lutherans, the allegation that 'Mass' is an exclusively Roman Catholic term, defined by Roman Catholic doctrine incompatible with the Articles of Religion, is entirely untrue.  Having agreed a common statement of Eucharistic doctrine with Nordic Lutherans, who routinely describe the Eucharist as 'Mass', there are no doctrinal obstacles to Anglicans using the term 'Mass'.

Related to this, the use of 'Missa' as a term for the Eucharist appears to date to shortly after Gregory the Great (d.604AD). This has considerable significance because the Latin church in the second half of the first millennium was not generally regarded by the Reformers as 'papist', as Cranmer indicated in his True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, published in1550:

This is the true catholic faith which the Scripture teacheth, and the universal Church of Christ hath ever believed from the beginning, until within these four or five hundred years last past that the Bishop of Rome ... hath set up a new faith and belief of their own devising.

As Elizabeth Saxon demonstrated in her excellent The Eucharist in Romanesque France: Iconography and Theology (2006), the late first millennium - when 'Mass' became the common term for the Eucharist in the Latin West - witnessed significant diversity in Latin eucharistic theologies, with no "linear development culminating in a definition of transubstantiation in the opening creed of the 1215 Lateran Council". 

The use of 'Mass', therefore, can be used to reflect the usage of the Latin West in the second half of the first millennium - as, for example, in the Rule of Benedict - significantly pre-dating defining features of late medieval Christendom, such as the Gregorian Reform and the dogmatic definition of transubstantiation, which the magisterial Reformations rejected.  

Having addressed the robustly Protestant voices, we can turn to those other tender consciences, that minority of Anglo-catholics who respond rather dismissively to the use of 'Midnight Mass' by other Anglicans. The suggestion is that 'Mass' is here used as a mere aesthetic choice, lacking the rigorous doctrinal content of Anglo-catholic eucharistic teaching and practice. Underlying this, we might suspect, is a view that conventional Anglican teaching on the Eucharist is insufficient, in terms of both Eucharistic presence and Eucharistic sacrifice. Against this, we can say that conventional Anglican teaching - as given expression in the Book of Common Prayer and by classical Anglican theologians - offers rich accounts of both Eucharistic presence and sacrifice, deeply rooted in patristic affirmations. The words of Taylor on the Eucharistic presence and of Bull on the Eucharistic sacrifice remind us of this richness:

So that now the question is not, whether the symbols be changed into Christ's body and blood, or no? For it is granted on all sides: but whether this conversion be sacramental and figurative? Or whether it be natural and bodily? Nor is it, whether Christ be really taken, but whether he be taken in a spiritual, or in a natural manner? We say, the conversion is figurative, mysterious, and sacramental; they say it is proper, natural, and corporal: we affirm, that Christ is really taken by faith, by the Spirit, to all real effects of his passion - Taylor; 

In the Eucharist, then, Christ is Offered, not hypostatically, as the Trent Fathers have determined, for so He was but once offered, but commemoratively only; and this commemoration is made to God the Father, and is not a bare remembering or putting ourselves in mind of him. For every sacrifice is directed to God; and the oblation therein made, whatsoever it be, hath Him for its object, and not man. In the Holy Eucharist, therefore, we set before God the Bread and Wine as figures or images on the precious Blood of Christ shed for us, and of His precious Body (they are the very words of the Clementine Liturgy), and plead to God the merit of His Son's sacrifice once offered on the Cross for us sinners, and in this Sacrament represented, beseeching Him for the sake thereof to bestow His heavenly blessings on us - Bull.

Such teaching would have been entirely recognisable as the catholic faith to late first millennium Latin Christians. To this it can be added that the absence of practices such as elevation and Benediction - much later innovations (as Bicknell notes) - only makes a conventional Anglican Eucharist more like the Mass known to those late first millennium Latin Christians, for whom both elevation and Benediction were unknown.

What, however, of the use of the term 'Mass' only at Christmas? As the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes clear, "The inexhaustible richness of this sacrament is expressed in the different names we give it. Each name evokes certain aspects of it": there is no one term which defines this Sacrament in a manner which makes the other terms lesser or redundant.  Indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church reflects upon the terms 'Eucharist', 'Lord's Supper', 'Synaxis' and 'Holy Communion' before turning to 'Mass', which is itself defined in a manner hardly alien to conventional Anglicanism:

Holy Mass (Missa), because the liturgy in which the mystery of salvation is accomplished concludes with the sending forth (missio) of the faithful, so that they may fulfill God's will in their daily lives.

There is nothing here about the term 'Mass' which makes it inappropriate for a conventional Anglican celebration of the Eucharist. Similarly, there is nothing here which requires 'Mass' to be used as the authoritative, normative term for the Eucharist. Mindful that Christmas is the one time in the liturgical year that the Prayer Book employs the suffix 'mas' - obviously derived from 'Mass' - this suggests how it can be fitting for Anglicans, who may not otherwise use the term, to use 'Mass' uniquely at this season.

Against both these Protestant and Anglo-catholic voices, we can affirm - on robust doctrinal and liturgical grounds - that the conventionally Anglican First Eucharist of Christmas is indeed Midnight Mass.

(The first picture is of the BBC advert for this year's televised Midnight Mass from Portsmouth Cathedral. The second is a screen shot from the website of Porvoo Cathedral. The third is a fresco in the Lower church of San Clemente, Rome, depicting Saint Clement celebrating the Eucharist. The fourth is of Midnight Mass in Old Saint Paul's Episcopal Church, Edinburgh.)