Pagan priest

“ He must hear your confessions, give you Holy Communion, come to you when you are ill, administer the sacraments to you, advise you, preach to you, instruct you, shield you from the wolves and seek you when you are lost, and often serve you at the risk of his own life. Now, the priest does all these things, not because he is paid, not because the people hire him and pay him a salary, but simply and solely because he is the good shepherd ”

“ The candidate is likewise reminded of the excellence of the priestly office by virtue of which the Passion of Christ is daily celebrated on the altar.
In the course of the rite, the priest's hands are blessed, since he is to consecrate the sacrifice offered for the sins and offences of the people; and he is given the chalice, etc., to show forth and emphasise the power to offer sacrifice and celebrate the Mass; and in the final blessing God is asked to bless the newly ordained in the priestly order who is to offer Sacrifices pleasing to Him. ”

“ Within the Catholic Church, in the mystery of the Lord's body and blood, nothing greater is done by a good priest, nothing less by an evil priest, because it is not by the merits of the consecrator that the sacrament is accomplished, but by the Creator's word, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. ”

“ For the priesthood is the very highest point of all good things among men, against which whosoever is mad enough to strive, dishonours not man, but God, and Christ Jesus, the First-born, and the only High Priest, by nature, of the Father. Let all things therefore be done by you with good order in Christ. Let the laity be subject to the deacons; the deacons to the presbyters; the presbyters to the bishop; the bishop to Christ, even as He is to the Father. As ye, brethren, have refreshed me, so will Jesus Christ refresh you. ”

“ For Baptism and the sacraments of the dying are only other forms of loosing souls from the bonds of sin. The question then is, does reserve with women create any hindrance in this essential work of a priest? Unquestionably not. Protestant writers, indeed, looking at the Church from outside, and not understanding the real feeling of Catholics, have sometimes supposed that they prefer going to Confession to an easy-going, self-indulgent priest, rather than one who leads a mortified, unworldly life. But all practical Catholics well know there cannot be a greater mistake. ”

“ A priest has many consolations in his little country parish that few can understand or appreciate. It is not the number and efficiency of his schools, the round of his visits, or the frequency of his instructions. No; it is the offering of the Victim of Salvation every morning for his own and his people's sins, and it is the conveying the precious blood of his Saviour to their souls, through the Sacraments he administers. ”

“ In a more advanced stage of religious culture, the position of the priest is no less powerful and important. When incantations yield to prayers in the proper sense, or are combined with prayers, it is only the priests who can make the prayers effective by their interceding in some way with the gods, whether by adding their appeal to that of the supplicant, or by the performance of the rites accompanying prayer, or by their aid in leading the worshipper into the presence of the deity and standing with him before the throne of grace. ”

“ A noble and worthy priesthood, according to his first encyclical, was to be one of the means towards that restoring of all things in Christ "which was to heal the wounds of the world." "The priest is the representative of Christ on earth," he said on one occasion to the students of the French College in Rome; "he must think the thoughts of Christ and speak His words. He must be tender as Christ was tender, pure and holy like his Lord; he must shine like a star in the world." This was not easy, he acknowledged; it needed a long preparation of study, of self-discipline and of prayer. ”

“ He is more gained over by the eye than by the ear, and is with difficulty persuaded that a priest in a black gown or plain white surplice can be as important a person as one of his 'Papas,' who wears a magnificent vestment in the church, shouts and chants loudly, and makes a thousand signs of the cross, and as many genuflexions. ”

“ That every priest hear confession and give penance, and carry the Eucharist to the sick, and anoint him if he desire it, and after death not allow any idle customs about the body, but bury it decently in the fear of God. That every priest have oil for baptism, and also for anointing the sick. Let him promote Christianity in every way, as well by preaching as by good example, and he shall be rewarded by God Almighty ”

“ For neither may we address ourselves to Almighty God, but only by Christ. In the same manner, therefore, let the laity make known all their desires to the bishop by the deacon, and accordingly let them act as he shall direct them. For there was no holy thing offered or done in the temple formerly without the priest. “For the priest’s lips shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth,” as the prophet somewhere says, “for he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty.” ”

“ Conscious that Jesus left no priesthood behind him, that his teaching was anti-sacerdotal and non-sacramental, there was nothing for the writer but to suggest that the great prophet himself was the high priest, the solitary member of the caste in the new gospel, and that therewith men are to be satisfied, because more than compensated thereby for the absence of the altar and hierarchy of old. ”

“ It is the behind-the-scenes of the temple, and it stretches from the sacristy to the parsonage, from the parsonage to the Palace. The profane world suspects nothing; it passes unconcernedly by without dreaming that tempests are rumbling by its side. But, like the revolutions raised by the eunuchs of the Seraglio, the intrigues of the sacristy have been known to change the face of nations.
The priest is the spy upon the priest.
Misfortune to the cassock which unbuttons itself before another cassock. ”

“ God's body in flesh and blood to make,
And handleth his maker between his hands.
The priest bindeth and unbindeth all bands
Both in earth and in heaven.
Thou ministers all the sacraments seven—
Though we kiss thy feet thou were worthy—
Thou art surgeon that cureth sin deadly.
No remedy we find under God
But all only priesthood.
Everyman, God gave priests that dignity,
And setteth them in his stead, among us to be;
Thus be they above angels in degree.
Knowledge. If priests be good, it is so surely ”

“ They find the Priest hurrying off through Latin prayers, and producing breathless attention by his own silence; they see him arrayed in unintelligible attire, moving one way and another, bowing, genuflecting, standing still, or blessing. They scarcely understand a word or gesture, and feel perfectly sure that the old woman who beats her breast and counts her beads by the side of their staring effrontery is as much in the dark as themselves, if not more. ”

“ A young priest sustains him; St. Paula, kneeling, kisses one of his thin bony hands; the saint fixes his eager eyes on the countenance of the priest, who is about to administer the sacrament,—a noble dignified figure in a rich ecclesiastical dress; a deacon holds the cup, and an attendant priest the book and taper; the lion droops his head with an expression of grief; the eyes and attention of all are on the dying saint, while four angels, hovering above, look down upon the scene. ”

“ A poor priest, ill supported and alone, without means and persons to aid in his functions, abandons the glories of religion in despair, and thinks {114} himself truly fortunate if he can secure the essential sacraments to those committed to his charge. ”

“ So careful is the Church both in administering and guarding the essentials of the Sacrament.
And notice: nothing but the water and the words are essential. Other things may, or may not, be edifying; they are not essential; they are matters of ecclesiastical regulation, not of Divine appointment. Thus, a Priest is not essential to a valid Baptism, as he is for a valid Eucharist. A Priest is the normal, but not the necessary, instrument of Baptism. "In the absence of a {65} Priest" [2] a Deacon may baptize, and if the child is in extremis, any one, of either sex, may baptize. ”

“ If there is no change of ordinances, there is no change of Priesthood. Wherever the ordinances of the Gospel are administered, there is the Priesthood.
How have we come at the Priesthood in the last days? It came down, in regular succession. Peter, James, and John had it given to them, and they gave it to others. Christ is the great High Priest; Adam next. Paul speaks of The Church coming to an innumerable company of angels—to God, the Judge of all—the spirits of just men made perfect; to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, &c., (Heb. III, 23.) ”

“ Bishop Hall’s remarks on this doctrine are as follows:—It sounds not more prodigiously that a priest should every day make his God, than that he should sacrifice him.
Antiquity would have as much abhorred the sense, as it hath allowed the word. Nothing is more ordinary with the Fathers than to call God’s table an altar; the holy elements, an oblation; the act of celebration, an immolation; the actor, a priest. ”

“ The priest, though consecrated by a heavenly grace and commissioned by the divine authority of our Lord, is consecrated to minister for the people, in their name and as their representative. He offers up the sacrifice for the people, and they offer sacrifice to God through him, which is signified in the mass by the action of the deacon, who, as the representative of the laity, holds the pixis in his hand at the offertory, and placing his right hand on the foot of the chalice, recites with the priest the prayer, Offerimus tibi, Domine, calicem, etc. ”

“ Catholics, while they esteem a mere fop at his just value, expect their priest to rise above the sneers of the most censorious and, if possible, to challenge the respect of all. They are proud of their priest ”

“ And since a person acquires the proximate disposition to the Eucharist by being cleansed from sin, it follows that the priest is the proper minister of all those sacraments which are chiefly instituted for the cleansing of sins, namely Baptism, Penance, and Extreme Unction. ”

“ Who but a priest hath power to break the Bread, and bless the Cup, and make a solemn memorial before God of His Son’s sufferings, and then deliver His sacramental Body and Blood to the faithful communicants, as tokens of His meritorious sufferings, and pledges of their salvation? A man authorized thus to act ‘for men in things pertaining to God,’ and for God in things pertaining to men, must needs be a priest; and such holy ministrations must needs be sacerdotal, whether the holy table be an altar, or the Sacrament a sacrifice or not. ”

“ The former makes the priest a kind of god on earth, the latter proclaims the priesthood of all men; the former is guided by scriptures which man calls sacred, the latter knows of no sacred oracles but the still small voice in the heart of every man. ”

“ They further teach that the confession of sins to a priest is necessary to salvation; and that every mortal sin, even the most secret and infamous, must be confessed to a priest, otherwise there can be no pardon from God. Thus we see that they make the priest the judge of the soul, and that in the confessional he sits instead of Jesus Christ and that he can keep the sins of any man bound upon him, or loose them, according to his discretion. ”

“ The office of Priesthood is, indeed, performed on earth, but it should itself be referred to the class and order of things celestial. Wherefore it is necessary, that the Priest be pure, as if, placed in heaven, he stood among the celestial spirits.-For when you behold the Lord immolated, and the Priest presiding over the Sacrifice, and pouring out prayers, and then the surrounding multitude partaking of the sacred blood, (n) can you, at that moment, fancy, you are among mortals, and dwelling on the earth ? ”

“ The Catholic priest not only is bound by the fear of terrible sin, but is also aided by the system which surrounds him, in which he is trained and by that supernatural power which we know upholds the seven sacraments. He is not an individual resting upon his unaided powers, but the creature of his church, the agent and representative of a vast power which girdles the Christian world. Years of study and discipline have taught him the nature of his obligations, while he himself is as much bound to confess his sins as to hear the burden of other consciences. ”

“ For such a high priest became us holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners and made higher than the heavens, who needeth not daily like those priests, to offer up sacrifices first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people, for this he did once for all when he offered himself. ”

“ In answering this question let us bear in mind that a priest is ordained not only, as the Apostle says, to offer up gifts and sacrifices for sin, but is likewise sent to all who are living in ignorance and sin, 'qui condolere possit iis qui ignorant et errant.' Hence the main occupation of a priest in charge of souls is to prevent sin by instruction, and to absolve from sin in the Sacrament of Penance. In other words, to teach Christian doctrine and to hear Confessions may be said to be the sum of a priest's work in dealing with souls. ”

“ And offer the loaves of proposition. Let them therefore be holy because I also am holy: the Lord, who sanctify them.
21:9. If the daughter of a priest be taken in whoredom and dishonour the name of her father, she shall be burnt with fire.
21:10. The high priest, that is to say, the priest who is the greatest among his brethren, upon whose head the oil of unction hath been poured; and whose hands have been consecrated for the priesthood; and who hath been vested with the holy vestments. He shall not uncover his head: he shall not rend his garments. ”