Untitled - Saints' Books

"
O
;
1 1 2 Material for Sermons. [PART i
according to Peter Comestor, the priest who, while he is
defiled with sins against chastity, pronounces the words
of consecration, spits, as it were, in the face of Jesus
Christ; and in receiving the sacred body and blood into
his polluted mouth, he, as it were, casts them into the
foulest mire. 1
St. Vincent Ferrer says that such a priest
is guilty of a greater impiety than if he threw the con
secrated host into a sink. 2 Here St. Peter Damian ex
claims, and says, priests
! whose duty
it is to offer to
God the immaculate Lamb, do not first immolate your
self to the devil by your impurities." Hence the saint
afterwards calls the unchaste priest a victim of the
devils, on which these cruel spirits make a most delici
ous feast in hell. 4
Besides, the unchaste priest not only
brings himself to perdition, but he also causes the dam
others. St. Bernard said that inconti
nation of many
nence in ecclesiastics was one of the greatest persecutions
that the Church could suffer.
On the w r ords of Ezechias,
Behold in peace is my bitterness most bitter? says the holy
Doctor, the Church has suffered much from the sword
of the tyrant and from the infection of heresy, but she
suffers still more from the incontinence of the unchaste
ecclesiastic, who by his scandals drags the bowels out of
his own mother. How 6 " shameful," says St. Peter Da-
" 1
Qui sacra illius verba Sacramenti ore immundo profert,
Salvatoris spuit;
in faciem
et cum in os immundum sanctisimam Carnem ponit,
earn quasi in lutum projicit." Scrni. 38.
2 "
Majus peccatum est, quam si projiciat Corpus Christi in cloacam."
3
"Cur,
o Sacerdos, qui sacrificium Deo debes offerre, temet ipsum
prius maligno spiritui non vereris victimam immolare." Opus. 1 7, c. 3.
4
Vos "
estis daemonum victimae, ad seternse mortis succidium destinatae;
ex vobis diabolus, tamquam delicatis dapibus, pascitur et saginatur."
5 "Ecce in pace amaritudo mea amarissima." Is. xxxviii. 17.
6 " Amara prius in nece Martyrum, amarior in conflictu hsereticorum,
amarissima in moribus domesticorum. Pax est, et non est pax: pax
a paganis, pax ab haereticis, sed non profecto a filiis." In Cant. s. 33.