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Saviour and High Priest

Summary. — Necessity of contemplating the work and mission of the Word-made-Flesh in order better to understand His Person; the names of the Incarnate Word declare His mission and characterise His work: “ Jesus Christ ” is the Son of God, Supreme High Priest who by His sacrifice saves humanity. — I. Christ is established High Priest in His Incarnation. — I]. How as soon as He enters into this world Christ inaugurates His sacrifice. — III. Diversity of the acts of the offering made by Jesus Christ. — IV. Perpetuity of Christ’s priesthood and oblation in Heaven. — V. How upon earth the sacrifice of the Cross is renewed ; the Church does not celebrate any of Christ’s mysteries without offering the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

HRIST Jesus is the Incarnate Word appearing in the midst of us, at once God and Man, true God and true Man, perfect God and perfect Man. In Him two natures are inseparably united in one Person, the Person of the Word.

These traits constitute the very being of Jesus. Our faith and piety adore Him as our God while confessing the touching reality of His Humanity.

If we would penetrate deeper into the knowledge of the Person of Jesus, we must begin by contemplating, for a few moments, His mission and His work. The Person of Jesus gives value to His mission and work ; His mission and work complete the revelation of His Person.

And it is most noteworthy that the names which designate the very Person of the Incarnate Word declare at the same time His mission and characterise His work. These names are not, as is too often the case with ours, lacking in significance. They come from Heaven and are rich in meaning. What are these names ? They are many, but the Church, following St, Paul in this, has especially retained two of them : that of Jesus, and that of Christ.

As you know, Christ means one who is anointed, sacred, consecrated. Formerly, under the Ancient Alliance, kings were frequently anointed, prophets more rarely, and the high priest always. The name of Christ, like the mission of king, prophet and pontiff which it designates, was given to several personages in the Old Testament before being given to the Incarnate Word. But none save Himself could fulfil its signification in all its fulness. He is the Christ, for He alone is the King of Ages, the Prophet preeminently, the one supreme and universal High Priest.

He is King. He is so by His Divinity, Rex Regum et Dominus dominantium’; He rules over all creatures brought out of nothing by His almighty power : Venite adoremus, et procidamus ante Deum... Ipse fecit nos et non ipsi nos *.

He will be so likewise as the Incarnate Word. The sceptre of the world had been foretold to Jesus by His Father. The Messias says : “I am appointed king by Him over Sion, His holy mountain, preaching His commandment. The Lord hath said to Me: Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thine inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for Thy possession ” ¢.

The Word became Incarnate in order to establish “ the Kingdom of God”. This expression often occurs in the preaching of Jesus. In reading the Gospel you will have remarked an entire group of parables,—the pearl of great price, the hidden treasure, the sower, the grain of mustard seed, the murderous vine-dressers, the guests invited to the wedding-feast, the tares, the servants awaiting their Master, the talents, etc.—which group is intended to show the greatness of this kingdom, its origin, its development, its extension to the pagan nations after the reprobation of the Jews, its laws, its conflicts, its triumphs. Christ organises this kingdom by the election of the Apostles, and the foundation of the Church to which He entrusts His doctrine, His authority, His sacraments. It is a wholly spiritual

_ kingdom wherein is nothing temporal or political such as - was dreamt of by the carnal minds of most of the Jews ; a kingdom into which every soul of good will enters ; a wonderful kingdom of which the final splendour is altogether heavenly and the beatitude eternal.1

St. John extols the magnificence of this Kingdom. He shows us the elect falling prostrate before their Divine Head, Christ Jesus, and proclaiming that He has redeemed them in His Blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and has made of them a kingdom to the glory of His Father : Et fecisti nos Deo nostro regnum*.

Christ is to be Prophet. He is the prophet preeminently, because He is the Word in person, the “Light of the World”. Who alone can truly enlighten every man here below. ‘‘ God... spoke in times past... by the prophets ”, St. Paul said to the Hebrews, but “in these days [God] hath spoken to us by His Son” ?. He is not a prophet who announces from afar off, to a small portion of the human race and under symbols, sometimes obscure, God’s still hidden designs. He it is Who living in the bosom of the Father alone knows the divine secrets and makes the wondrous revelation of these secrets to mankind : [pse enarravit °,

You know that from the beginning of His public life, Our Saviour applied to Himself the prophecy of Isaias declaring “the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me. Therefore He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor... to preach deliverance to the captives, and sight to the blind... to preach the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of reward ” +.

He is, then, the One sent, God’s Legate Who proves, by miracles wrought by His own authority, the divinity of His mission, of His work, and Person. Thus we hear the multitude, after the miracle of the multiplication of loaves, cry out : “ This is of a truth the prophet, that is to come into the world” >.

Tt is above all in His capacity of High Priest and Mediator, supreme High Priest and universal Mediator, that

  1. Apoc, V, 9-10. — 2. Heb. I, 1-2. — 3. Joan. I, 18. — 4s Lue. rive 18-19 ; cf. Isa. xr, 1. — 5. Joan. vI, 14.

SAVIOUR AND HIGH PRIEST AS the Word Incarnate realises the signification of this name of Christ.

But here we must unite the name of Jesus to that of Christ. The name of Jesus means Saviour : “ Thou shalt call His name Jesus”’, says the Angel to Joseph, “ for He shall save His people from their sins” . This is His essential mission: Vemit salvare quod perierat?. Truly Jesus only fully realises the signification of His Divine name by His Sacrifice, in fulfilling His work as High Priest : Venit Filius hominis dare animam suam redemptionem pro multis. The two names therefore complete each other and are henceforward inseparable. “ Christ Jesus” is the Son of God, established as the Supreme Pontiff Who, by His Sacrifice, is the Saviour of all humanity.

That is why we must contemplate Christ’s Priesthood and Sacrifice in order to understand, as far as is possible, the adorable Person of the Incarnate Word.

We are about to see that it is indeed by the Incarnation itself that Jesus was consecrated Pontiff, and that it was from the moment of His entrance into this world that He inaugurated His Sacrifice. All His existence bears the reflection of His mission of Pontiff and is marked with the characters of His Sacrifice.

Thus we shall better grasp both the greatness and the order of Christ’s mysteries ; we shall see what a profound unity knits them together : the sacrifice of Jesus, because it is His essential work, is the culminating point towards which all the mysteries of His earthly life converge, and the source whence all the states of His glorious life derive their splendour. We shall see too of what abundant graces He is the principle for every soul that comes to Him in order to drink at the Fountain of life and joy. i

It is especially in his Epistle to the Hebrews that St. Paul sets forth in broad and strong terms the ineffable greatness of Christ as High Priest : De quo nobis grandis eMatth ir 2t.-—82. bid. «vim, 11; ct. Luce x1x, ros sen Ck Matth. xx, 28 ; Marc. X, 45. sermo, et ininterpretabilis ad dicendum*. We herein see His mission of Mediator, the transcendency of His priesthood and sacrifice above the priesthood of Aaron and the sacrifices of the Old Testament : the unique sacrifice, consummated on Calvary, of which the offering is continued with inexhaustible efficacy in the sanctuary of heaven.

St. Paul reveals to us this truth that Christ Jesus possesses His Priesthood from the very moment of His Incarnation.

What is a priest ? A mediator between man and God, says the Apostle. The priest offers the homage of the creature to God, and gives God, “the Holy One”, to men, “sacrum dans”, Hence the name of sacerdos.

He is taken from among men, consecrated to God, in order to be mediator : Omnis pontifex ex hominibus assumptus, pro hominibus constituitur in tis quae sunt ad Dewm?. In times past, this consecration was ordinarily made by a special “ anointing” signifying that the Spirit of the Lord was upon the one who was chosen and thus marking him out in a particular manner for his sacerdotal mission. In the human _ priesthood, this sacerdotal character is a quality added as it were to the person of the man.

But in Christ, this character is wholly transcendent, as the mediation which He took upon Himself is unique. Jesus became High Priest from the moment of His Incarnation and by reason of His Incarnation.

Only faith can penetrate into this profound mystery for human understanding is confounded before such greatness. Let us transport ourselves to Nazareth so as to be present at the heavenly colloquy which took place between the Angel and the Virgin. God’s messenger says to Mary in explanation of the wonderful thing that is about to be accomplished in her : ‘The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God”. The Virgin replies : “Behold the handmaid of the Lord ; be it done to me according to thy word ” * i Hebr. V, t:—) 25 Ubidsv, 1.— 3, uc 35, 38s

At this moment, the Word is made flesh. The Word is for ever united, by an ineffable union, to our humanity. Through the Incarnation, the Word enters into our race, He becomes authentically one of ourselves, like unto us in all things, excepting sin. He can, then, become High Priest and Mediator, since being God and Man He can bind man to God: Ex hominibus assumptus.

In the Holy Trinity, the Second Person, the Word, is the Infinite glory of the Father, His essential glory : Splendor gloriae et figura substantiae ejus*. But, as Word, before the Incarnation, He does not offer sacrifice to His Father. Why is this ? Because sacrifice supposes homage, adoration, that is to say the acknowledgment of our own abasement in presence of the Infinite Being ; the Word being in all things equal to His Father, being God with Him and like Him, cannot then offer Him sacrifice. Christ’s Priesthood could only begin at the moment when the Word was made flesh. At that moment when the Word became Incarnate, He united in Himself two natures : the divine nature whereby He was able to say : Ego et Pater unum sumus? : “TY and the Father are one”, one in the unity of the Divinity, one in equality of perfections ; the other, the human nature by reason of which He said : Pater major me est: “ The Father is greater than I” *. It is therefore inasmuch as He is Man-God that Jesus is Pontiff.

Learned authors derive the word “ pontiff” from pontem facere : to establish or build a bridge”. Whatever be the ‘value of this etymology the idea is just as applied to Christ Jesus. In “The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena”, we read that God the Father, vouchsafed to explain to her how, by the union of the two natures, Christ threw a bridge over the abyss that separated us from heaven : “I would that thou shouldst look at the Bridge that I have built for thee in My Only-begotten Son, and that thou shouldst see the greatness thereof for it reaches from heaven to earth, that is, the greatness of the Divinity is joined to the earth of your humanity... That was necessary in order to restore the road which was broken and make it possible for man to pass through this world’s bitterness and attain (eternal) life ; but the bridge could not be made of earth large enough to span the abyss and reach eternal life, since the earth of human nature was incapable of itself to satisfy for sin and remove the stain of Adam’s sin which has corrupted and infected the whole human race. It was, then, necessary to join human nature with the height of My nature, the Eternal Deity, so that it might satisfy for the whole human race. It was necessary that the human nature should bear the punishment and that the Divine nature, united with the human, should make acceptable the sacrifice that My Son offered to Me in order to destroy death and restore life to you. So the height of the Divinity, humbled to the earth of your humanity, built the Bridge and made the road... But in order that you should have life, it is not enough that My Son should have become the Bridge, unless you pass over by this Bridge” ?.2

Moreover, it is through the Incarnation itself that the ' Humanity of Jesus was “consecrated”, “anointed ” ?. Not with an outward anointing, as is done for simple creatures, but with an entirely spiritual unction. By the action of the Holy Spirit, Whom the liturgy calls spiritalis unctio , the Divinity is poured out upon the Human nature of Jesus, like an “oil of gladness” : Unxit te Deus oleo laetitiae prae consortibus tuis. This unction is so penetrating, the Humanity is so closely consecrated to God, that there is no closer consecration than that, for this human nature has become the very Humanity of a God, of the Son of God.

This is why at the moment of the Incarnation whereby the first Priest of the New Alliance was consecrated, a cry resounded in Heaven : Tu es sacerdos in aeternum *, “ Thou art a priest for ever”. St. Paul, whose gaze pierced so many mysteries, likewise reveals this one to us. Listen to what he says : “Neither doth any man take the honour (of ptiesthood) to himself, but he that is called by God... thus Christ also did not glorify Himself, that He might be made a high priest ; but He that said unto Him : Thou art

  1. Dialogue. This idea is familiar to St Catherine. It is found in many places of the Dialogue and in her Letters. — 2. St Augustine,3

My Son, this day have I begotten Thee. As He saith also in another place : Thou art a priest for ever”...

So then, by the Apostle’s testimony, it was from the Eternal Father Himself that Christ received the supreme Priesthood, from this Father Who also said to Him : “Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee” ”. Christ’s Priesthood is a necessary and immediate consequence of His Incarnation.

Let us adore this holy, immaculate High Priest, Who is God’s own Son ; let us cast ourselves down before this Mediator Who alone, because He is at once God and Man, can fully realise His mission of salvation and render to us God’s gifts by the sacrifice of His Humanity ; but let us likewise confide ourselves to His Divine virtue which, also alone, was powerful enough to reconcile us with the Father.

/

II /

The sacrifice of this one Pontiff is on a par with His priesthood : it was likewise from the moment of His Incarnation that Jesus inaugurated it.

You know that in Christ, the soul, created like ours, was not however subject to the progressive development of the corporal organism for the exercise of the faculties proper to it, intelligence and will : His soul had, from the first moment of its existence, the perfection of its own life, as befitted a soul united to the Divinity.

Now, St. Paul reveals to us the first movement of the soul of Jesus at the instant of His Incarnation.

In one simultudinous glance, it beholds the ages past, the abyss wherein humanity lies powerless to liberate itself, the multiplicity and fundamental insufficiency of all the sacrifices of the Old Law ; for no creature; however perfect, can worthily repair the injury committed by sin against the Creator. Christ beholds the programme of immolation that God demands of Him in order to work out the world’s salvation.4

What a solemn moment for the soul of Jesus! What a moment too for the human race.

With a movement of intense love, His soul yields itself to perfect the work, both human and divine, which alone can render glory to the Father in saving humanity. O Father, “sacrifice and oblation Thou wouldst not”, they are not sufficiently worthy of Thee, “but a body Thou hast fitted to me”: Corpus autem aptasti mim. And _ wherefore hast Thou given it to me? Thou requirest that I should offer it to Thee in sacrifice. Behold I come. In the head of the book [of my life] it is written of me, that I should do Thy will, O God” : Ecce venio, in capite hbri scriptum est de me ut faciam, Deus, voluntatem tuam?.

With a perfect will, Christ accepted that sum of sorrows which began with the lowliness of the manger only to be ended by the ignominy of the Cross. From His entrance into this world, Christ offered Himself as Victim : the first action of His life was a sacerdotal act.

What creature is able to measure the love that filled this sacerdotal act of Jesus? Who is able to know its intensity and describe its splendour ? The silence of adoration can alone praise it in some degree.

Never has Christ Jesus retracted this act, nor withdrawn anything from this gift. All His life was ordered in view of His Sacrifice upon the Cross. Read the Gospel in this light and you will see how in every mystery and state of Jesus is found an element of sacrifice leading Him little by little to the height of Calvary, so much is the character of High Priest, Mediator and Saviour essential to His person. We shall never grasp the true physiognomy of the Person of Jesus unless we constantly have in view His redeeming mission by the sacrifice and immolation of Himself. This is why when St. Paul said that he summed up everything in the knowledge of the mystery of Jesus, he immediately added : “and Him crucified” : Non enim judicavi aliquid scire inter vos nisi Jesum Christum, ET HUNC CRUCIFIXUM ?.

Christ is born in the most absolute destitution ; He has to flee to a strange land to escape from a tyrant’s rage ;5

He knows hard and hidden toil in the workshop of Nazareth ; during His Public Life, He has not where to lay His head ; He is exposed to the persecution of the Pharisees, His most deadly enemies ; He suffers hunger, thirst, weariness. Furthermore, He burns to achieve His sacrifice : Baptismo autem habeo baptizari, et quomodo COARCTOR usquedum perficiatur?.

There is in Jesus, if we may so speak, a kind of enthusiasm for His Sacrifice. See again in the Gospel how our Divine Saviour begins to disclose to His apostles, gradually in order to spare their weakness, the mystery of His sufferings. One day He tells them that He must go to Jerusalem, that He will suffer many things from His enemies, and will be put to death. Then Peter immediately taking Him aside says: “Lord, be it far from Thee”. But Jesus answers: “Go behind me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto me ; because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men”?. In the midst of the splendours of His Transfiguration upon Thabor of what did the Saviour speak with Moses and Elias ? Of His coming Passion.

Christ thirsted to give to His Father the glory which His Sacrifice was to procure for Him: Jota unum aut unus apex non praeteribit a lege, donec omnia fiant*®. He wishes to fulfil everything to the last iota, that is to say, to the least detail.

When, in His agony, anguish and sorrow gather in His soul, He feels them acutely. « My Father », He says, “if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me, nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt”*. Finally upon Calvary, He consummates His immolation, and is able to say, before drawing His last breath, that He has entirely fulfilled all that His Father had given Him to do: Consummatum est®, This last cry of the Divine Victim upon the Cross corresponds to the Ecce venio of the Incarnation in the Virgin’s bosom.6

The offering that Christ made of Himself was a plenary, total and continuous offering, but it comprised different acts.

Adoration, first of all.

In the Holy Trinity, the Son belongs entirely to His Father, referring to Him, so to speak, all that He is. From the moment that the Word is made flesh, the Humanity that is united to Him is drawn into this ineffable current that bears the Son towards His Father. But as the Humanity is created and is inferior to the Divinity, this movement is translated by adoration. And this adoration is intense, perfect. From the instant the Humanity was joined to the Word, this Humanity, in Jesus, was lost in profound adoration, in self-annihilation, before the Divine Majesty of the Eternal Word Whose infinite perfections it contemplated through the Beatific Vision.

Then thanksgiving.

It is certain that of all the graces, of all the mercies God can grant, the greatest, the most eminent, is that which was given to the Humanity of Jesus. God chose it, predestinated it from among all others prae consortibus tuis, to be the Humanity of His Son ; to unite it, in an incom- - parable union to His Word. This is a unique grace, surpassing all that the human mind can dream as to the communication of the Divinity with the creature.

Thus the soul of Jesus filled, by this union, with the delights of the Divinity itself, overflows in thanksgiving. If at times we ourselves know not how to express the abundance of our gratitude to our Heavenly Father, what must not have been the gratitude of the soul of Jesus for the ineffable grace given to it, for all the incomparable privileges which were to proceed from its union with the Word ?

Expiation is likewise to be found. The race wherefrom the Word takes a human nature so as to unite it to Himself, is a sinful, fallen race ; the

Word espoused a body made “in the likeness of sinful flesh”, in simalitudinem carnis peccati?.

Certainly sin never touched Him personally : Tentatum autem per omnia pro similitudine, absque peccato?. He is the Christ, that is to say the High Priest pre-eminently ; “for it was fitting’, says St. Paul, “that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” . But His Father laid upon Him the sins of all mankind : Poswit in eo imquitatem omnium nostrum., Jesus became, according to the energetic expression of St. Paul, “sin for us” °,. Thereby the offering that Jesus made of Himself to His Father, at the moment of His Incarnation, embraced the poverty of the manger, the lowliness of the Hidden Life, the fatigues and conflicts of the Public Life, the terrors of the Agony, the ignominies of the Passion, the torments of a bitter Death : Semetipsum exinanivit formam servi accipiens... humiliavit semetipsum, factus obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis®, Although He was God, Christ did not eagerly cling to His equality with God ; but He humbled Himself in taking, through the Incarnation, the condition of a created nature, in becoming like unto men ; and in showing Himself under the aspect of a man, He further humbled Himself “becoming obedient... even to the death of the cross”.

This death upon Calvary was an expiation of infinite value because Christ was God, but also because His abasements reached the utmost limit of humiliation. The dying Christ upon the Cross accepted to become for us “the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people” : Opprobrium honinum et abjectio plebis™ ; and this unheard of abasement, into which He was to descend in order to expiate sin, was willed by the soul of Jesus from the moment of His Incarnation with all that was brought with it of humiliation, ignominy and suffering.

Finally, in this offering we find mpetration, that is to say supplication.

  1. Rom. vil, 3.— 2. Hebr. tv, 15 cf. 1, 17.— 3. Ibid. vu, 26. — 4. Isa. Wl, 6. — 5. II Cor. v, 21.— 6. Philipp. m, 7-8.— 7. Ps. xx!, 7.

Christ in His Mysteries. 6

The Gospel tells us nothing of Christ’s prayer for us in the Incarnation; nor even during His public life, although it says that He passed whole nights in prayer : Brat pernoctans in oratione Deit. But St. John has preserved the words of the prayer that Jesus made for His disciples and for us, at the Last Supper, at the moment of inaugurating His Passion and when about to complete His Sacrifice : it was the sacerdotal prayer of Jesus. The Gospel does not contain a more beautiful page. And can we doubt but that this prayer was the epitome and final echo of all those that Christ had addressed to His Father during His whole life ?

“Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee. As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He may give eternal life to all whom Thou hast given Him... I have manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou hast given me... Now they have known that all things which Thou hast given me, are from Thee... I pray for them... because they-are Thine... Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given me ; that they may be one, as we also are... These things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy filled in themselves... I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from evil... And for them do I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in me ; that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee... Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me; that they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me, because Thou hast loved Me before the creation of the world ” 2,

What a wonderful prayer! And rising up from what a Heart! From the Heart of Jesus, the supreme High Priest of all humanity, our Pontiff, when He is about to make Himself our Victim ! Why then do we so often doubt Christ’s power? Why are we discouraged, when Jesus, true God as well as true Man, offers such a prayer to His Father when He is on the point of glorifying Him with an infinite glory and immolating Himself for our sins ?7

O Christ Jesus, often repeat for us this prayer : Father, keep those whom Thou hast given Me from evil... that they may have my joy... that they may have it in its fullness... that they may share in My glory... that they also may be one in Us !...

IV

The prayer of Jesus has been granted ; the immolation by which it was followed merited for the whole human race abundant graces of pardon, justification, union, life, joy and glory.

After saying that Christ was established supreme High Priest of the human race from the moment of His Incarnation, St. Paul immediately adds : ‘“ Who in the days of His flesh, with a strong cry and tears, offering up prayers and supplications to Him that was able to save Him from death, was heard for His reverence. And whereas He was the Son of God, He learned obedience by the things which He suffered ; and being consummated, He became, to ali that obey Him, the cause of eternal salvation” +.

St. Paul also shows how our salvation proceeds from the oblation offered by Jesus at the moment of coming into this world ; for this offering of Himself to the will of God, held in germ the immolation of Calvary : “In the which will, we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ:/*. 7:

So, as you see, every grace whatsoever, flows for us from the Cross : there is not one but is bought with the love and blood of Jesus. The Priesthood of Christ makes Him our one Mediator Who is ever heard. This is why the Apostle exclaims in ardent conviction : “ He that spared not even His own Son... how hath He not also, with Him, given us all things” ? Quomodo non etiam cum illo omnia nobis donavit® ? We are made so rich, says St. Paul again, that henceforward no grace is wanting to us : /ta ut NIHIL vobis desit in ULLA gratia* !

What absolute and unshaken confidence this revelation ought to give us! In Christ Jesus we find ali, we possess all, and, if we will, in Him nothing is wanting to us : He is our Salvation, the source of all our perfection and of all our sanctification.8

For so great is our Pontiff, so far-reaching His priesthood that even now Christ fulfils this office of Mediator and continues His Sacrifice for our sanctification.

First of all He does this in Heaven.

It is there above all that the mystery is ineffable. The Eternal Priesthood of Christ Jesus contains hidden depths of which St. John and St. Paul give us glimpses, the one in his Apocalypse’, the other in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

St. Paul exalts the eternal priesthood of Jesus in magnificent terms. “Jesus... now sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God” ?. We have in Him “a great High Priest that hath passed into the heavens” *.. Jesus “ for that He continueth for ever, hath an everlasting priesthood... always living to make intercession for us... and made higher than the heavens” *. “For Jesus is not entered into the holies made with hands, the patterns of the true : but into heaven itself, that He may appear now in the presence of God for us” ®.

All these remarkable expressions show us that in heaven Christ Jesus eternally remains as High Priest, prolonging His oblation for us.

Doubtless, St. Paul does not forget that there is but one sacrifice of the Cross : UNA enim oblatione, consummavit in sempiternum sanctificatos ©. There could not be any other; this sacrifice is unique and definitive.

But, he says, in the same way as each year in the Old Testament the high priest, after having offered the sacrifice in the first tabernacle of the Temple, entered alone with the blood of the victims into the second tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, and presenting himself before the Lord hence achieved his office of high priest,—so Christ, having offered His sacrifice upon earth, entered once for all by His own Blood, not into a tabernacle made by the hand of man, but into the sanctuary of the divinity : Per pro- prium sanguinem imtroivit semel in sancta... Hence He consummates in glory His divine office of Mediator : Nunc autem semel im consummatione saeculorum, per hostiam suam apparuit ?.9

What is it that Christ Jesus does in this sanctuary ? What is His work ? ; He can no longer merit, it is true. The time of meriting ceased for Him at the moment He breathed forth His last breath upon the Cross ; but the time of applying His merits to us ever endures.

And this is what our Lord does, He henceforward stands before the face of His Father to intercede for us : Ui appareat NUNC vultui Dei pro nobis*. There, “ ever living”, semper vivens, for “death shall no more have dominion over Him” *, He unceasingly offers to His Father for us His sacrifice already accomplished, but subsisting in His Person ; He shows to His Father His Five Wounds of which He willed to keep the marks, those Wounds which are the solemn attestation and full pledge of His immolation upon the Cross. In the name of the Church of which He is the Head, He unites to His oblation our adoration and homage, our prayers and supplications, and our thanksgiving. We are constantly present in the thoughts of our compassionate High Priest, unceasingly He brings to bear for our sanctification His merits, His satisfactions, His Sacrifice.

Thus there is in Heaven, and will be until the end of time, a sacrifice celebrated for us by Christ in an eminent and sublime manner, but it is in perpetual continuity with His immolation upon the Cross: Per hostiam suam apparuit.

After having shown us something of the greatness and power of this Sacrifice, St. Paul gives us this exhortation : “ Having therefore a great High Priest that hath passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession”. What confession? The confession of our faith in Jesus Christ, the supreme Mediator, faith in the infinite value of His merits, faith in the boundless extent of His Divine power with the Father.

The Apostle continues : “ Let us go therefore with con- fidence, Adeamus ergo cum fiducia, to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid »?.10

Indeed what grace could be refused to us by this High Priest Who knows how to have compassion on our frailty, our infirmities, our sufferings, since, in order to be like unto us, He has experienced them all ; this High Priest Who is so powerful, since being the Son of God, He deals with His Father as with His equal : voto Pater? ; this High Priest Who wills to be united to us as, in the body, the head is united to the members ? What graces of forgiveness, of perfection, of holiness may not be hoped for by a soul that truly seeks to remain united to Him by faith, confidence and love ? Is He not the “ High Priest of the good things to come »*? Js He not “able to do all things more abundantly than we desire or understand” * ?

This is why, in all her worship, the Church, who better than anyone, knows her Bridegroom, addresses no prayer to the Heavenly Father, asks no grace, without marking her request with the sign of the cross, without invoking Jesus Christ, our Saviour and High Priest : Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum. This formula, in the Church’s liturgy, is repeated daily and hourly. It is the ceaseless proclamation of Christ’s universal mediation ; but it is also the most explicit and most solemn confession of His Divinity, for the Church immediately adds : “ Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, world without end”.

V

In commenting, according to St. Paul, upon the work of | Christ as Pontiff in Heaven, we have not exhausted the marvels of the priesthood of Jesus.

Heaven has its oblation, eminent and ineffable, conti- -nuous and altogether glorious. The Incarnate Word did not will to leave the earth without likewise bequeathing to it a sacrifice. This sacrifice is the Holy Mass which both recalls and reproduces, in a mystical manner, the immolation of Golgotha. As I have said, the Sacrifice of the Cross is the one and only Sacrifice ; it suffices for all ; but our Lord willed that it should be renewed in order to apply the fruit of it to souls. I will set forth this truth more in detail when we shall have to contemplate the mystery of the Eucharist. I would simply say here how our High Priest perpetuates His Sacrifice here below.11

Christ chooses certain men to whom He gives a real participation in His priesthood. These are the priests whom the bishop anoints on the day of their ordination. Extending his hands over the head of the one whom he is about to consecrate, the bishop invokes the Holy Spirit, beseeching Him to descend upon that soul. At that moment the words that the Angel spoke to Mary might be repeated to the priest : Spiritus Sanctus superveniet in te. The Holy Spirit envelops him, as it were, and effects within him so close a union and resemblance with Christ Jesus that he is, like Christ, a priest for all eternity. Christian tradition calls the priest ‘“ another Christ” : he is, like Him, chosen to be, in the name of Christ, a mediator between heaven and earth. This is a supernatural reality. When the priest offers the Sacrifice of the Mass, which reproduces the Sacrifice of Calvary, he is identified with Christ. He does not say : “ This is Christ’s Body, this is Christ’s Blood” ; if he said this, there would not be sacrifice ; but he says : “This is My Body, this is My Blood”.

From this moment, the priest consecrated to God by the Holy Spirit becomes, like Christ, a pontiff and mediator between men and God, or rather, it is Christ’s one mediation prolonged here below throughout the ages, by the ministry of priests. In the name of the faithful, the priest offers to God the Eucharistic Sacrifice upon the altar ; from the altar he brings to the people the Holy Victim, the Bread of Life, and therewith every gift and every grace.

The altar is, on earth, the centre of the religion of Jesus, as Calvary is the summit of His life. All the mysteries of the terrestrial existence of Jesus converge, as I have said, towards His immolation upon the Cross ; from the Cross all the states of His glorious life derive their splendour.12

This is why the Church does not commemorate nor celebrate any of the mysteries of Jesus without offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. All the public worship organised by the Church’ gravitates around the altar ; all the readings, prayers, praises and homage of which the whole is called the Divine Office and in which the Church exalts the mysteries of her Divine Bridegroom and retraces them under the eyes of her children, were regulated by her only so as to enshrine the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

Whatever then be the mystery of Jesus that we celebrate, the best way to participate in it and to dispose ourselves to make the fruit of it our own is, after having meditated upon and contemplated it, to assist with faith and love at the Sacrifice of the Mass and to unite ourselves, by Holy Communion, to the Divine Victim, immolated for us upon the altar.

In the Life of Blessed Marie d’Oignies it is related that our Lord was accustomed, on the occasion of the different feasts, to show Himself to her in the Blessed Sacrament under a form in harmony with the mystery being celebrated ’.

We have no need to envy this favour. By Holy Communion, Christ Jesus does not only show Himself to the soul; He comes within us, He communicates Himself entirely to us ; He comes with His humanity as a compassionate High Priest, knowing our frailty, and with the virtue of His divinity which is able to raise us up to Himself at His Father’s right hand. He comes within us, in order to pray to the Father in us, with us ; to offer Him Divine homage and unite thereto our supplications ; but above all to bring forth in our inmost souls, by His Spirit, the fruit of each of His mysteries.

You will have noticed that the thanksgiving which follows the holy Oblation and Communion, (postcommunion) takes a different aspect according to the different mysteries. What does this indicate if not that by Communion Christ wishes to make arise within us the thoughts and sentiments that He experienced when living the mystery that is being celebrated that day, and consequently wishes to apply to us

  1. Father Faber. The Blessed Sacrament.

SAVIOUR AND HIGH PRIEST of the special fruits and graces proper to this mystery. This is what the Church asks at the postcommunion on the feast of the Rosary wherein she honours the Mother of the Incarnate Word as united with all the mysteries of her Son Jesus. What does the Church beseech in the collect of the Mass ? In her prayer to God, she brings forward the plea that “His only begotten Son has by His Life, Death and Resurrection merited for us the reward of eternal salva- tion”. Then she asks “that in honouring these mysteries, we may imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise”: Concede... ut haec mysteria recolentes, et imitemur quod continent et quod promitiunt assequamur. A like thought inspires the “postcommunion” of the feast : “Grant, O Lord, that we may obtain the virtues of the mysteries which we celebrate” : Ut mysteriorum quae recolimus virtus percipiatur.

Thus, little by little, our identification with Jesus is realised: Hoc enim sentite in vobis quod et in Christo Jesu}. ‘Is not that the very formula of our eternal predestination : Conformes fieri imaginis Filii? ? '

Such are the essential traits of the Person and the work of Christ Jesus.

The Eternal Word—made Flesh for us—becomes, by His mysteries and His Sacrifice, our High Priest and our Mediator. A Mediator Who knows our needs, because He has been a man like unto us ; an all-powerful Mediator, because He is God with the Father and the Holy Spirit ; a Mediator Whose mediation is unceasing, in heaven by His eternal oblation, on earth by the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

And it is for us that Christ accomplishes this work : pro nobis. Christ saves us by His Sacrifice only in order to associate us with His glory.

O Lord, who shall be able to reveal how ineffable are the designs of Thy wisdom? Who shall celebrate the greatness of the gift Thou dost make to us ? Who shall be able to render Thee thanksgiving worthy of it ?

  1. Philipp. 0, 5. — 2. Rom. vil, 29.

Footnotes

    1. Apoc. XIX, 16.— 2. Ps. xciv, 6.— 3. Ibid. xcrx, 2. —- 4. Ibid. ny, 8.
    ↩
    1. Hebr. 1, 3.— 2. Joan. x, 30. — 3. Ibid. xrv, 28.
    ↩

  3. De Trinitate, Xv, 27. — 3. Hymn Vent Creator. — 4. Ps. xuiv, 8. — 5 Se Clse e4l ↩

    1. Nec quisquam sumit sibt honorem, sed qui vocatur a Deo, sic et Christus non semetipsum clartficavit ut pontifex fieret ; sed qut locutus est ad eum: Filius meus es tu, ego hodie genui te, quemadmodum et im alio loco dicit : Tues sacerdos in aeternum, WHebr. v, 4-6. — 2. Ps. 1, 7.
    ↩

  5. 1, Hebr. x, 5-7 ; ef. Ps. XxxIx, 7-9.— 2 I Cor. 0, 2. ↩

    1. Luc. x1, 50,— 2. Ibid. xvi, 21-23; Marc. vill 31-33. — 3.Matth. v, 18. — 4. Ibid. xxvI, 39, cf. Marc. xIv, 36; Luc. xx, 42.— 5.Joan. XIX, 30.
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  7. 1, Luc. VI, 12.— 2. Joan, XvIt. ↩

    1. Hebr. v, 7-9.— 2. Ibid. x, 10. — 3. Rom. vi, 32. —- 4, I Cor. 7:
    ↩
    1. Cf. Vv. 6.— 2. Hebr. xm,.2, — 3. Ibid. tv, t4. — 4. Ibid. vir. 24- 26. — 5. Ibid.1x, 24. — 6. Ibid. x, 14. i‘ Neh
    ↩

  10. 1, Hebr. rx, 12. — 2. Ibid. 26. — 3. Ibid. rx, 24. — 4. Rom. VI, 9. ↩

    1. Hebr. Iv, 16.— 2. Joan, xvit,24.— 3. Hebr, 1x, 11.— 4. Ephes. tt,20.
    ↩
    1. Lue. I, 35.
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Chapter 6 of 21