Our Lady Saint MaryBarry, J. G. H. (Joseph Gayle Hurd)
Religion
Our Lady Saint Mary
Barry, J. G. H. (Joseph Gayle Hurd)
Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint -- Meditations
We approach Divinity, then, through our Lord's humanity; and we at once
see how that teaching, so common to-day, which denies the Resurrection
of our Lord's Body, and believes simply in the survival of His human
soul strikes at the very heart of the Catholic Religion. If Revelation
be true, our approach to God is rendered possible because there is a
Mediator between God and man, the MAN Christ Jesus. All our prayers
have explicitly, or implicitly, this fact in view. All our Masses are a
pleading of this fact.
How great is our joy and confidence when we realise this! We come
together, let us say, on Sunday morning at the High Mass. We are coming
to offer the Blessed Sacrifice of our Lord's Body and Blood. But who,
precisely, is to make the offering? When we ask what this congregation
is, what is the answer? The congregation is the congregation of Christ's
Flock: it is the Body of Christ gathered together for the worship of
Almighty God. The act that is to be performed is the act of a Body, not
primarily of individuals. Our participation in the act of worship in the
full sense of participation is conditioned upon our being members of the
Body. If we are not members of the Body we have no recognised status as
worshippers. No doubt we each one have our individual aspirations and
needs which we bring with us, but they are the needs and aspirations of
a member of the Body of Christ, and our ability to unite them with the
act that is to be performed grows out of our status as members of the
Body; as such, we join our own intention to the sacrificial act and make
our petitions through it. But we are here as offerers of the Sacrifice,
and may not neglect our official significance, and attempt to turn the
Mass into a private act of worship.
We, then, the Body of Christ in this place, offer the Sacrifice of
Christ. What is the status of the priest? He is a differentiated organ
of the Body, not created by the Body, but created by God in the creation
of the Body. He is not separate from the Body, an official imposed upon
it from the outside, nor is he a creation of the Body set apart to act
upon its behalf. He is one mode of the expression of the Body's
life--the Body could not perfectly perform its functions without him
any more than a physical body can perfectly function without a hand or
an eye. But neither has the priest any existence apart from the Body of
which he is a function. The Sacrifice that he offers is not his on
behalf of the Body, but the Body's own Sacrifice which is made through
his agency.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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