Year for Priests - Thoughts for the Week

YEAR FOR PRIESTS

Faithfulness of Christ, faithfulness of priests

What does the priest do?

From the Letter to the Hebrews: “Every high priest is taken from among men and made their representative before God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins” (5:1).

The priest offers sacrifice to God. In the Old Testament, God revealed to the Israelites how He desired to be worshiped. This worship of the one true God involved three essential and indispensable elements: 1) an altar; 2) a sacrifice; 3) a priest.

The worship of the Eternal One was brought to its perfect fulfillment in Christ Jesus, who, upon the Cross became the priest, the altar, and the sacrificial victim, all in one.

However, the requirements of divine worship were not abolished with Christ, but brought to their perfection in Him. We still have need of an altar, a sacrifice, and a priest. We need the one altar, the Cross; the one sacrifice, the Body and the Blood; the one priest, Jesus Christ.

All of these our Lord still gives to His Church by means of the sacraments: in Holy Orders, the priest; in the Eucharist, the sacrifice; in the Church (which is the ‘sacrament of salvation’), the altar.

And so the priest, chosen by God from among men, made their representative before Him, offers the sacrifice of Christ, the sacrifice of the Cross, for the glory of God and for the salvation of souls, for all who have asked him to pray for them in general and in particular, and for the good of the holy Roman Church.

Fr. Joshua Guillory