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The Time After Pentecost
Jesus is our high priest in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. He offers Himself with the same
love, with the same subjection to His Father, with the same desire of honoring the Father and
of satisfying for our sins, that He manifested when He offered Himself on the cross. He can
say now, as truly as He did on the cross, “I thirst.” He is still consumed with the same desire to
love, honor, and thank the Father in a manner worthy of the Father. At the same time His heart
is absorbed in us, so that in our stead He may praise, honor, and love the Father, and perform
for us all those things of which we ourselves are incapable.
The wealth of the Christian consists in this, that we possess “a great high priest, . . . Jesus
the Son of God; . . . holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than
the heavens” (Heb 4:14; 7:26). We have at the same time an eternally worthy victim, the most
holy heart of the Savior.
Prayer
Protect us, O Lord, that we who avail ourselves of Thy holy mysteries in the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass, may dedicate ourselves to heavenly things and serve Thee with body and soul. Through
Christ our Lord. Amen.
Tuesday after Corpus Christi
“This is My body which shall be delivered for you. . . . This chalice is the new testament in My
blood” (Epistle). Holy Mother the Church is the sole custodian of the Eucharistic sacrifice,
which is the center and the consummation of Christian worship and Christian piety.
The Mass is the sacrifice of the Church. Day after day the Church approaches the altar through
thousands of her ordained priests. “Receive, O holy Father, almighty and eternal God, this
spotless host which I [the priest], Thy unworthy servant, and all Thy faithful [those assembled
here and the whole Church] offer to Thee.” The Church holds in her virgin hands the pure,
holy, and spotless victim, “the holy bread of eternal life, the chalice of eternal salvation,” the
body and blood of the Lord, together with His merits, His satisfactions, and His prayers.
“Through Him, and with Him, and in Him,” the Church offers unceasingly to the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost, a worthy adoration, homage, thanksgiving, love, and satisfaction
for sin. With the Church each one of us also may offer up his sacrifice in every Mass that is
celebrated throughout the world. We take part in every Mass that is said, and thus our offering
to the Father never ceases.
The Sacrifice of the Mass is offered by the whole Church, and not merely by the priest
who is actually celebrating the Mass, or by those who are actually physically present. “We offer
to Thee, O Lord, the chalice of salvation.” “Receive, O holy Father, almighty and eternal God,
this spotless host which . . . all Thy faithful offer to Thee.” What a wonderful grace it is that, by
virtue of our membership in the Church, we may make to God, both day and night, an unceasing
offering of adoration, thanksgiving, satisfaction, and petition! What a consolation it is to
know that each time this offering is made not only by the whole Church, but also for the whole
Church. The chalice is offered that it may “rise up in the sight of Thy divine majesty as a sweet
savor for our own salvation and for that of the whole world.” Daily the Church, through the
hands of her priests, raises to heaven the sacred bread and the chalice of blood to implore God
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