Untitled - Saints' Books

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128 Material for Sermons. [PARTI.
worthy of receiving the divine flesh as the heart of a
sacrilegious priest. The 1
sacrilegious priest, then, says
St. Vincent Ferror, is guilty of greater impiety than if
he cast the most holy sacrament into a sink. 2
Such, too,
is the doctrine of St. Thomas of Villanova. 3
The sins of a priest are always most grievous on
account of the injury that they do to God, who has
chosen him for his own minister, and has heaped so
many favors upon him. It is one thing, says St.
Peter Damian, to violate the laws of a sovereign, and
another to strike him with your own hands. This is
what the priest does that offers sacrifice in the state of
mortal sin. It is one thing to transgress edicts which
the king has promulgated, and another to wound him
with our own hands. No one sins more grievously than
When we sin
the priest that offers sacrifice unworthily.
in any other way we, as it were, injure God in his prop
erty, but when we unworthily offer sacrifice we dare to
lay violent hands upon his person. 4
This was the sin of
the Jews who had the daring audacity to offer violence
to the person of Jesus Christ. But St. Augustine teaches
that the sin of the priest that offers sacrifice unworthily
is still more grievous:
"Those that unworthily offer
Jesus Christ in heaven sin more grievously than the
Jews who crucified him when he w r as upon earth. 5
The
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Lutum non adeo indignum est corpore divino, quam indignaest
carnis tuae impuritas."
In Pleb. 10, 16.
2 "
Christi in cloacam."
Majus peccatum est, quam si projiceret corpus
3
"Quantum flagitium sit in spurcissimam pectoris
Christi sanguinem fundere." De Sacram. alt. cone. 3.
tui cloacam
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4
Aliud est promulgata edicta negligere, aliud ipsum regem
vibrato propriae manus jaculo sanciare. Deterius nemo peccat, quam
Sacerdos qui indigne sacrificat: aliter in quocumque modo peccantes,
quasi Dominum in rebus ejus offendimus; indigne vero sacrificantes,
velut in personam ejus manus injicere non timemus." Opusc. 26, c. 2.
5
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Minus peccaverunt Judaei crucifigen es in terra deambulantem,
quam qui contemnunt in coelo sedentem. In Ps. 68, s. 2.