Untitled - Saints' Books

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INSTR. i.] The Celebration of Mass. 2 1 9
attacked by pirates without getting time to fly away.
Some priests spend two hours in useless conversation,
or in treating of worldly affairs, and are all haste in
celebrating Mass. As they begin the Mass without rev
erence, so they proceed to consecrate, to take Jesus
Christ in their hands, and to communicate with as much
sacrament were common
irreverence as if the holy
bread. They should be told what the Venerable John
d Avila said one day to a priest who celebrated with
haste and irreverence: For God s sake treat him better,
for he is the Son of a good Father."
The Lord commanded the priests of the Old Law to
tremble through reverence in approaching his sanctuary:
Reverence. My sanctuary? And still we see scandalous
irreverence in priests of the New Law while
they stand
at the altar in the presence of Jesus Christ; while they
converse with him, take him in their hands, offer him in
sacrifice, and eat his flesh. In the Old Law the Lord
threatened several maledictions against priests who
neglected the ceremonies of sacrifices, which were but
figures of our sacrifice. But if Thou wilt not hear the
voice of the Lord thy God, to keep . . . all His ceremonies,
.... all these curses shall come upon thee; .... cursed
shalt thou be in the city,
cursed in the field? St. Teresa used
to say:
Church." ;
I would give my life for a ceremony of the
And will a priest despise the ceremonies of
the holy Mass ? Suarez 4 teaches that the omission of
any ceremony prescribed in the Mass cannot be excused
from sin; and it is the opinion of many theologians, that
a notable neglect of the ceremonies may be a mortal sin.
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Pavete ad Sanctuarium meum." Lev. xxvi. 2.
Quod si audire nolueris vocem Domini Dei tui, ut custodias
te omnes maledictiones istae.
. . . Maledictus eris in civitate, maledictus in agro."
Deut. xxviii. 15.
3 Life, ch. 33.
4
De Sacram. d. 84,
s. 2.