The Priest at Prayer, June 6

Second Part
The Priestly Ministry

The Second Priestly Duty: The Holy Eucharist

Fifth Meditation - The Sacrilegious Mass: A Punishment

I. And the sacrifice shall fail: and there shall be in the temple the abomination of desolation. (Dan. ix, 27)

This was the final signal given by Daniel the Prophet, and afterwards by Christ Himself, of God's impending Wrath upon His Chosen People of Israel: the sign of God's abandoning them totally and irrevocably to the severest of punishments.

Far more abominable than the discontinuance of the Jewish sacrifices and the setting up by the Romans of the statue of Venus in the Sancta Sanctorum - which many commentators think constituted the "abomination of desolation" - is the profanation of the New Sacrifice.

Incomparably greater is the iniquity of setting up the Holy of Holies in Person, the God-Man Christ who hallows all things, in a breast made unclean by grievous sin.

In olden times the Tabernacle of the Blessed Sacra­ment was often the breast of our Lady's statues. Shall Venus take our Lady's place?

Wilt Thou not abhor, O Lord, far more than the cessation of Sacrifice the offering up of this Sacrifice on a cesspool for an altar? What else is a sacrilegious Mass?

II. Whip in hand, bursting with anger, the Divine Saviour drove from the outer court of the Temple those who were profaning it by buying and selling, as in a market-place, the requisites for the temple offerings ordained by the Law. Zelus domus tuae comedit me, et opprobria exprobrantium tibi ceciderunt super me.­ (Ps. lxviii, 10)

"Was it not jealousy for the honor of thy house that consumed me; was it not uttered against thee, the reproach I bore?"

But, Lord, what if Thou hadst found them in the Holy of Holies? And what wilt Thou not do to those who day after day, year after year perhaps, instead of honoring Thee, as they are in duty bound, fling Thy clean Oblation into their impure hearts like sweepings into a refuse bin - that clean Oblation in which as in a spotless mirror Thou beheldest Thy Glory countless ages before the Offering was accomplished on earth?

Thou art patient; yes, but in a case like this Thy patience would be our undoing. Having waited for so long, as though Thou hadst no eyes to see, as though the spate of our iniquities did not touch Thee person­ally, with what fury will the pent-up cataract of Thy Wrath descend when it finally leaps or breaks through the flood-gates!

III. The most heroic act of self-denial in order to reach God, the greatest effort of the will under the impulse of grace in order to entrench themselves in good, was for certain Saints, it is said, their fleeing from home over the prostrate bodies of their children, over the breast of the adored wife or venerated mother, in fulfil­ment of St. Jerome's per calcatum perge patrem; such was their moral courage and constancy.

The priest who says Mass in mortal sin, because his feet are set in the way of evil, proceeds still further: he rides roughshod over everything, he tramples every­thing underfoot, even the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Son of God: per calcatum perge patrem! . . .

It is this which explains the most appalling outcome of sacrilegious Masses: the hardening of the heart, impenitence.

The Blood of Christ is become the cementing force in the structure of our iniquities! The sacrilegious Sacri­fice has put the last nail in the coffin of a soul dead and buried in its own wickedness! The profaning of the Most Holy has been the daily sledge-hammer blow on the anvil of a reprobate heart!

Resolution
I shall not allow a single month to go by without devoting one or more meditations to this, frightful theme: "The sacrilegious Mass," so that it may soak deep enough to make me tremble at the very mention of it.

Lord, nail my fickle mind to the cross of Thy chasten­ing fear, and let this thought be one of the nails!
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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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