Catechism of the Catholic Church
§1120. The saving mission entrusted by the Father to His incarnate Son was committed to the Apostles and through them to their successors: they receive the Spirit of Jesus to act in His name and in His Person. The ordained minister is the sacramental bond that ties the liturgical action to what the Apostles said and did and, through them, to the words and actions of Christ, the source and foundation of the Sacraments.
“All the churches on the face of the earth might be destroyed, but wherever there is still a priest, we can still have the Mass, we can still have the Holy Eucharist.”1 If this statement surprises us with its depth and beauty, our surprise only increases when we discover who uttered it and, above all, the motives behind his words.
It is a phrase of Cardinal Van Thuan, who spent thirteen years locked up in the appalling prisons of communist Vietnam. Who can imagine the profound emotion he must have experienced as he celebrated Holy Mass clandestinely behind bars? As a priest of the Most High God and prince of the Holy Church, he knew that, although a prisoner, he possessed a power not granted the Angels: when he pronounced the Consecration, Our Lord Jesus Christ became present in his cell, just as long ago, in the Grotto of Bethlehem. “What angelic or human language could explain such unlimited power? Who could imagine that the word of a man […] would receive from grace the prodigious power to bring the Son of God down from Heaven to earth?”2
The Vietnamese cardinal was keenly aware that “the ordained minister is the sacramental bond that ties the liturgical action to what the Apostles said and, through them, to the words and actions of Christ,” and that, as a successor of the Apostles, he thus acted in the name of Jesus and in His Person.
In fact, when sacred ministers baptize, when they hear the faithful in Confession or celebrate Holy Mass, it is literally the God-Man Himself who acts in them!
For this reason, their responsibility to conform their lives to that of Our Lord is tremendous! St. John of Avila3 calls priests reliquaries of God, houses of God and, in a way, creators of God. St. John Eudes, in his turn, affirms that “the priest is Jesus Christ alive and walking on earth.”4
But, as we consider the sublimity of the priesthood, we should also ponder how much admiration and respect the faithful owe to the ministers of the Lord. If we were given to see what occurs mystically when the priest administers the Sacraments, and if we consider the august mystery of the Liturgy more deeply, we would leave each celebration with our souls “rejuvenated” by the experience of those contacts with God Himself!
Contemplating such a wondrous and divine presence of Our Lord, we can perhaps better understand the phrase that once flowed from His divine lips: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:20). ◊
Notes
1 VAN THUAN, Francis Xavier Nguyen. The Road of Hope. A Gospel from Prison. North Palm Beach: Wellspring, 2018, p.104.
2 ST. LEONARD OF PORT MAURICE. Excelências da Santa Missa. São Paulo: Cultor de Livros, 2015, p.21.
3 Cf. ST. JOHN OF AVILA. Plática enviada al P. Francisco Gómez, S. J., para ser predicada en un sínodo diocesano de Córdoba, 1563. In: Obras Completas. Madrid: BAC, 1953, t.II, p.1289.
4 ST. JOHN EUDES. Le mémorial de la vie ecclésiastique. In: Œuvres Complètes. Vannes: Lafolye Frères, 1906, t.III, p.187.
