How honor and reverence in those that receive and handle the Body of Christ.
by VP
Posted on Tuesday August 30, 2022 at 02:45PM in Articles
"And for as much as Almighty God gave express commandment to the Priests of the ancient law, that they should not approach to His altar to offer unto Him, but first to be washed and invested, not with their profane, but with their holy ornaments, is it not, then, most convenient that the Priest of the new law should be peculiarly adorned, and thereby dispose themselves with much more reverence to handle and touch the most precious Body of our Redeemer and Savior Jesus, than the old Priests and Prophets did, the flesh of sheep and oxen or the body of a brute beast?
Our Priests, therefore, going to the altar thus appareled, do set before our eyes our Savior Jesus as He was at His Passion, and consequently those that scoff at the Priest, thus representing Christ unto us, do nothing else than, with the wicked Jews, scoff and deride at Christ Himself; and even as those Jews put all these ornaments upon our Savior for despite, and the more to dishonor Him, yet Christ's holy Mother and His blessed Apostles did both love Him and reverence Him so much the more entirely, for enduring such reproaches and shame for our sakes; so these men, now-a-days, whose minds are wholly set against the Catholic Church, will mock, perhaps, at the Priest standing at the altar in such apparel, but, contrariwise, the true Christian and Catholic people do esteem and honor him so much the more, who is, by the ordinance of God, exalted to so high a dignity as the present unto us so great a mystery.
To conclude, Priestly habits, so much offensive to the heretics of our age, were so highly respected by Alexander the Great, although a Paynim and idolater, going to Jerusalem with deliberation to ruin it, that he, withholden by the only sight of the Pontifical vestments of the High Priest, and touched instantly with the fear of God, did cast himself from his horse upon the ground, as it were to crave pardon for this sinister designs, and granted to the city and country of Jewry all the privileges, franchises, and immunities, that possibly they could desire, as witnessed Josephus."
Source: A Devout Exposition of the Holy Mass, John Heigham R. Washborne, 1876
