Thoughts on the Eucharist and current teaching

In the post "how can we respond" I tried to explain how I felt about the new text; and tried to identify the areas that seemed to provoke those feelings.  These were  to do with what felt important to me, about how so much of how I viewed God, Jesus, the Church, being human was not evident to me in the new text.

I have recently bumped into two more things I would like to add to the above.

First is an email I sent to our RCIA group a few weeks ago - it was an evening when I had to be elsewhere for work. Those accompanying the enquirers had been asked to say "what does the Mass mean to you?" I sent a message that was not orginal thought - it is a summary of things I learnt and that became a part of me around 1980. I wrote:

What frequently dominates my thoughts at Mass are the words Alleluia and Amen: praise, and "it is so, let it be so in me!"

 - Alleluia, to greet the Gospel, says: may the Word be made real, incarnated in me.

 - When I say Amen to the Eucharistic prayer, I am giving my life to God.

 - When I receive the host and say Amen to "The Body of Christ" I am affirming  not just the presence of Christ in the sacrament, but also that I am in the Body of Christ, so is the person offering the host/cup,  and so are we all. As a Eucharistic minister, when I say "The Body of Christ" I am acknowledging the person before me, as well as the host I give them.

Why is this so?

My baptism joined me to Christ, I was reborn in Christ, so when I recall and reconnect with Christ's death and resurrection in the Mass, I recall and renew my own baptismal calling to live in Christ for the world, and hence for God.

It seems to me that we laity are now portrayed so often as mere consumers at communion, upholding the power of the ordained - and not given the dignity of daughters and sons loved and held by God, sharing Christ's ministry to the world.

The second item is a quote from a report from a weekend on liturgy held in 1980  It included the following:

[so often] we come to the liturgy wrongly because we have an inadequate conception of God's grace.  [We ask] "How do we get to Heaven?"... There is nothing we can do to make God, the Inifinite Lover, love us more - or less. God says to us, "I give you myself. Free, You can't pay for my grace." This is what the prodigal son's elder brother complained about, "you are too prodigal and wasteful with your love, you should be more thrifty with it.".... [But instead we believe that] each of us has become a son or daughter of God.

Now we are told time and again in the prayers of the Mass and in its dissemination, that we have to merit eternal life, merit God's love.  See for example, page 46 of “Understanding the Revised Mass Texts,” from Liturgy Training Publications (McCrinnons).: “Jesus will not avoid us because of our sins but will come to us on the strength of our virtue.”  

I wonder if there has been a loss of joy in our Mass with the new text, and if so, whether this loss of emphasis on God's love and our calling through Baptism is part of the reason -  would that joylessness be called appropriate solemnity nowadays?  I recall the wisdom and fun of that liturgy weekend, and also the  stillness and prayerfulness that continued for maybe 10  minutes after the closing Mass.