Untitled - Saints' Books

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INSTR. i.) The Celebration of Mass. 223
hours at play, or in the street, to pass the time, they feel
it tedious and fatiguing to spend half an hour in hear
ing Mass. Of this evil, priests are the cause. To you^ O
priests, that despise My name, and have said: Wherein have
we depised Thy name ? . . . In that you say: The table of the
Lord is contemptible. 1 . The want of reverence with which
many priests celebrate Mass is the cause that it is
treated with contempt by others.
Poor priests! Having heard that a priest died after
celebrating his first Mass, the Venerable Father John
d Avila said: Oh what a terrible account shall he have
to render to God for his first Mass!" But what should
Father d Avila say of priests who have for thirty or
forty years said Mass with haste and irreverence, so as
to scandalize all that were present at it ? And how, I
ask again, can such priests propitiate the Lord and
obtain his graces, when by celebrating in such a man
ner they insult rather than honor him ? Since every
says Pope Julius, is wiped out by the holy sacri
sin,"
fice, what would be offered to the Lord in atonement
of sin if in offering the sacrifice sin is committed ?"
Miserable priests! and miserable the bishop who per
mits such priests to celebrate. For, as the Council of
Trent prescribes, bishops are bound to prevent all irrev
erences in the celebration of Mass: "The
holy synod
decrees that the ordinary bishops of places shall take
diligent care and be bound to prohibit irreverence,
which can hardly be separated from impiety."
Mark
vos, o Sacerdotes, qui despicitis nomen meum, et dixistis: In
quo despeximus nomen tuum ? . . . In eo quod dicitis: Mensa Domini
2 " est."
despecta Mai. i. 6.
Cum omne crimen sacrifices deleatur, quid pro delictorum expiatione
Domino dabitur, quando in ipsa
Cap. Cum omne, de Consecr. dist. 2.
sacrificii oblatione erratur?"-
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Decernit sancta synodus, ut Ordinarii locorum eaomnia prohibere
sedulo curent ac teneantur, quse irreverentia (quae ab impietate vix
sejuncta esse potest) induxit." Sess. 22, Deer, de obs. in M.
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