Ologgio
Ite, missa est
editThank you for your kind enquiry about the "missa est" part of the above phrase.
The context lacks any word that could act as antecedent for your "she". You seem to think the antecedent referred to is "ecclesia". But nowhere nearby is the word "ecclesia" to be found, nor, indeed, any other singular feminine word. If "missa" is considered to be a participle, "missa est" needs a subject. There is none. The word is therefore best explained as a noun, itself the subject, not the complement, of the verb "est". "Missa" was certainly used as a late form of "missio" (sending, dismissal ...)
Furthermore, there is a theological objection to treating "Ite, missa est" as meaning "Go (you), she (the Church) is sent". "Ite" is grammatically second person; "est" is third person. The contrast of the two grammatical persons suggests that the people addressed and the Church are quite distinct entities. The natural way to dismiss the people while using the passive past participle of the verb "mittere" would be: "Ite, missi estis" (Go, you are sent), not "Go, she (whoever she is) is sent."
I hope I have succeeded sufficiently in explaining my thought, and let me know if I should try better.
Lima 16:29, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
If, during Mass, at a moment when there was no mention of the Church, you heard the priest say: "She is here", would you really think he meant that the Church is here? Would you not think he was talking about some woman or girl? Why then do you think that, if the priest said at the end of Mass: "She is sent", people would understand it of the Church? Would they not rather wonder who on earth the priest was talking about?
(If you have studied Latin, you know that "missa est" can mean equally "was sent" or "has been sent" (equivalent to "is sent"). According to the rule of the sequence of tenses, the perfect tense, when used in the first sense, is followed in a subordinate clause by the imperfect subjunctive; when used in the second sense, it is followed by a present subjunctive.)
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