The supreme power of the
priestly office is the power of consecrating. "No act is greater,"
says St. Thomas, "than the consecration of the body of Christ." In
this essential phase of the sacred ministry, the power of the priest
is not surpassed by that of the bishop, the archbishop, the cardinal
or the pope. Indeed it is equal to that of Jesus Christ. For in this
role the priest speaks with the voice and authority of God Himself.
When the Priest pronounces
the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens,
brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our altar to
be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man. It is a power
greater than that of monarchs and emperors: it is greater than that of
the saints and angels, greater than that of the Seraphim and Cherubim.
Indeed it is greater even
than the power of the Virgin Mary. While the Blessed Virgin was the
human agency by which Christ became incarnate a single time, the
priest brings Christ down from heaven, and renders Him present on our
altar as the eternal Victim for the sins of man—not once but a
thousand times! The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and
omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest’s
command. (Cardinal John A. O’Brien, The Faith of Millions,
Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., (Huntington, IN 1974), pp. 255-256)
Would anyone leave the
physical presence of the risen Savior? I would think not.
The Mass and the Bible—do
they agree?
When you ask a Catholic to
show you where in the Bible one can find the Lord instituting the Mass,
you will be directed to the passages dealing with the "Last Supper". You
will be told that when Christ says the words, "this is my body," the
bread is changed into His body and the same miracle occurs with the
wine.
A few years ago, in a
dialogue with a "Eucharistic minister," I was told that, clearly, anyone
could see that this was the institution of the sacrament by Christ. I
responded by asking him a few questions.
1. Is the Mass a sacrifice
for sins for the living and the dead. His answer, Yes!
2. Did Jesus Christ celebrate
the first Mass at the "Last Supper"? His answer, Yes!
3. Was it a perfect Mass? His
answer, Of course!
4. If Christ offered a
perfect sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead at the "Last
Supper", why did He have to die on the cross? And
5. How can the Mass be a
re-presentation of the Cross when it preceded the Cross? His answer,
silence for about two minutes, "No you don’t understand. What Christ did
at the ‘Last Supper’ was just pointing to what He would do on the
Cross!"
I replied, "You are right and
when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper today we are pointing back to what
Christ has already done on the Cross for us. ‘For by ONE offering He
hath perfected FOREVER….’"
He became very quiet and
replied, "I have a lot to think about."
The intellectually honest
person, when reading passages dealing with the last Passover meal that
Jesus shared with His apostles, will quickly notice the absence of words
such as sin, Sacrifice, offering, Priest, etc. You must force your
presuppositions into the text to retrieve the Roman Catholic doctrine of
the Mass and the Priesthood.
The Mass and Theology
Whenever a person reads
Catholic catechisms or theological works for Biblical proof of the false
doctrine of Transubstantiation we are brought to John chapter six
without fail.
For the sake of space, let us
look strictly at the text involved. Verses 53-56 are used to prove that
you are to literally eat His flesh and drink His blood to be saved.
Leaving aside the fact that this is unnatural and against Levitical law
(cf. Lev. 17), Transubstantiation is disproved by John chapter six.
Firstly, the verbs in this
verse are NOT present tense verbs, which they would be if we were
to repetitiously partake of His flesh and blood in the Mass. They are,
in fact, aorist tense verbs which tells us that, whatever this
eating and drinking really is, it is to be done only one time.
Secondly, verse 58 clearly
tells us that this is not literal eating at all. Jesus says "NOT AS YOUR
FATHERS DID EAT MANNA AND ARE DEAD." How did they eat manna? Literally!
Was the manna physical or spiritual? Physical! So we are not literally
eating any literal thing. We are in fact spiritually receiving something
SPIRITUAL. If you miss it in verse 58, you get it again in verse 63.
Jesus says here that the words that He is speaking are SPIRITUAL! This
is why when the apostle Paul is asked the question in Acts 16:30, "What
must I do (present tense—literally "do and keep on doing") to be saved?"
He replies, "Believe (aorist tense—literally "believe one time for
salvation") on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved…."
Nowhere in the New Testament
does anyone celebrate a "Mass". It is not some miracle, but is in
reality a falsehood, a religious ritual that says the work of Christ on
the cross was deficient and incomplete. It should be rejected as all
false doctrine should.
