Priests and the Mass

We got an idea in the first post how important the Mass is to the Catholic Faith. It’s absolutely central and it is of immense significance.

In order to get to the heart of the matter, let’s take a look at the word “priest”.

Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians call their clerics “priests”.

Protestants call them “preacher” or “pastors” or “ministers”. Not “priests”.

Why?

Well, lots of non-Christian religions have priests.

Most of the ancient polytheistic religions of the Middle East had priests. The great native religions of America had priests. Hinduism has priests.

But the great monotheistic religion from which Christianity derives is Judaism, which saw itself in contradistinction to all these also had priests.

There are lots of different ways to define “priest” technically and most of them are kind of confusing!

But at the heart of all of them is something a priest does.

A priest offers sacrifice.

He goes to an altar, a table of sacrifice, and makes an offering to the Divine.

Sometimes that offering is cakes or wine or something like that.

But typically that offering is a life.

At their worst, the pagan religions would offer human sacrifice. Enemies taken in war or captives or even sometimes children from among their own people were killed. Their lives were taken often in brutal ways and their lifeblood was offered to the gods to appease them.

But the usual offering is an animal that would otherwise be eaten by people. An ox, a goat, a rabbit, a pair of turtledoves are given to the priest who takes them to the altar and kills them, offering their lives to the gods so that the gods won’t be angry at them.

This is what the Jews did in their great Temple in Jerusalem—except that they were offering their sacrifices to the One God Who made the universe. But they were offering their sacrifices to Him in recompense for Sin, to make their peace with Him.

So, why do Catholics have priests?

Because Catholic priests, like all other priests, offer sacrifice to the Divine.

When do they offer sacrifice?

When they offer Mass.

The Mass is a Sacrifice.

If you see a priest at Mass, even if you don’t know what he is doing and you can’t understand the language, you will see that the central action involves a priest going to the altar, the table of sacrifice, and offering something to God.

Here’s Fr. D’Alliessi offering Mass at old St. Mary’s with Billy serving on the left.

So, if the Mass is a sacrifice, what is being sacrificed?  What is being offered to God for our sins?

I’ll save that for the next post!

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