SSPX Priests Explain the Priesthood

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-- Transcript of Video --

I would say it is really beautiful and I would say amazing to see how this great ideal of the priesthood is still attracting young people. It is impossible to explain this on a natural basis. It is clear that Our Lord is behind, attracting through His grace, young people. And He will do the same until the end of time, because He wanted to entrust all the treasures of His Redemption to the priest and not to anybody else. We can’t change this rule. We can’t change this law, which is the law of the economy of the sacraments. But we have to be faithful to this law. That is the mission of the Society of St. Pius X.

The priest has a power to do things which in his human nature he shouldn't have the power to do.

The priest is one united intimately to Christ, the second person the Blessed Trinity.

The priesthood is a gift from Our Lord to show mercy to souls. The priest is meant to be an imitator of the Sacred Heart.

Really a mystery of God's infinite mercy, infinite Love - His eternal Love for a soul.

The priest is the man of sacrifice; he is the man of the Mass…

...who reflects God, the holiness of God among people.

He has the power to make God present on the altar. He says the words, “This is My Body” and it becomes the Body of Jesus Christ. “This is My Body”; this is not Jesus's Body: “This is My Body”. He acts in the Person of Christ.

The priesthood is a mystery because it's a transformation of a man in such a way that he now has Divine powers.

Who Is the Priest?

The priest, for Archbishop Lefebvre, is more than anything, a man of the Mass, a man who offers the sacrifice of the Mass.

There is a link, a union between the priest and his Mass, and the Mass and the priest, that cannot be broken. And if you try to separate a priest from the Mass, he will lose his priesthood. Just like if you try to have a Mass without a priest, it’s impossible.

[Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatæ Mariæ semper Virgini, beato Michaeli Archangelo…]

Archbishop Lefebvre talks about the priest being a man of sacrifice because he was ordained for the Mass. The Archbishop says that the Mass is both contemplative and active, but essentially active. It's the giving of self for the salvation of souls.

The Mass is the center of Catholic life. It's the graces that our Lord won on the Cross applied to us here and now. So in fact, any of the graces we receive from the sacraments, be it Matrimony or Extreme Unction or Baptism, all of those graces come to us through the Mass. And the Mass, of course, is the great source of all grace. And that's why the priest is so important, because he offers the Sacrifice of the Mass; he applies the graces of the Mass to us here and now.

When the priest can lift that host, there at the beginning of the Offertory, he's not just lifting a pure Victim – he can put everything on that paten. He puts every soul that he knows, he puts every confession that he hears, he puts every direction that he gives, he puts every class that he teaches – we can put all of that on the paten, and then, at that moment we don't have to be any sort of superhuman to be able to save the world, because Christ has already saved it.

The priest is called ‘father’ because a father gives life; a father brings life into the world.

The priest is not like a Protestant minister. He's not there just to preach the gospel truth and then go back to his family. The priest, as a celibate man, has one family and it's all the souls given to him in his parish.

To be between those souls that are standing behind you looking expectantly to their God, and on the other hand, God the Father looking back at them, paternally with His solicitude, and then receiving that kiss from the altar which is Christ, and then turning and passing that greeting to the faithful – that really strikes home as simply the role of the priest.

There, really being a father in the distribution of Holy Communion, so beautiful for the priest because he's a father to souls. He gives not only life, but Eternal Life to each soul that comes to the Communion rail. If he were to lay down his life for that soul, it wouldn't be more than he gives the soul in Holy Communion.

A mystery is something that we don’t fully comprehend. And when you think of the priesthood, that the man, the human being, has to be like Christ associated with His Priesthood. We don’t fully comprehend it. And that is why you can say that the priesthood is truly a mystery. It is not fully comprehended by the man.

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