Reverend Father,
First of all, I would like to commend you on your perseverance and thank you for having already replied to me once.
I would like to know at what point during Mass the priest acts in persona Christi: during the Offertory? The Consecration? Certainly not during the homily, when he might say something silly.
May God bless you!
Luca
Priest’s answer
Dear Luca,
1. the priest acts in persona Christi at the moment of consecration.
At that moment his words are effective because it is Christ who speaks them through his minister, the priest.
2.The priest is a permanent instrument whom the Lord has prepared through the conferral of Holy Orders.
St Thomas Aquinas states that whilst Baptism confers the power to receive the sacraments, Holy Orders, on the other hand, confer a spiritual power: the permanent and indelible power to do what Christ did for the benefit of mankind (cf. Supplement to the Summa Theologica, 34, 2, ad 2).
3.In the celebration of the sacraments, the priest acts not merely in the name of Christ, as an ambassador with full powers, but under his actual guidance.
When it is said that priestly power is an instrumental power, the intention is to emphasise that the priest never acts by his own power, just as no instrument acts by its own power.
In the exercise of his ministry, he always remains an instrument in the hands of Christ, the one, supreme and eternal Priest, ‘the one mediator between God and the human race’ (1 Tim 2:5).
When the priest celebrates, “it is Christ who gives power to the sacrament; it is he who is the true priest who offered himself on the altar of the cross and by whose power his body is consecrated daily on the altar” (Summa contra Gentiles, IV, 76).
4.If, hypothetically, Christ were to cease to be a priest in heaven, immediately all priests on earth would no longer be able to exercise their divine powers and would simply be men like any others.
This is so true that when a bishop ordains, he does not pass on his own priesthood, as the priests of the Old Law did, but incorporates the person into the priesthood of Christ.
Priests are such only in him and by the power that comes from him.
5.St Thomas says that priests “are set over others as ministers and, as it were, as instruments of the life-giving influence that flows from the head (Christ) to the members (the faithful)” (Supplement to the Summa Theologica, 36, 3, ad 2).
Therefore, the relationship between the priest and Christ is much stronger than that of a child with their mother. For the child does indeed draw life from the mother, but has an existence of their own, an autonomous one. They have received from the mother the means to exist. But if the mother passes away, the child survives her.
In the priesthood, however, this is not the case, because Christ, through the character, unites the priest to himself in a new way, conforms him to himself and equips him to act in intimate union with him. In a sense, he takes possession of him so that he may make use of him whenever he wishes to communicate his divine life to mankind.
This is the function of the character or seal which confers upon him the sacred power to act in persona Christi.
6.The words of the Offertory, like indeed all the words of the Eucharistic Prayer, with the exception of the words of consecration, are the words of the Church. Indeed, they are the Church’s prayer.
According to St Thomas, if the priest celebrates Mass whilst in a state of mortal sin, all the prayers of the Church that he utters are without effect for him, whereas the words of consecration remain effective because at that moment, and only at that moment, he acts in persona Christi.
I would like to thank you especially for following us from Luxembourg.
I wish you a joyful continuation of the Christmas celebrations; I bless you and keep you in my prayers.
Father Angelo
