The 'Sacrificing Priesthood'

The phrase 'sacrificing priesthood' is often misunderstood itself. A safe way of describing it is to say that the priest is one ordained to be ontologically in persona Christi capitis, in the Person of Christ the Head of the Church, in order to celebrate the Sacraments of the New Covenant. 'And be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God and of His Holy Sacraments.' In this role as the living instrument of Christ, the living icon of Christ, the ordained priest offers the Eucharistic Sacrifice, which is no new Sacrifice, but the anamnetic re-presentation of the One Sacrifice once offered to the Father. The priest is Christ's sacramental representative, imaging or impersonating Christ at the Altar, pleading and making-present in a sacramental mode the One Perfect Sacrifice of Christ. As Saint Cyprian of Carthage puts it, the priest 'stands in Our Lord's place.' Through the sacerdotium or ministerial priesthood, Our Lord does in the Eucharistic offering on earth in the Church what He eternally does in Heaven - He exhibits Himself in His atoning death, sacrifice, and glorification as the full, perfect, sufficient Oblation for the sins of the whole world. Christ exercises His one and only Priesthood as the Great Eternal High Priest and Heavenly Intercessor, Mediator, and Advocate through the sacramental priesthood of His Body the Church. Sacramental priests have no priesthood of their own; they share in Christ's one Priesthood. The sacerdotium is the sacramental organ of His Body. Through this organ of ordained priesthood the whole Church, the priesthood of the baptised, is enabled to be the Church, united as members to the Head, to Christ's self-oblation to the Father through the Holy Ghost. That is what I mean by 'sacrificing priesthood.'

How wonderful it is to be a 'sacrificing' 'massing' priest!