Transcript:
According to the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Church is born primarily of Christ’s total self-giving for our salvation, anticipated in the institution of the Eucharist and fulfilled on the cross. Each time the sacrament, the actualization of the sacrifice of the Cross, which is the Holy Mass, is celebrated, the Church receives new strength of supernatural life.
It can be said that the Holy Mass is the life of the Church. The Second Vatican Council said that the Eucharistic sacrifice is the source and summit of the whole Christian life. All supernatural life, that is, the entire spiritual good of the whole Church, is substantially contained in this Sacrament of the Eucharist, as St Thomas Aquinas said.
Father Nicholas Gere, a German theologian, gave us a certain explanation of these truths. He said, The Church of Christ is placed in the middle between the figurative shadow of the Old Law and the final completion of the Heavenly Jerusalem. The Old Law was the preparation, the breaking of the ground for Christianity, and Christianity forms the direct entrance and vestibule leading to the revealed and beatific vision of the eternal truth and beauty to come.
But the perfection of religion necessarily demands a perfect divine worship, that is, the offering of sacrifice. Sacrifice is the chief and most excellent act of religion. If the Christian religion had not this, it would not have a perfect divine worship, and it would not be complete in every respect. It would, in an essential point, be incomplete and insufficient.
But this is inadmissible, since the Christian religion is the most perfect. It must possess the most excellent and the most sublime and worthy form of worship, namely, the worship of sacrifice. Where there is no sacrifice, there is no priesthood and no altar.
The sacrifice of Holy Mass provides the necessary and continuous spiritual strength for the militant Church in its struggle against sin and in its following of Christ. So long as the Church continues here below, combating and suffering, labor and tribulation, Christ will fight as a perpetual sacrifice with her, for he himself will never cease to be the bright, new, and inexhaustible source of that life of sacrifice.
The Sacrament of the Eucharist, and in particular the sacrifice of the Holy Mass, manifests in the most sublime and perfect way the mystery of the Church itself. As Pope Leo the Great said quote, “The only oblation of your body and blood replaces all the different victims who represented it. For you are the true Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and thus all the mysteries are fulfilled so much in you that, like all the hosts that are offered to you, they make but one sacrifice.
So all the nations of the earth make but one kingdom, the Church. The writing did okay from the first century, one of the oldest documents of the Church, which speaks about the celebration of Holy Mass, reaffirms the intimate union of all the members of the Church, symbolized and brought about by the Eucharistic sacrifice, particularly through Holy Communion.
Quotation from the oldest document from the first century: It says, In the way this broken bread was scattered here and there on the hills and gathered in became one, so let your Church, God, gather into your kingdom from the ends of the earth.
The organic development of the rite and the historical events, especially during the persecutions, are a powerful and moving demonstration of the supernatural strength that the Church drew from the Sacrifice of the Mass for her life.
The glorious testimonials of the Eucharistic sacrifice are so much the more precious because they originated at times in which the situation of Christians was painful and oppressive. As is described in the inscription of the catacombs in Rome, for example, a description of the catacombs of San Callistus says about a martyr Alexander: Alexander is not dead but above the stars, and his body reposes in his grave, kneeling in order to sacrifice to the true God.
At all the plural times in which we could not even offer the Holy Mysteries and safely say our prayers, in caves, in the quiet enclosure of this City of Death, the mysterious sounds of the sublime ceremony of the faithful resounded in the catacombs.
Here, at the grace of the martyrs in the catacombs, the holy sacrifice was celebrated. The faithful received the bread of the strong, and strong in faith, they hastened to the battlefield of martyrdom to shed their blood and to die for Christ.
To this day, the order of sanctity, the perfume of sacrifice, the spirit of martyrdom emanate from these silent caves and chambers, into catacombs in which the venerated traces of the faith and life of the early Christians throughout the centuries to our own epoch have been preserved for our joy and consolation.
The reason the Church went into the cities, villages, valleys, and mountainous regions was to carry out her mission. Entering into the Brazilian marble temples, grand cathedrals, numberless churches and chapels, built therein altars and celebrated as formally in the stillness of the night but now in the light of open day, in the presence of the assembled congregations, the heritage of the Lord, the mystery of his perpetual sacrifice, of His death on the cross.
From this time on, she fulfilled for all ages her mission, that of carrying to all countries of the world her most holy inheritance, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. She gathered nation after nation around her altar, celebrated with them generation after generation the sacrificial death of the Redeemer, and distributed to them the body of the Lord. The Sacrifice of the Mass is the source for a more effective configuration of Christ in His sacrifice, in daily life, and in the moments of the great sacrifices of the Christian life.
With Christ, in Christ, and for Christ, the Church offers herself daily to the Most High as a sacrifice pleasing to God. With Christ, at the sight of the Divine Victim, whose body is mystically broken every day at the altar and whose blood is daily, mystically shed before our eyes, the Church is encouraged and cheerfully animated to drink with Christ from the chalice of bitter affliction, to embrace fatigue, suffering, persecution, and slander with joy.
In Christ, because in Him, as His head, that is, in His most intimate connection with His sacrifice, the Church offers herself to travel the harsh, lonely, tiring, and painful way of the Cross until her arrival in Jerusalem, heavenly for Christ. Since the true and Mystical Body of Christ constitutes the only sacrifice whose sweet smell ascends to heaven, for Christ our Lord, through whom only we can draw near to God, and through whom only we please God, the Holy Mass is truly the tree of life for the Church.
This tree of life of the Eucharistic sacrifice, planted by God in the garden of the Church, raises its flowering top towards heaven and spreads its shedding branches on the earth, pouring out graces and blessings on all men.
In the ancient Church, the expression Catholic was almost synonymous with true, with authentic. Thus speaks Tertullian at the beginning of the third century, explaining Psalm 21 of the Church as the Catholic Jerusalem. He says the Greek letter tau, our letter T, is the true form of the Cross which, according to the prophecy of Christ, we design on our forehead in the true Catholic Jerusalem, in which, according to Psalm 21, the brothers of Christ or the children of God will give glory to God the Father, in the person of Christ Himself who addresses the Father.
The Catholic ecclesial characteristic is that it is universal, embracing all Catholics and all members of the Church, even the first member of the Church mentioned in the canon of the Mass, which is Abel the just.
In Saint Augustine, we find the idea of the ecclesia, that the Church already began with Abel the just. Saint Augustine says, All together, we are members of one body of Christ, not only we who are here in this place, but all on all the earth. And not only us who live in this time, but from righteous Abel to the end of the world, as long as there is human generation, whatever righteousness makes his passage in this life. All present humanity, and not only of this place, and all future humanity, all from the one body of Christ, and each is a member of it.
Therefore, if all form its body and the individuals are its members, Christ is the head of this body. He is, says the apostle, the head of the body that is the Church, the firstborn, the one who has primacy over all things. And since Christ still, says of Him, the apostle says of Christ that He is the head of every principality and of every power, it is clear that this Church, now a pilgrim, is united to that heavenly Church where we have angels as fellow citizens, to whom we will be equal after the resurrection of the bodies, an equality that we would impudently arrogate to ourselves if the truth itself had not assured us, saying, they will be equal to the angels of God, gospel of Luke 20:36.
And there will be only one Church, the city of the great King. The celebration of the Mass embraces all the angels and opens up to eternity. The Mass will flow into eternity because Christ is the eternal High Priest. His sacrifice will remain for all eternity. Therefore, Tertullian spoke of Christ as the Catholicos, such as elder Patrice, that is, Christ is the universal priest of God the Father. The Holy Mass is also ecclesial in the sense that it incorporates all places and all peoples. It is present everywhere on Earth.
The French poet Paul Claudel said that the Roman Missal, the old one, is enough for the Catholic Mass. He said that wherever he traveled, he saw the same book and heard the same words. This is how Paul Claudel speaks about the Mass’s protection.
He said he was in Notre Dame in Paris once during the seven-hour Mass in the dark morning. Could it have been one day on a dirty Boston street? Could it have been in China, where the priest still has this bushel on his head? Was it in Prague, in the laughing golden splendor of the beautiful Rococo churches? Could it have been obstructed by snow in Frankfurt? Could it have been in Hamburg, where the rain hits the windows in smoke like burning charm, in the crystalline morning, like gold? There is always a book on the altar that contains all the secrets of life and death: the Roman Missal.
So Paul Claudel said, the Roman Missal of the ages is a powerful element of ecclesiality and of the catholicity of the Mass, of its objectivity. The Church began in her historical existence as a universal Church, even if she later found herself in particular churches in different places. But her original characteristic is universality, that is, catholicity.
How did missionaries in mission lands do the planting of the Church? They celebrated the Holy Mass. The Holy Mass was the seed of the planting of the Church.
Saint Peter Julian Eymard, a Eucharistic saint from the nineteenth century, said that when missionaries arrived at a pagan people, they first established the tabernacle, the Eucharistic presence of Christ, which was the command post to win these pagan souls to God. He said, every time Christ takes possession of a country, He sets up His royal Eucharistic tabernacle there. The erection of a tabernacle officially sanctions His occupation of this land.
In our day, Christ continues to go to different nations, and wherever the Eucharist is brought, people are converted to Christianity. So the words of Saint Peter Julian Eymard. The Holy Mass is not ours, even if today many churchmen think they can manipulate it as they please. This is deeply wrong.
This attitude is a reflection of modern times, of its deepest disease, which is anthropocentrism, a loss of the supernatural vision. From this disease comes the idea that we are the ones who carry out the liturgy, not understanding that, instead, the protagonist is always Christ.
We are invited to participate in something that has been given to us by Christ and the tradition of the Church as an organic expression. It is not we who animate the liturgy.
The true animator of the liturgy is Christ, who is the main celebrant. Christ gives the liturgical celebration the true soul, the true spirit, the true spiritual attitudes, so that a concrete liturgical action may please God.
A holy Mass celebrated by a priest individually is spiritually no less animated than that celebrated by many priests. The most important action in the Mass is that of Christ, who is the principal celebrant. Even if the priest celebrates Mass alone, we could say that, theologically speaking, he concelebrates with Christ, who is the principal celebrant.
Our dignity is to participate in what we have been given, not to engage in activism. Another spiritual disease of our day is Neo-Pelagianism, connected with anthropocentrism, which makes us believe that salvation depends on our actions, our activism, or our liturgical animation.
Our participation in the Mass does not mean that we have to invent something. The deepest liturgical participation consists in uniting ourselves with the action of Christ, with the voice of the Church of all centuries. For us, the greatest action consists in giving ourselves spiritually as an offering with Christ, our life, and the crosses of our lives.
This is the greatest action, that is to say, being able during the Mass to accept one’s crosses and contradictions in loving union with Christ’s sacrifice. This is a real action rather than just performing the external rite of doing liturgical animation. This action is what God expects of us, which culminates in the mercy and fruitful reception of Holy Communion.
In this sense, Cardinal Charles Journet reiterated that union with Christ through the ritual rite is ordered to the union of sanctifying love. He said, valid worship and the ardor of love, the container and the content are inseparable in the Sacrifice of the Mass. Yet the rite is for love, not the other way around. According to the evangelical reversal of values, the last can be first, and the humblest in worship, the highest in love.
In this aspect, the Mass is the repetition of the bloodless sacrifice, the existential entry of each generation of the Church into the drama of redemptive charity, itself present at its source and whose place was marked in advance in the sacrifice of the Cross.
The Church lives from the Sacrifice of the Mass because this sacrifice is the only source of charity, and without charity, the Church and souls cannot have true supernatural life.
There are persons who alone can consecrate the Sacred Body of Jesus in a spiritual manner. But in a spiritual way, said John Towler, a woman can offer this sacrifice as well as a man, a simple layperson. When she wants, night or day, this means to unite oneself spiritually with the Holy Mass, which is celebrated continuously, night and day.
This soul must therefore enter the holy of holies, leaving out all that is vulgar and sinful. She must enter alone, entering into herself with a collected spirit and repentance. Then, having left all worthless earthly things behind, she must offer to the Heavenly Father the most lovable sacrifice of Christ, spiritually united with Him. And so the soul must, with great devotion, include in this prayer all people, all souls, the poor sinners for their conversion, and the souls in Purgatory.
An ancient author of the 14th century, John Towler, explained that we should always unite ourselves spiritually with the sacrifice of Christ for the conversion of sinners and the consolation of the souls in Purgatory. The Holy Mass is the supreme act of divine worship in the life of the Church.
The church building, where the Eucharistic sacrifice is usually celebrated, is also rightly called a church due to the Real Presence of the consecrated Body of Christ. In the tabernacle of Catholic churches, one can find a permanent place containing the source of supernatural life, which is the sacramental Body of Christ. But even more than the house of the Christian people, the Church is the house of Christ. A mystery, a presence fills even the poorest Catholic churches.
The Catholic Church is inhabited. It does not live mainly on the movement brought about by the comings and goings of crowds. A church is itself first a source of life and purity for those who pass through its enclosure. It has the real Eucharistic presence of Christ, the bodily presence of Christ, the place where supreme love has touched our human nature to contract with it an eternal covenant, the center of radiance capable of illuminating all the drama of time and human adventure.
Anyone can enter and personally meet Jesus Christ here in the Church. Regardless of their ignorance, their faults, or the burdens of memory and secret inner anxieties, the sinner can come to approach Jesus just as those did in the house of Simon the Pharisee. Anyone can cry out to Him, like the blind man of Jericho, and say, “Lord, let me see.”
When a sincere person asks us, What should I do to find the truth? perhaps before we take the time to explain the catechism or the mysteries of the Christian faith, before we send this person into the crowd of believers where they might feel like a stranger, and where the Church, whose nature they do not yet know, risks appearing to them as just another social group let us first invite them to sit quietly in the Church, in the presence of Christ, the Eucharistic presence.
Later, when they are ready, we can give them the Gospel, and when they understand that the real Eucharistic presence of Christ is the fundamental purpose of the Church, the Church’s permanence in space and time until the Second Coming of Christ, then their eyes will be open to the Catholicity of the Church, the mystery, and the Holy Mass.
The Holy Mass is the source of the supernatural life of Christ in the Church. It contains a transformative power that changes sinful humanity into true divine life.
Paul Claudel, the French writer, gave a moving personal testimony in 1913 about the influence the Liturgy of the Church, especially the Holy Mass, had on his conversion and rebirth into true supernatural life. He said: “But the great book that I had at my disposal, and where I studied, was the Church. Praised be this majestic grandmother from whose knees I have learned everything. I spent every Sunday at Notre Dame and went there as often as possible during the week. I was there and as ignorant of my religion as one can be of Buddhism. And lo and behold, the sacred drama unfolded before me with a magnificence beyond my imagination, the celebration of the Holy Mass. It was no longer the poor language of devotional books. It was the most profound and majestic poetry, the Holy Mass, the most austere gestures ever entrusted to human beings. I could not be satisfied with the spectacle of the Holy Mass, and every movement of the priest was deeply engraved in my mind and in my heart.
From the death of Christmas, the spectacle of the days of Holy Week, the sublime chant of the Exalted in the East tonight
all this overwhelmed me with respect, with joy, with gratitude, with repentance and adoration.”
This testimony of Paul Claudel reminds us that the Holy Mass is truly the life of the Church, and it should be the life of every Catholic, every day.
Thank you for your attention.
Host: Thank you so much. Wow, that was wonderful. As I was listening, I was thinking, what would it take to get the bishop to read his book to me?
Hey, I’ve got some good news! This is a first tonight here, thanks to this young man, Augustine, and some wizards back at KCRD, we are broadcasting live. The first time from Plantville, and certainly the first time from Kazakhstan! So thanks to Chris Polley and Augustine.
Now I need to do a quick station ID because we’ve been going on and on. This is FM 98.3 KCRD-LP, Dubuque.
I wanted to ask the bishop, what encouragement or advice do you have for priests who are faithful to the sacred tradition but might face persecution or ostracism from their community?
His Excellency: I would encourage such priests to remain faithful to Christ in the liturgy of all times. We must serve God and Christ first, not the ever-changing trends of this world. Therefore, even if it costs persecution, remain faithful to Christ. He will reward you, and in eternity, you will receive from God your eternal reward. So do not be afraid of persecution. Stay faithful, and Christ will bless you abundantly.
Host: Thank you, Bishop.
And thank you all for coming, especially everyone online. Sorry for the technical difficulties, but we’ll be doing this every First Friday, getting together to talk about tradition and its importance. We will also discuss what we can do to further this in our Church because this is truly the cause of our time. We all need to move forward and work for the better.
God bless all of you for coming.