The Complete Ascetical Works of St. Alphonsus/Volume 6/The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
​

The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ,

WITH A SHORT EXPLANATION OF

THE PRAYERS OF THE MASS.

​

NOTICE.

I acknowledge to have drawn this little treatise on the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ from a work composed by a learned French author.[ed. 1] His work is complete and somewhat diffuse. I have composed and have published this abridgment because of the profit that may be de rived from it, not only by the priests who say Mass, but by the faithful who are present at it.

My little work bears the title "The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ," for, although we distinguish by different names the Sacrifice of the Cross from the Sacrifice of the Altar, ​yet it is substantially the same sacrifice. In fact, we find at the altar the same victim and the same priest that one day offered himself on the cross. The Sacrifice of the Altar is a continuation or a renewal of the Sacrifice of the Cross, and differs from it only in the manner in which it is offered.

​

The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

I.

The Sacrifices of the Old Law were Figures of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

All the sacrifices of the old law were figures of the sacrifice of our divine Redeemer, and there were four kinds of these sacrifices; namely, the sacrifices of peace, of thanksgiving, of expiation, and of impetration.

1. The sacrifices of peace were instituted to render to God the worship of adoration that is due to him as the sovereign master of all things. Of this kind were the holocausts.

2. The sacrifices of thanksgiving were destined to give thanks to the Lord for all his benefits.

3. The sacrifices of expiation were established to obtain the pardon of sin. This kind of sacrifice was specially represented in the Feast of the Expiation by the emissary-goat,[1] which, having been laden with all the sins of the people, was led forth out of the camp of the He brews, and afterwards abandoned in the desert to be there devoured by ferocious beasts. This sacrifice was the most expressive figure of the sacrifice of the cross. Jesus Christ was laden with all the sins of men, as Isaias had foretold: The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.[2] He was afterwards ignominiously led forth from Jerusalem, whither the Apostle invites us to follow him ​by sharing in his opprobrium: Let us go forth therefore to him without the camp, bearing his reproach.[3] He was abandoned to ferocious beasts; that is to say, to the Gentiles, who crucified him.

4. Finally, the sacrifices of impetration had for their object to obtain from God his aid and his grace.

Now, all these sacrifices were abolished by the coming of the Redeemer, because only the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which was a perfect sacrifice, while all the ancient sacrifices were imperfect, was sufficient to expiate all the sins, and merit for man every grace. This is the reason why the Son of God on entering the world said to his Father: Sacrifice and oblation Thou wouldst not; but a body Thou hast fitted to me. Holocausts for sin did not please Thee. Then said I: Behold, I come; in the head of the book it is written of me, that I should do Thy will, O God.[4] Hence, by offering to God the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we can fulfil all our duties towards his supreme majesty, and provide for all our wants; and by this means we succeed in maintaining a holy intercourse between God and ourselves.

We must also know that the Old Law exacted five conditions in regard to the victims which were to be offered to God so as to be agreeable to him; namely, sanctification, oblation, immolation, consumption, and participation.

1. The victim had to be sanctified, or consecrated to God, so that there might not be offered to him anything that was not holy nor unworthy of his majesty. Hence, the animal destined for sacrifice had to be without stain, without defect; it was not to be blind, lame, weak, nor ​deformed, according to what was prescribed in the Book of Deuteronomy.[5] This condition indicated that such would be the Lamb of God, the victim promised for the salvation of the world; that is to say, that he would be holy, and exempt from every defect. We are thereby instructed that our prayers and our other good works are not worthy of being offered to God, or at least can never be fully agreeable to him, if they are in any way defective. Moreover, the animal thus sanctified could no longer be employed for any profane usage, and was regarded as a thing consecrated to God in such a manner that only a priest was permitted to touch it. This shows us how displeasing it is to God if persons consecrated to him busy themselves without real necessity with the things of the world, and thus live in distraction and in neglect of what concerns the glory of God.

2. The victim had to be offered to God; this was done by certain words that the Lord himself had prescribed.

3. It had to be immolated, or put to death; but this immolation was not always brought about by death, properly so called; for the sacrifice of the loaves of proposition, or show-bread, was accomplished, for example, without using iron or fire, but only by means of the natural heat of those who ate of them.

4. The victim had to be consumed. This was done by fire. The sacrifice in which the victim was entirely consumed by fire was called holocaust. The latter was thus entirely annihilated in order to indicate by this destruction the unlimited power that God has over all his creatures, and that as he created them out of nothing, so he can reduce them to the nothingness from which they came. In fact, the principal end of the sacrifice is to acknowledge God as a sovereign being, so superior to all things that everything before him is purely nothing; for all ​things are nothing in presence of him who possesses all things in himself. The smoke that came from this sacrifice and arose in the air signified that God received it as a sweet odor, that is to say, with pleasure, as is written of the sacrifice of Noe: Noe … offered holocausts upon the altar; and the Lord smelled a sweet savor.[6]

5. All the people, together with the priest, had to be partakers of the victim. Hence, in the sacrifices, excepting the holocaust, the victim was divided into three parts, one part of which was destined for the priest, one for the people, and one for the fire. This last part was regarded as belonging to God, who by this means communicated in some manner with those who were partakers of the victim.

These five conditions are found reunited in the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb. The Lord had commanded Moses[7] that, on the tenth day of the month on which the Jews had been delivered from the slavery of Egypt, a lamb of one year and without blemish should be taken and separated from the flock; and thus were verified the conditions enumerated above, namely: 1. The separation of the lamb signified that it was a victim consecrated to God; 2. This consecration was succeeded by the oblation, which took place in the Temple, where the lamb was presented; 3. On the fourteenth day of the month the immolation took place, or the lamb was killed; 4. Then the lamb was roasted and divided among those present; and this was the partaking of it, or communion; 5. Finally, the lamb having been eaten, what remained of it was consumed by fire, and thus was the sacrifice consummated.

​

II.

Fulfilment of the Prophetic Figures.

The Sacrifice of our Lord, as we have said, was a perfect sacrifice, of which those sacrifices of the Old Law were but signs, imperfect figures, and what the Apostle calls weak and needy elements.[8] The sacrifice offered by Jesus Christ really fulfilled all the conditions mentioned above. The first condition, which is the sanctification, or the consecration of the victim, was accomplished in the Incarnation of the Word by God the Father himself, as is mentioned in the Gospel of St. John: Whom the Father hath sanctified.[9] Likewise, when announcing to the Blessed Virgin that she was chosen to be the Mother of the Son of God, the Angel said: The Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.[10] Thus this divine victim, who was to be sacrificed for the salvation of the world, had already been sanctified by God, when he was born of Mary. From the first moment in which the Eternal Word took a human body, he was consecrated to God to be the victim of the great sacrifice that was to be accomplished on the Cross for the salvation of men. In regard to this our Lord said to his Father: But a body Thou hast fitted to me … that I should do Thy will, O God.[11]

The second condition, or the oblation, was also fulfilled at the moment of the Incarnation, when Jesus Christ voluntarily offered himself to atone for the sins of men. Knowing that divine justice could not be satisfied by all ​the ancient sacrifices, nor by all the works of men, he offered himself to atone for all the sins of men, and hence he said to God, Sacrifices, and oblations, and holocausts for sin, Thou wouldst not. … Then said I, Behold, I come to do Thy will, O God.[12] Then the Apostle adds immediately, In which will we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once.[13] This last text is remarkable. Sin had rendered all men unworthy of being offered to God and of being accepted by him, and, therefore, it was necessary that Jesus Christ should offer himself for us in order to sanctify us by his grace, and to make us worthy of being accepted by God. And this offering which our Lord then made of himself did not limit itself to that moment, but it only then began; it always has continued since, and it will continue forever. It is true it will cease on earth at the time of Antichrist: the Sacrifice of the Mass is to be suspended for twelve hundred and ninety days; that is, for three years six months and a half, according to the prophecy of Daniel: And from the time when the continual sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination unto desolation shall be set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred ninety days.[14] Yet the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ will never cease, since the Son of God will always continue to offer himself to his Father by an eternal sacrifice, for he himself is the priest and the victim, but an eternal victim and an eternal priest, not according to the order of Aaron, of which the priesthood and the sacrifice were temporary, imperfect, and inadequate to appease the anger of God against rebellious man, but according to the order of Melchisedech, as David predicted: Thou art a priest ​according to the order of Melchisedech.[15] The priesthood of Jesus Christ will, therefore, be eternal, since, even after the end of the world, he will always continue to offer in heaven this same victim that he once offered on the Cross for the glory of God and for the salvation of mankind.

The third condition of the sacrifice—namely, the immolation of the victim—was evidently accomplished by the death of our Lord on the Cross.

There remains for us yet to verify, in the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the two other conditions requisite to render a sacrifice perfect—that is, the consumption of the victim and the partaking of it.

It is then asked, What was this consumption of the victim in the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ? for although his body was by death separated from his holy soul, yet it was not consumed, nor destroyed.

The anonymous author of whom I spoke in the beginning, says that this fourth condition was fulfilled by the resurrection of our Lord; for, then, his adorable body was divested of all that is terrestrial and mortal, and was clothed in divine glory. He adds that it is this glory that Jesus Christ asked of his Father before his death: And now glorify Thou me, O Father, with Thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with Thee.[16] Our Lord did not ask this glory for his divinity, since he possessed it from all eternity as being the Word equal to the Father; but he asked it for his humanity, and he obtained it at his resurrection, by which he entered in a certain manner into his divine glory.

In speaking of the fifth condition, which is, the partaking of the victim, or Communion, the same author ​says that it is also fulfilled in heaven, where all the blessed are partakers of the victim of the Sacrifice that Jesus Christ continues to offer to God while offering himself.

These two reflections, made by the author to explain the two last conditions of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, are wise and ingenious; but for myself I think that the two conditions of which there is question, namely, the consumption and Communion, are manifestly fulfilled in the Sacrifice of the Altar, which, as has been declared by the Council of Trent, is the same as that of the Cross. In fact, the Sacrifice of the Mass, instituted by our Lord before his death, is a continuation of the Sacrifice of the Cross. Jesus Christ wished that the price of his blood, shed for the salvation of men, should be applied to us by the Sacrifice of the Altar; in which the victim offered is the same, though it is there offered differently from what it is on the Cross, that is, without the shedding of blood. These are the words of the Council of Trent: "Although Christ our Lord was to offer himself once to his Eternal Father on the altar of the Cross by actually dying to obtain for us eternal redemption, yet as his priesthood was not to become extinct by his death, in order to leave his Church a visible sacrifice suited to the present condition of men, a sacrifice which might at the same time represent to us the bloody sacrifice consummated on the Cross, preserve the memory of it to the end of the world, and apply the salutary fruits of it for the remission of the sins which we daily commit; at his last supper, on the very night on which he was betrayed, giving proof that he was established a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech, he offered to God the Father his body and blood, under the appearances of bread and wine, and, under the same symbols, gave them to the apostles, whom he constituted at the same time priests of the New Law. By these words, ​'Do ye this in remembrance of me,' he commissioned them and their successors in the priesthood to consecrate and offer his body and blood, as the Catholic Church has always understood and taught."[17] And further on the Council declares that the Lord, appeased by the oblation of the Sacrifice of Mass, grants us his graces and the remission of sins. It says: "It is one and the same victim; the one that offers sacrifice is the same one who, after having sacrificed himself on the Cross, offers himself now by the ministry of the priest; there is no difference except in the manner of offering."[18]

Jesus Christ has, then, paid the price of our redemption in the Sacrifice of the Cross. But he wishes that the fruit of the ransom given should be applied to us in the Sacrifice of Altar, being himself in both the chief sacrificer, who offers the same victim, namely, his own body and his own blood;—with this difference only, that on the Cross his blood was shed, while it is not shed at the ​altar. Hence the Roman catechism[19] teaches that the Sacrifice of the Mass does not serve only to praise God and to thank him for the gifts that he has granted us, but it is a true propitiatory sacrifice, by which we obtain from the Lord pardon for our sins and the graces of which we stand in need. Because the fruit of the death of Jesus Christ is applied to us by the Sacrifice of the Altar, the Church expresses herself thus in her prayers: "As often as the memory of the Sacrifice of the Cross is celebrated, so often is accomplished the work of our redemption."[20]

Now, in the Mass we find not only the three essential parts of the Sacrifice of the Cross,—that is, the sanctification and oblation of the victim, as also the immolation, which is here done mystically, the consecration of the body and that of the blood taking place separately, but we also find the two other parts of the sacrifice; namely, the destruction or consumption, communion or partaking, of the victim. The destruction or consumption is accomplished by the natural heat of those who receive the consecrated Host. Communion or partaking of the victim consists in the distribution of the Holy Eucharist to the faithful who approach the altar for this purpose.

In this manner we clearly see realized in the Sacrifice of the Altar the five conditions required in the ancient sacrifices, all of which were signs and figures of the great Sacrifice of our Lord.[ed. 2] ​

  1. ↑ Lev. xvi. 8.
  2. ↑ "Et posuit Dominus in eo iniquitatem omnium nostrum."—Isa. liii. 6.
  3. ↑ "Exeamus igitur ad eum extra castra, improperium ejus portantes."—Heb. xiii. 13.
  4. ↑ "Hostiam et oblationem noluisti, corpus autem aptasti mihi; holocautomata pro peccato non tibi placuerunt; tunc dixi: Ecce venio; in capite libri scriptum est de me, ut faciam, Deus, voluntatem tuam."—Heb. x. 5.
  5. ↑ Deut. xv. 21.
  6. ↑ "Noe … obtulit holocausta super altare; odoratusque est Dominus odorem suavitatis."—Gen. viii. 20.
  7. ↑ Exod. xii. 3.
  8. ↑ "Infirma et egena elementa."—Gal. iv. 9.
  9. ↑ "Quem Pater sanctificavit."—John, x. 36.
  10. ↑ "Quod nascetur ex te Sanctum, vocabitur Filius Dei."—Luke, i. 35.
  11. ↑ "Corpus autem aptasti mihi, … ut faciam, Deus, voluntatem tuam."—Heb. x. 5.
  12. ↑ "Quia hostias et oblationes et holocautomata noluisti … tunc dixi: Ecce venio, ut faciam, Deus, voluntatem tuam."—Heb. x. 8.
  13. ↑ "In qua voluntate sanctificati sumus per oblationem corporis Jesu Christi semel."—Ibid. 10.
  14. ↑ "Et a tempore cum ablatum fuerit juge sacrificium, et posita fuerit abominatio in desolatione, dies mille ducenti nonaginta."—Dan. xii. 11.
  15. ↑ "Tu es Sacerdos in æternum secundum ordinem Melchisedech."—Ps. cix. 4.
  16. ↑ "Et nunc clarifica me tu, Pater, apud temetipsum, claritate quam habui, priusquam mundus fieret, apud te."—John, xvii. 5.
  17. ↑ "Is igitur Deus et Dominus noster, etsi semel semetipsum in ara crucis, morte intercedente, Deo Patri oblaturus erat, ut æternam illic redemptionem operaretur; quia tamen per mortem sacerdotium ejus exstinguendum non erat; in cœna novissima, qua nocte tradebatur, ut dilectæ sponsæ suæ Ecclesiæ visibile, sicut hominum natura exigit, relinqueret sacrificium, quo cruentum illud semel in cruce peragendum repræsentaretur, ejusque memoria in finem usque sæculi permaneret, atque illius salutaris virtus in remissionem eorum, quæ a nobis quotidie committuntur, peccatorum applicaretur, Sacerdotem secundum ordinem Melchisedech se in æternum constitutum declarans, corpus et sanguinem suum sub speciebus panis et vini Deo Patri obtulit; ac, sub earumdem rerum symbolis, Apostolis, quos tunc Novi Testamenti Sacerdotes constituebat, ut sumerent, tradidit; et eisdem eorumque in sacerdotio successoribus, ut offerrent, præcepit per hæc verba: 'Hoc facite in meam commemorationem;' uti semper Catholica Ecclesia intellexit et docuit."—Sess. 22, c. 1.
  18. ↑ "Una enim eademque est Hostia, idem nunc offerens Sacerdotis ministerio, qui seipsum tunc in cruce obtulit, sola offerendi ratione diversa."—Sess. 22, c. 2.
  19. ↑ P. 2, c. 4, q 62.
  20. ↑ "Quoties hujus Hostiæ commemoratio celebratur, opus nostræ redemptionis exercetur."—Dom. 9 p. Pent.

Editor's notes:

  1. ↑ This is, however, not a mere abridgment that St. Alphonsus gives us. As was usual with him, he appropriated the subject and treated it after his own manner by confining himself to quoting on some points the opinion of the French author. What he ascribes to the latter is found, nearly word for word, in the book entitled "L'Idee du Sacerdoce et du Sacrifice de Jesus-Christ, par le R. P. De Condren, etc. Par un Prêtre de l'Oratoire." We doubt, however, whether this excellent work is that which our Saint had before him; for it appears to us that such a work cannot be called anonymous, though the learned Oratorian who published it in 1677 gives in the title-page only his title, and the initials of his name in his dedication, by signing himself P. Q. (This is Father Pasquier Quesnel, who later on became unfortunately so famous.) This doubt is confirmed by the remark that we add further on, page 26, and is changed almost into certainty in view of a passage that we read on page 36, and that we have not seen in the aforesaid work. We therefore believe that there exists a more recent work in which "L'Idée" of Father De Condren is reproduced in an incomplete manner and without the name of the author.—Ed.
  2. ↑ It seems to us that the two explanations which we have just read—the explanation of the anonymous author and that of St. Alphonsus—about the consummation or the last two parts of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ can be and should be admitted, should not exclude each other, but should be united. It was necessary that this great sacrifice, the only real sacrifice worthy of God, should be consummated in heaven and on earth at the same time, to unite to God the body of Jesus Christ entirely; that is, the Church triumphant and the Church militant: in heaven, by the glorious union of Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Virgin, of the angels, of the saints with God, and among themselves in the bosom of God in which the sacrifice is perfect and eternal: on earth, by Holy Mass and Communion, in which all the faithful partake of the same victim under the Eucharistic veil. The body of the Redeemer, immolated on the Cross, had, therefore, to be transformed in a twofold manner; namely, by the resurrection, for the consummation of the sacrifice in heavenly glory; by the Eucharist, for the consummation of the sacrifice in earthly combats. This twofold consummation of the true sacrifice was typified in the ceremonies of the Old Law: the burning of the victim represented heavenly Communion, and the eating of it represented earthly Communion. But in heaven, as in Holy Mass, we have not only consummation, but we have all the parts of the Sacrifice of the Cross and of the sacrifices of the Old Law. Hence, three kinds of sacrifices, or three degrees, are to be distinguished. In the Old Law there were figures without the reality; in the New Law we have the reality under the figures or appearances; in glory we have the reality exposed and unveiled. Such is, briefly, the thought of Père De Condren, wisely developed by him who published it. Such is, also, without doubt, the thought of St. Alphonsus; for otherwise we should not understand what he says on page 22, where he explains the text taken from Daniel.—Ed.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=The_Complete_Ascetical_Works_of_St._Alphonsus/Volume_6/The_Sacrifice_of_Jesus_Christ&oldid=9365895"