Victim offered, and the Priest or principal Offerer, is the same Jesus Christ. The difference is only in the manner of the offering; because upon the Cross our Saviour offered Himself in such a manner as really to shed His Blood and die for us; whereas now He does not really shed His Blood, or die. And therefore this is called an unbloody Sacrifice; and that of the Cross a bloody Sacrifice.
By virtue of this essential sameness, the Sacrifice of the Mass completely answers all the different ends of Sacrifice, and that in a way infinitely more effective than any of the ancient Sacrifices. Christ is here both Priest and Victim, representing in person and offering up His Passion and Death to His Father.
This Sacrifice of the Mass is offered up to God, in the Catholic Church, first as a daily remembrance of the Passion of Christ: This do for the commemoration of Me (1 Cor. xi. 24); secondly, as a most solemn worship of the Divine Majesty; thirdly, as a most acceptable thanksgiving to God, from whence it has the name of Eucharist; fourthly, as a most powerful means to move God to show mercy to us in the forgiveness of our sins, for which reason we call it propitiatory; and, lastly, as a most effectual way to obtain of God all that we need, coming to Him, as we here do, with Christ and through Christ.
For these ends both Priest and people ought to offer up the Sacrifice of the Mass—the Priest, as Christ's minister and in His person; and the people, by the hands of the Priest; and both the one and the other by the hands of the Great High-Priest Jesus Christ. And with this offering of Christ, both the one and the other should make a total offering of themselves also by His hands and in union with Him.
OF THE CEREMONY OF MASS.
ALTHOUGH the homage which man owes to his Creator so essentially consists in the interior dispositions of the soul that without these all outward worship is unprofitable and vain, yet the constitution of our nature is such as to require external signs and ceremonies which may operate through the medium of the bodily senses upon our souls, and elevate them to God. To this end are directed all the Ceremonies of the Church, and it is the Christian's duty to learn how to use them accordingly. Hence—
