Sect. 210Christ’s Priesthood and Its FunctionsChrist’s Priesthood and Its Functions
The Priesthood of Christ and its functions are set forth in the Epistle to the Hebrews in order to induce the converted Hebrews to abandon the defective Aaronic priesthood and to cling to Christ, the Great High-Priest Who entered heaven. The treatment of the subject is not, however, exhaustive, because it has only one special object in view, viz. the superiority of Christ’s priesthood over that of Aaron. Hence Protestant theologians are not justified in restricting the attributions of Christ’s priesthood to those mentioned therein.
I. Christ’s priesthood is eminently hierarchical, and perfect in every respect. Christ “draws nigh to” God on behalf of mankind, and His sacrifice has sufficient virtue to take away the sins of the world. No higher priesthood exists; all other priesthoods, of both the Old and the New Testament, depend on it for their existence and efficacy. It is eminently perfect, because (a) it has all the perfections of other priesthoods without any of their imperfections; (b) it has hierarchical power to accomplish in the most perfect manner whatever any priesthood can accomplish.
1. The priest is made “God’s own,” and endowed with the honour and power of his ministry through an act of consecration. When an ordinary man is elevated to the priesthood, he is made God’s own minister by an accidental unction: Christ is constituted God’s Own Son by His substantial unction with the Divine Nature, and so possesses sacerdotal dignity and power by His very Nature. Hence His pre-eminent holiness. The ordinary priest is not made impeccable by his consecration; he requires priestly ministration for his personal sanctification; his personal holiness is not the source of the holiness which he imparts to others. The consecration of Christ, i.e. the Hypostatic Union, makes Him holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners (Heb. 7:26–28), and makes Him the holder and dispenser of God’s own holiness. The ordinary priest “draws nigh to God” in a very imperfect manner; Christ sits at the right hand on the throne of God (Ibid. 8:1). Like other priests. Christ has known the weaknesses and sufferings of our nature (Heb. 5:2), yet without loss to His dignity and holiness: on the contrary, His death was but the road to the never-ending exercise of His priesthood in an eternal life (Ibid. 7:25).
2. As Christ’s priestly powers flow from His hypostatic consecration, they also are eminently perfect. Being Himself consecrated with the fulness of Divinity, He can in His turn consecrate and sanctify everything, and bring it nigh to God; He can dispense all holy things, whether they be sanctified offerings from man to God, or gratuitous gifts from God to man. He has power to perform the holiest of sacrifices by which the Covenant between God and man is established and sealed, and to make the victim of that sacrifice the pledge of the covenant, the bearer and dispenser of the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost (cf. Heb. 9:14 sqq., and 10:14).
The nature and power of the Divine Priesthood show its excellence over the imperfect, inefficacious, and transitory priesthood of Aaron (see Epistle to the Hebrews, passim). The whole matter may be summed up in a few words: the Levitic priesthood was temporal, earthly, and carnal in its origin, in its relations to God, in its working, and in its power, whereas Christ’s Priesthood, in all these particulars, is eternal, heavenly, and spiritual.
II. 1. The things offered to God by the ancient priests were either lifeless, or at best irrational creatures, distinct from the person of the offerer. In Christ, on the contrary, the gift offered up is included in the Person of the offering Priest: it is His living, human flesh, animated by His rational soul, and therefore, in the language of Scripture, it is a spiritual and rational (πνευματικόν, λογικόν) offering. Hence the sacrificial victim offered by Christ is not a merely symbolical, but a real and equivalent, substitute for mankind, on whose behalf it is sacrificed. Again, it is a “victim of immaculate holiness,” whereas its predecessors were at best but physically spotless or blameless animals. Lastly, the gifts brought to the altar in the Old Testament acquired some consecration by their contact with consecrated persons, altars, and fires. The gift offered by Christ possesses a holiness of its own, before the act of offering, viz. its unction with the Divine Substance of its personal principle. That same unction, by which the Logos anoints His human nature to the highest priesthood, likewise consecrates it as the Altar of the sacrifice, and, moreover, is the spiritual fire which clarifies and vivifies the victim. Hence, at the very moment the Hypostatic Union took place, the High Priest, the Altar of the sacrifice, the victim and the sacrificial fire were consecrated, and the Logos began to offer up a “spiritual and rational oblation” (προσφορά πνευματικὴ καὶ λογική).
2. The power of the Aaronic priests over the victims of their sacrifices was limited to the infliction, by external means, of an irreparable death which their sacrificial intention turned into a religious rite or symbol. The dead victim acquired no new life-giving qualities, and was for ever beyond the power of the sacrificer. In Christ’s sacrifice the immutation of the victim is brought about by an internal act of His will: “I lay down my life that I may take it again” (John 10:17); His death is the source of new life to Himself and mankind. The immutation, therefore, is spiritual, accomplished by the Eternal Spirit of the Sacrificer. This spiritual character is manifest in the glorious resurrection of Christ’s body, and likewise in the Eucharistic sacrifice. But it is of the bloody sacrifice on the cross that the Apostle speaks in this connection. On the cross, death was indeed inflicted by external agents; the immutation, however, was accomplished neither by these agents, nor by Christ’s willing submission to their act: He offered Himself by a direct and positive act of His will which had power to dispose of His own life and death. The inner act of supernatural power allowed the external agencies of death to take effect, to dissolve the animal life of His body—to liquefy, as it were, the inhabiting Divine Life so as to transform the body into food and the blood into drink unto life everlasting.
III. Of Christ as Mediator we have already treated (supra, § 190). The perfection of His mediatorship stands out prominently in His priesthood.
1. His sacrifice, being that of a Divine Person, is not only acceptable to God, but carries its acceptance with it. For the same reason the shedding of His blood in the name of mankind is as much a gift of God to man as a sacrifice of man to God. On the other hand, Christ perfectly represents mankind in His sacrifice. The flesh He offers is a gift from the human race accepted by Him; it is not a symbol or an inadequate substitute, as in the old sacrifices, but the most perfect member of the whole race, and therefore a perfect substitute for His brethren.
2. The sacrifice of the cross is chief amongst the sacerdotal functions of Christ, because it crowned His work on earth, and laid the foundation of His eternal priesthood in heaven. It alone realizes all the aims and objects of the ancient sacrifices. Being at once an offering for sin, a peace offering, and a burnt offering (holocaust), it reconciles man to God by the remission of sins; it establishes and maintains peace between God and man by preserving man in a state of grace; it unites the spirit of man to God, imperfectly on earth, but perfectly in the state of glory, by imparting to him the consuming fire of Divine Charity (St. Thomas, 3, q. 22, a. 2). In other words: the sacrifice of the cross attains the object of the burnt offering or holocaust, which is to arrive at a perfect union with God through acts of worship; and also attains the objects of the offerings for sin and of peace offerings, which were to remove the obstacles to an acceptable worship (sins), and to procure the means thereunto.
3. The sacrifice of the cross is also the central function of Christ’s priesthood, inasmuch as all its other functions are based on this, and are only its consummation or perpetuation. It is virtually continued—not repeated—in heaven, where the sacrificial intention of the Priest and the glorified wounds of the Victim live for ever in the Divine Pontiff. One circumstance alone prevents the heavenly sacrifice from being actually the same as that of the cross: and that is the absence of any real immutation of the victim.
4. In the whole burnt offerings of the Old Testament the smell of the victim is said to ascend to God “as an odour of sweetness,” which expression is also applied to the sacrifice of Christ. The “odour of sweetness” of the Saviour is His glorified Self ascending into heaven, and as the Lamb slain, standing in the midst of the throne before God, as an eternal sacrifice of adoration and thanksgiving (Apoc. 5:6, etc.).
IV. From His heavenly throne Christ, through His priestly ministers on earth, continually consecrates and sacrifices in His Church, making Himself the Sacrifice of the Church, and including the Church in His sacrifice. He thus brings down to earth the perennial sacrifice of heaven in order to apply its merits to mankind, and at the same time enables the Church to offer with Him and through Him a perfect sacrifice of adoration and thanksgiving. The Mass, then, like the Eternal offering in heaven, completes the sacrifice of the cross by accomplishing its ends; viz. the full participation of mankind in its fruits. Although the Eucharistic sacrifice is offered on earth and through human hands, it is none the less the formal act of Christ Himself as heavenly Priest. This idea finds expression in the liturgical prayers before and after the Consecration, in which the Church, here acting in her own name, asks the heavenly Priest and Angel of the Covenant to complete and perfect her sacrifice in heaven. In a similar way the layman in the Old Testament asked the priest to accept his offering, and to lay it on the altar before God. See the prayer “Supplices te rogamus,” in the Canon of the Mass.
V. The final consummation of Christ’s sacrifice is the perfect participation in its fruits, in time and in eternity, by those on whose behalf it was offered. The sanctifying graces thus obtained consecrate the faithful with the Holy Ghost, and transform them into God’s holy servants and priests, and make them members of the mystical body of Christ. With Christ they sacrifice and are sacrificed in the universal offering of the Holy City to God. St. Thomas, 3, q. 22.
The Priesthood of Christ and its functions are set forth in the Epistle to the Hebrews in order to induce the converted Hebrews to abandon the defective Aaronic priesthood and to cling to Christ, the Great High-Priest Who entered heaven. The treatment of the subject is not, however, exhaustive, because it has only one special object in view, viz. the superiority of Christ’s priesthood over that of Aaron. Hence Protestant theologians are not justified in restricting the attributions of Christ’s priesthood to those mentioned therein.
I. Christ’s priesthood is eminently hierarchical, and perfect in every respect. Christ “draws nigh to” God on behalf of mankind, and His sacrifice has sufficient virtue to take away the sins of the world. No higher priesthood exists; all other priesthoods, of both the Old and the New Testament, depend on it for their existence and efficacy. It is eminently perfect, because (a) it has all the perfections of other priesthoods without any of their imperfections; (b) it has hierarchical power to accomplish in the most perfect manner whatever any priesthood can accomplish.
1. The priest is made “God’s own,” and endowed with the honour and power of his ministry through an act of consecration. When an ordinary man is elevated to the priesthood, he is made God’s own minister by an accidental unction: Christ is constituted God’s Own Son by His substantial unction with the Divine Nature, and so possesses sacerdotal dignity and power by His very Nature. Hence His pre-eminent holiness. The ordinary priest is not made impeccable by his consecration; he requires priestly ministration for his personal sanctification; his personal holiness is not the source of the holiness which he imparts to others. The consecration of Christ, i.e. the Hypostatic Union, makes Him holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners (Heb. 7:26–28), and makes Him the holder and dispenser of God’s own holiness. The ordinary priest “draws nigh to God” in a very imperfect manner; Christ sits at the right hand on the throne of God (Ibid. 8:1). Like other priests. Christ has known the weaknesses and sufferings of our nature (Heb. 5:2), yet without loss to His dignity and holiness: on the contrary, His death was but the road to the never-ending exercise of His priesthood in an eternal life (Ibid. 7:25).
2. As Christ’s priestly powers flow from His hypostatic consecration, they also are eminently perfect. Being Himself consecrated with the fulness of Divinity, He can in His turn consecrate and sanctify everything, and bring it nigh to God; He can dispense all holy things, whether they be sanctified offerings from man to God, or gratuitous gifts from God to man. He has power to perform the holiest of sacrifices by which the Covenant between God and man is established and sealed, and to make the victim of that sacrifice the pledge of the covenant, the bearer and dispenser of the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost (cf. Heb. 9:14 sqq., and 10:14).
The nature and power of the Divine Priesthood show its excellence over the imperfect, inefficacious, and transitory priesthood of Aaron (see Epistle to the Hebrews, passim). The whole matter may be summed up in a few words: the Levitic priesthood was temporal, earthly, and carnal in its origin, in its relations to God, in its working, and in its power, whereas Christ’s Priesthood, in all these particulars, is eternal, heavenly, and spiritual.
II. 1. The things offered to God by the ancient priests were either lifeless, or at best irrational creatures, distinct from the person of the offerer. In Christ, on the contrary, the gift offered up is included in the Person of the offering Priest: it is His living, human flesh, animated by His rational soul, and therefore, in the language of Scripture, it is a spiritual and rational (πνευματικόν, λογικόν) offering. Hence the sacrificial victim offered by Christ is not a merely symbolical, but a real and equivalent, substitute for mankind, on whose behalf it is sacrificed. Again, it is a “victim of immaculate holiness,” whereas its predecessors were at best but physically spotless or blameless animals. Lastly, the gifts brought to the altar in the Old Testament acquired some consecration by their contact with consecrated persons, altars, and fires. The gift offered by Christ possesses a holiness of its own, before the act of offering, viz. its unction with the Divine Substance of its personal principle. That same unction, by which the Logos anoints His human nature to the highest priesthood, likewise consecrates it as the Altar of the sacrifice, and, moreover, is the spiritual fire which clarifies and vivifies the victim. Hence, at the very moment the Hypostatic Union took place, the High Priest, the Altar of the sacrifice, the victim and the sacrificial fire were consecrated, and the Logos began to offer up a “spiritual and rational oblation” (προσφορά πνευματικὴ καὶ λογική).
2. The power of the Aaronic priests over the victims of their sacrifices was limited to the infliction, by external means, of an irreparable death which their sacrificial intention turned into a religious rite or symbol. The dead victim acquired no new life-giving qualities, and was for ever beyond the power of the sacrificer. In Christ’s sacrifice the immutation of the victim is brought about by an internal act of His will: “I lay down my life that I may take it again” (John 10:17); His death is the source of new life to Himself and mankind. The immutation, therefore, is spiritual, accomplished by the Eternal Spirit of the Sacrificer. This spiritual character is manifest in the glorious resurrection of Christ’s body, and likewise in the Eucharistic sacrifice. But it is of the bloody sacrifice on the cross that the Apostle speaks in this connection. On the cross, death was indeed inflicted by external agents; the immutation, however, was accomplished neither by these agents, nor by Christ’s willing submission to their act: He offered Himself by a direct and positive act of His will which had power to dispose of His own life and death. The inner act of supernatural power allowed the external agencies of death to take effect, to dissolve the animal life of His body—to liquefy, as it were, the inhabiting Divine Life so as to transform the body into food and the blood into drink unto life everlasting.
III. Of Christ as Mediator we have already treated (supra, § 190). The perfection of His mediatorship stands out prominently in His priesthood.
1. His sacrifice, being that of a Divine Person, is not only acceptable to God, but carries its acceptance with it. For the same reason the shedding of His blood in the name of mankind is as much a gift of God to man as a sacrifice of man to God. On the other hand, Christ perfectly represents mankind in His sacrifice. The flesh He offers is a gift from the human race accepted by Him; it is not a symbol or an inadequate substitute, as in the old sacrifices, but the most perfect member of the whole race, and therefore a perfect substitute for His brethren.
2. The sacrifice of the cross is chief amongst the sacerdotal functions of Christ, because it crowned His work on earth, and laid the foundation of His eternal priesthood in heaven. It alone realizes all the aims and objects of the ancient sacrifices. Being at once an offering for sin, a peace offering, and a burnt offering (holocaust), it reconciles man to God by the remission of sins; it establishes and maintains peace between God and man by preserving man in a state of grace; it unites the spirit of man to God, imperfectly on earth, but perfectly in the state of glory, by imparting to him the consuming fire of Divine Charity (St. Thomas, 3, q. 22, a. 2). In other words: the sacrifice of the cross attains the object of the burnt offering or holocaust, which is to arrive at a perfect union with God through acts of worship; and also attains the objects of the offerings for sin and of peace offerings, which were to remove the obstacles to an acceptable worship (sins), and to procure the means thereunto.
3. The sacrifice of the cross is also the central function of Christ’s priesthood, inasmuch as all its other functions are based on this, and are only its consummation or perpetuation. It is virtually continued—not repeated—in heaven, where the sacrificial intention of the Priest and the glorified wounds of the Victim live for ever in the Divine Pontiff. One circumstance alone prevents the heavenly sacrifice from being actually the same as that of the cross: and that is the absence of any real immutation of the victim.
4. In the whole burnt offerings of the Old Testament the smell of the victim is said to ascend to God “as an odour of sweetness,” which expression is also applied to the sacrifice of Christ. The “odour of sweetness” of the Saviour is His glorified Self ascending into heaven, and as the Lamb slain, standing in the midst of the throne before God, as an eternal sacrifice of adoration and thanksgiving (Apoc. 5:6, etc.).
IV. From His heavenly throne Christ, through His priestly ministers on earth, continually consecrates and sacrifices in His Church, making Himself the Sacrifice of the Church, and including the Church in His sacrifice. He thus brings down to earth the perennial sacrifice of heaven in order to apply its merits to mankind, and at the same time enables the Church to offer with Him and through Him a perfect sacrifice of adoration and thanksgiving. The Mass, then, like the Eternal offering in heaven, completes the sacrifice of the cross by accomplishing its ends; viz. the full participation of mankind in its fruits. Although the Eucharistic sacrifice is offered on earth and through human hands, it is none the less the formal act of Christ Himself as heavenly Priest. This idea finds expression in the liturgical prayers before and after the Consecration, in which the Church, here acting in her own name, asks the heavenly Priest and Angel of the Covenant to complete and perfect her sacrifice in heaven. In a similar way the layman in the Old Testament asked the priest to accept his offering, and to lay it on the altar before God. See the prayer “Supplices te rogamus,” in the Canon of the Mass.
V. The final consummation of Christ’s sacrifice is the perfect participation in its fruits, in time and in eternity, by those on whose behalf it was offered. The sanctifying graces thus obtained consecrate the faithful with the Holy Ghost, and transform them into God’s holy servants and priests, and make them members of the mystical body of Christ. With Christ they sacrifice and are sacrificed in the universal offering of the Holy City to God. St. Thomas, 3, q. 22.
Seção 71% da obra, de A Manual of Catholic Theology (Wilhelm & Scannell, sobre a Dogmatik de Scheeben). Ver o original.