Pasty

“ P. 77.-“ Look down on us, O Lord Jesus Christ, our God —who sittest with the Father in the highest heavens, and art here invisibly present with us; and vouchsafe with thy powerful hand, to impart to us thy immaculate body and thy precious blood; and by us, to all the people.” Then dividing the holy bread into four parts, the Priest says: “ The Lamb of God is broken and divided; the Son of the Father ;' he is broken, but is not diminished; he is always eaten, but is not consumed; but he sanctifies those who are made partakers.” ”

“ What canst thou deny me, who hast given me thyself! Govern me, and nothing will be wanting to me, in the place of pasture where thou has placed me, until thou bringest me to the happy pastures of eternal life. ”

“ David found him so, and so have we. See the happiness of the saints as the sheep of God's pasture. (1.) They are well placed, well laid: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. We have the supports and comforts of this life from God's good hand, our daily bread from him as our Father. The greatest abundance is but a dry pasture to a wicked man, who relishes that only in it which pleases the senses; but to a godly man, who tastes the goodness of God in all his enjoyments, and by faith relishes that, though he has but little of the world, it is a green pasture, Ps. ”

“ And scarcely does the priest begin the words of consecration, than there Christ already hovers, surrounded by the heavenly host, come down from heaven to earth, and to the altar of sacrifice, and changes, upon the words of the priest, the bread and wine into his holy flesh and blood, and permits himself then to be taken up and to lie in the hands of the priest, even though the priest is the most sinful and the most unworthy. ”

“ The priest commences with prayer, and no one is allowed to taste his food before grace is said. He also returns thanks after the meal; for both at the commencement and at the conclusion they praise God as the giver of their food.51 [44] Whereupon they put off their white garments as if they were sacred, and betake themselves again to their work till evening. On returning again they take their supper together, at which strangers, who happen to be in the place, are allowed to sit down with them. ”

“ O thou man of GOD, there is death in the pot. But he said, Then bring meal, and he cast it into the pot .... and there was no harm in the pot. [That is, the wild gourds are a type of sin; the vessel, of the human heart; the meal, of the Holy Eucharist, and its effect in preserving against the dangers of temptation.]
Ps. xxv. 20. Let perfectness and righteous dealing wait upon me. [That is, the perfect righteousness of our LORD : wait upon me, in the sense of that verse, "The SON of MAN came not to be ministered unto but to minister."] ”

“ A stranger outside the priest’s kindred, though his guest or hired servant, was not permitted to eat of the heave-offering of the holy things. If a priest’s daughter were married to a stranger, she could not eat of it. ”

“ It was easy to draw a contrast between the parish priest with a wife and family, bound by a thousand ties to the ordinary interests and anxieties of the world, and the celibate priest, who wants nothing beyond the priest’s chamber and his humble fare, and who gives his whole mind and soul to his daily devotions and his spiritual ministrations among his flock; his rusty cassock a uniform as honourable as the soldier’s war-stained coat, his ascetic life ensuring the reverence which even the worldly-minded pay to those who despise worldly things. ”

“ In one word, to crown the whole of this extravagance, the person who kills his neighbour in this style, without authority and in the face of all law, contracts no sin and commits no disorder, though he should be religious and even a priest! Where are we, fathers? Are these really religious, and priests, who talk in this manner? ”

“ No doubt it was with that piece of meat.
—Why, sir?
—In what religion have you been brought up?
—In the Catholic religion.
—Is it possible? Really! you are a Catholic and you keep some pie for your meals on a fast-day, on a Friday! A Friday! he repeated with an accent of the deepest indignation: has not your Curé then taught that it is forbidden to eat meat the day on which Our Lord Jesus Christ died to redeem you from your sins?
—I know it, answered the young girl colouring, but we are not able to attend to religion much. We do not belong to any parish. ”

“ Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare the passover that we may eat. They said to Him, Where do you want us to go to prepare? Jesus said, When you enter the city, a man, bearing a pitcher of water, will meet you, follow him into the house he enters. Say to the good man of the house, The Master says to thee, Where is the guestchamber where I shall eat the passover with my disciples? ”

“ Is not the mark of priesthood an indelible one, does it not brand the priest for ever, and differentiate him from the flock? Even should he tear off his gown with his skin, he would remain a priest, an object of scandal and shame, awkward and impotent, shut off from the life of other men. ”

“ Father, I pray not only for these Twelve Apostles that thou hast given me, but for all those who shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee; that they may be made perfect in one, even as we are one. ”

“ In one corner an arbour of honeysuckle, where more than once he had caught sight of a crabbed face.
Perhaps the maid with the sweet eyes will be sitting beneath that arbour embroidering thoughtfully some chosen pattern.
What shall he do if Suzanne is there? Will he dare to look at her?
Yes, he must! He must read the expression in her look. And if that look is sweet and free from anger, shall he stop? Certainly. Why should he hesitate? What is there surprising in a priest, stopping to talk to a young girl? Is he not her Curé? More than that, her Confessor. Her confessor! ”

“ The priest transfixed with pity and amazement let fall the sacred volume from his hands. Emotions of an indescribable nature mingled in the countenance of the bridegroom. The priest was the first to dissolve the spell, and to recover a comparative presence of mind; he descended from the altar and endeavoured to raise and extricate the lifeless Glorvina from the arms of her unhappy lover, but the effort was vain. Clasping her to his heart closer than ever, the almost frantic M———— exclaimed, “She is mine! mine in the eye of heaven! and no human power can part us!” ”

“ As a guide of my life in the innermost corner of my soul, I am to have the pastor, the priest of my parish, who has just come from the seminary, a shallow boy, almost illiterate, or an aged drunkard, whose only care is to acquire as many fowls and pigs as he can. ”

“ Can't you tell the difference between your priest and any ole madman in a black coat?
PATSY. Sure I'm afraid he might put a spell on me.
FATHER DEMPSEY [wrathfully] . You mind what I tell you or I'll put a spell on you that'll make you lep. D'ye mind that now? [He goes home] .
Patsy goes down the hill to retrieve the fish, the bird, and the sack. ”

“ Loud laughed the priest at this reply,
"I shall not put up, friend, with that;
No daughter in the world have I,
An only son is all my stay;
Some minx has played a trick, no doubt,
But cheer up, let thy heart be gay. ”

“ I adore thee, eternal Priest! whose delight is to offer sacrifice; and to make reparation for the insults and affronts done to thy priests, religious, and virgins, I offer up to thee thy own invincible patience, together with the true and fervent zeal of all good Priests and Apostolic Preachers. ”

“ This is the pasture. If you recollect, He had said before, “And he shall go in and out, and find pasture.” We have entered by believing—we go out at death. [9] But as we have entered by the door of faith, so, as believers, we quit the body; for it is in going out by that same door that we are able to find pasture. The good pasture is called eternal life; there no blade withereth—all is green and flourishing. There is a plant commonly said to be ever-living; there only is it found to live. ”

“ Why would they have bound themselves, by a particular devotion, also sanctioned by the pope, to have some of their sisterhood, night and day without intermission, in presence of the sacred host, to compensate, by their perpetual adorations towards that perpetual sacrifice, for the impiety of the heresy that aims at its annihilation? Tell me, fathers, if you can, why, of all the mysteries of our religion, they should have passed by those in which they believed, to fix upon that in which they believed not? ”

“ I am their possession.
44:29 They shall eat the meat offering, and the sin offering, and the trespass offering: and every dedicated thing in Israel shall be theirs.
44:30 And the first of all the firstfruits of all things, and every oblation of all, of every sort of your oblations, shall be the priest's: ye shall also give unto the priest the first of your dough, that he may cause the blessing to rest in thine house.
44:31 The priests shall not eat of any thing that is dead of itself, or torn, whether it be fowl or beast. ”

“ Speaking of a moral, not of a literal or substantial, change in the consecrated elements, as they themselves distinctly assure us in the way of explaining their own language, the old Fathers often say: that the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ. ”

“ Then the priest took heart and blessed him and sat down beside her. And the wolf spoke to him and made her confession to the priest and he anointed her. And when they had that done, the priest began to think in himself that she that had that mis-likeness upon her and had grace to speak, might likely have grace and the gift of knowledge in other things; and he asked her about the strangers that were come into Ireland, and what way it would be with them. ”

“ Then the priest was gone; the man alone remained, the man of thirty, robust and full of life and yearning for all the joys of life. And beneath his gold-embroidered chasuble, near that altar laden with lustres and with flowers, amidst the floods of light and the floods of perfume, in that atmosphere saturated with the intoxicating waves of incense and the breath of maidens; surrounded by all those women, by all these girls on their knees before him or hanging on his lips; before all these modest or burning looks fixed upon his gaze, a strange sensation rose to his brain ”

“ We scholars helped the priest to sing the mass. Then one who passed for the most eminent preacher preached from a window, and said amongst other things, to the young priest, "O thou noble knight! thou holy knight! thou art holier than the mother of God herself: for she only bore Christ once, but thou shalt hear him every day of thy life henceforth." Then one on the bridge, a Basle Master of Arts, out of Sitten, said a little too loud, "Priest! you lie like a miscreant." ”

“ However, almost in spite of myself, I was interested in this young priest, and although disposed to believe that he was a knave like the rest, I was sensible of something in him so upright and so loyal that I was, from the very first, prejudiced in his favour.
And besides, these flashes of fiery passion which at times betrayed him, could they serve as an accusation against him? Could one take offence at his not having completely stifled at thirty years the fierce passions of youth and his violent desires? ”

“ What most hurt the feelings of the young priest, however, was the extraordinary promiscuity of the table d’hôte, at which men and women, young girls and ecclesiastics, were packed together in chance order, and satisfied their hunger like a pack of hounds snapping at offal in all haste. ”

“ The first words of the poor milkman, on revisiting me, therefore, were like these: "That's to show you what power the priest has! Didn't he give it you in the court? It is to be hoped you will leave the city now." ”

“ There are some misguided folk who think of a priest as a feeble, microcephalous body with a black coat, a shovel hat, and a superb ignorance of the ways of the world. There are, we own, some priests like this, but Father Pat was not one of them. Indeed, his dress and deportment were such as to often cause scandal to good church folk who were not so conversant with his noble deeds and self-abnegation as were the railroad navvies and gold-miners. ”

“ Uncle Ridoux, the Bishop and greatness might go to the devil. The promised cure and the episcopal mitre might go to the devil too. Did he not possess the most precious of treasures, the most enviable blessing, the supplement and complement of everything, the ambition of every young man, the desire of every old man, of every man who has a heart: a young, lovely, modest, loving, intelligent and adored mistress. But what might not be the result of that love? What drama, what tragedy, and perhaps what ludicrous comedy, in which he, the priest, would play the odious and ridiculous character? ”

“ We bring our little thoughts as the priest brings a piece of common bread to consecration, and though we have produced but a couplet or a dozen lines of prose, we have nevertheless done the parallel miracle. ”

“ It seems to me not desirable to make it essential or even important that the people should see the breaking of the bread, or the taking the cup into the hands of the priest, and positively mischievous to encourage them in gazing on him, or watching him with critical eyes while so employed. ”