Untitled - Saints' Books

Serin.
132 Material for Sermons. IPART i.
Peter Comestor observes that when a sacrilegious priest
begins the prayer Aufer a nobis iniquitates nostras, etc.
("Take away from us our iniquities, and kisses
etc."),
the altar, Jesus appears to reproach him, and say:
Judas, do you betray me with a kiss? And when 1
the
priest, says St. Gregory, extends his arm to communi
cate, I think I hear the Redeemer say what he said to
Judas/ * Behold the hand that betrays me is with me on
the altar."
Hence, according to St. Isidore of Pelusium,
2
the sacrilegious priest is, like Judas, entirely pos
sessed
3
by the devil.
Ah ! the blood of Jesus Christ, so much insulted, cries
more powerfully for vengeance against the sacrilegious
priest than the blood of Abel did against Cain. This
Jesus himself declared to St. Bridget. Oh ! what horror
must God and his angels feel at the sight of a sacri
legious Mass ! This horror the Lord made known in
the following manner, in the year 1688, to his servant
Sister Mary Crucified, of Palma, in Sicily. At first she
heard a doleful trumpet, which uttered, in a tone of
thunder, audible over the entire earth, the following
words: Ultio, pcena, dolor (vengeance, punishment, pain).
She then saw several sacrilegious ecclesiastics singing
psalms with discordant voices, and in a confused and
irregular manner. She next saw one of them rise up to
go to the altar and say Mass. While he was putting on
the sacred vestments, the church was covered with dark
ness and mourning. He approaches the altar, and, in
saying the Introibo ad altare Dei, the trumpet sounds
"Nonne Christus potest stare, et dicere: !
Juda tradis osculo
1
Filium hominis !"
42.
2
"
Qui Christi corpus indigne conficit, Christum tradit, ut Christus,
dum traditur dicat; Ecce manus tradentis me mecum est in mensa."
P. de Blots, Epist. 123.
3 "
Ineisqui peccant, nee sanctamysteriacontingere verentur, totus
daemon se insinuat; quod etiam in proditore quoque fecit." Egist. 1.
3 e P- 3 6 4-