At the end of every Traditional Latin Mass, after the dismissal and final blessing, the priest returns to the altar and reads the Prologue of the Gospel of St. John: In principio erat Verbum — “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The faithful kneel at the words “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” This is the Last Gospel — John 1:1–14, the great proclamation of the Incarnation.

It works as a kind of postscript to the Mass — a closing proclamation of the mystery that grounds everything that has just happened on the altar. God became man, dwelt among us, was offered in sacrifice, and gives Himself in this Eucharist. The Last Gospel reasserts the metaphysical foundation of the rite the faithful have just assisted at, so that no one leaves without the central truth ringing in his ears.

It is also a blessing. The Prologue of John was used as a sacramental in the Middle Ages — read over the sick and dying, over fields and houses. Its place at the end of every Mass extends that blessing over the faithful as they go back into the world. They do not depart with mere words of dismissal; they depart with the great Christological doxology spoken over them.

Here is the honest history, because it is more interesting than a myth of changelessness: the Last Gospel began as a private devotion of the priest in the late medieval period — recited at the altar or on the way to the sacristy — and usage varied from place to place. It became a fixed, universal part of the Mass only when St. Pius V included it in the 1570 Missal. He standardized it; he did not invent it. It was kept through 1962, and the 1969 reform set it aside — the Mass now simply ending at the dismissal. Something quiet but real was lost: a final affirmation of who Christ is, sent home with every Catholic, every day, for centuries.