The Priest at Prayer, June 4

Second Part
The Priestly Ministry

The Second Priestly Duty: The Holy Eucharist

Third Meditation - The Sacrilegious Mass: its Malice

I. By a sacrilegious Mass is meant a Mass celebrated without the necessary dispositions. It would be sacrile­gious to celebrate non-fasting, except in cases allowed by the law; with a grievously sinful intention; with a conscience branded with mortal sin unforgiven by the Sacrament of Penance or by a perfect act of contrition in a case where the priest is obliged to celebrate because otherwise some grave injury would befall either himself or the neighbor, and he has considerable difficulty in finding a confessor.

I should never lose sight of canon 807:

"The priest who should find himself in mortal sin shall not dare to say Holy Mass without previous sacramental Confession, no matter how contrite he may be over his sins. If he has no chance to go to Confession and urgent need obliges him to celebrate, he shall make an act of perfect contrition before saying Holy Mass, and shall be obliged to confess as soon as possible."

Have I ever had the audacity to mount the altar steps without any one of those dispositions which the Church demands of me in the Name of God? If I have, I have celebrated sacrilegiously. That Mass, so holy in Itself, became for me an outrageous profanation, just as on Calvary Christ's torture, of infinite merit, became for the executioners who crucified Him their greatest crime.

II. A sacrilegious Mass is a piece of the most refined and perverse hypocrisy.

Our Divine Lord's greatest loathing during His earthly career in the midst of a degraded society - as swollen with pious appearances as drained of all true spirit of religion - was for hypocrisy; and yet, He found nothing to equal the hypocrisy of His own unworthy celebrants, except perhaps in two of the saddest episodes of His Passion: Judas's kiss of treachery in the Garden, and the pitiless, mocking scene of the crowning with thorns.

If I have ever said Mass sacrilegiously I ought to medi­tate on these two episodes and compare my conduct with that of Christ's tormentors. The striking similarity between the profanations of the Passion and mine will serve to convince me and force me to confess that my lips, when kissing the altar and paten and touching the sacred Species during a sacrilegious Mass, were the lips of a traitorous Judas, kissing before bartering away, flattering before tearing to pieces, rendering service before profaning. My knees were bent, my head bowed, as if to adore Jesus Christ; but, in actual fact, to smite Him with cynical daring, to spit upon Him, and crown Him with the sharp thorns of disloyalty: the disloyalty of a minister of Christ, chosen from among thousands.

On that day I joined the ranks of Pilate's pretorian bodyguard; like them, and with signal success, I played the part of mock-worshipper before that outraged and silent King.

I stood revealed as a hypocrite, a whited sepulchre. . .

III. The sacrilegious Mass is the vilest profanation of the Son of God, of the Eternal Word.

However clean my hands, the Church obliges me to wash them before going up to the altar, and while at the altar I have to purify once again my fingers that are to touch the sacramental species. To handle the Blessed Sacrament with dirty hands would shock any Christian with the tiniest spark of faith left in him. And if a criminal were to throw the Sacred Species on a dung heap or even on the ground, we should tremble with horror.

Will it not be a far greater crime to enclose the Body of Christ and shed His Blood within a breast befouled by mortal sin?

"Quantum flagitium in spurcissimam corporis tui cloacam sacratum Christi Sanguinem profundere!" (St. Thomas of Villanova)

What a detestable crime it is to pour the Precious Blood into a heart that erupts in sensual desires or breeds the worms of lascivious actions; to pour It as though It were body waste or kitchen slops!

IV. If sin is such, essentially, because it is an offense against God, and if the more directly we offend God the more grievously we sin; let us see whether we shall find an act personally more injurious to God and Christ than the sacrilegious Mass.

There is certainly lime or no harm done to another human being, God's image, or to his belongings; it is a crime that goes direcdy against God, not merely against a precept sprung from God's lips, not merely a profanation of the Holy Name of God, like blasphemy; it is a crime that would sully, if that were possible, the very God Himself; a personal affront to God present as God and Man in our hands, in our lips, in our breast, when we consecrate and receive Him sacrilegiously.

Is there a vestige of faith left in the dark recesses of the sacrilegious priest's soul? Does he believe what Holy Mother Church believes, that what he holds in his hands is the true Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ? He will answer, yes, I do believe, with the same firm adherence as when the same question is put to him at Holy Viaticum. . . . and yet he profanes It?

No, St. Peter Damian does not exaggerate when he declares that no one is ever found guilty of sinning more grievously than the priest who in celebrating unworthily befouls, so far as in him lies, the mysteries of the Saving Victim.

And St. Thomas, speaking with his customary theo­logical precision and as a man of cold reasoning, says:

"Nemo deterius peccat quam sacerdos qui indigne sacrificat."

No one sins worse than the priest who sacrifices unworthily.

Have I ever committed such a crime? If so, I became the worst type of sinner - nemo deterius peccat.

O God! What if I have had the misfortune to commit this crime each day for a whole month, a year, three, ten years. . . where will God, the Searcher of hearts, find a sinner more abominable?
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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

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Please pray for our priests and pray for vocations to the priesthood!