I attended Mass today on Long Island in a nice church with a good choir and good preaching. Pretty good liturgy for these days, actually. But at the end of Mass the priest gave us the final blessing saying “May almighty God bless us, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
Doesn’t sound so bad at first hearing, and in what follows, I’m not trying to beat up on this particular priest–its a common mistake. However, two things are problematic here, and they both stem from the priest’s lack of understanding of sacramental theology and his own role acting in persona Christi.
First of all, since the priest is acting as Christ, he should say “May Almighty God bless you,” the people. Christ has no need of the blessing of the Father, because he is one with the Father. To ask that God bless “us” means that:
a) the priest has given up acting in persona Christi and his blessing is only his and not Christ’s,
or
b) the priest is proclaiming that Christ is creature and not God and therefore needs a blessing from God.
Oops. Small word change, big heresy. His role is to be Christ at that moment, not part of the congregation.
Secondly, in the liturgy a priest does not give a blessing “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” The priest acting in persona Christi uses the words of Christ himself and therefore blesses the people in his own name, as Christ. He need not take the name (and therefore authority) of Christ; he is Christ, sacramentally speaking. The names of the persons of the Trinity are used here to describe who God is: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not to invoke their authority. We make the Sign of the Cross at the beginning of Mass to recall our baptism, when we were baptized by a human being “in the name of” the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
In the scheme of things, is this the biggest problem we have in the liturgy? Probably not. But since words mean things, and the fix is quite simple, let’s encourage our priests to use the words the Church gives us. Mother Church knows what she is doing.
December 28, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Maybe I’m an undereducated theological lout, but I think this is stretching it. Acting in the person of Christ does not mean that he IS Christ, and he can still benefit from the blessings of God. Moreover, all of us are supposed to stand in persona Christi. The difference for the priest is that he stands in persona Christi capitis [pastoris?]. Perhaps I’m mistaken, though, but I don’t think of this as a big issue.
Then again, today I was glad to hop over to the Ukrainian Church, so maybe I’m out of it — the dozens of Lord have mercies in two languages can scramble one up a bit. 🙂
December 29, 2008 at 12:56 am
Dare I say it?
Say the black…do the red.
December 29, 2008 at 6:13 am
While I agree that liturgy works best when the ministers say the black and do the red, it seems quite a stretch to try to characterize this as heresy. The change from “you” to “us” changes the nature of the event from administration of a blessing to invocation of one. Changing to invocation does not seem to me to alter the priest acting in persona Christi. Within the sacrament of reconciliation the priest acts in persona Christi but in the Byzantine Catholic Churches the priest acts through invocation instead of administration. The Latin formula includes an administrative statement translated as “I absolve” (or “I forgive” in some other languages), but Byzantine priests use the invocation “May…God…through me, a sinner, forgive you…”(CCC 1481).
The mumu ladies who claim to be Catholic priests are committing heresy. Let us not devalue the word by using it for this.
December 29, 2008 at 6:33 am
Nzie,
During the celebration of any Sacrament, but most especially during the offering of the Most Holy Mass, there is no difference between the person of the Priest and the person of Christ. They are one and the same. Now, of course, there is still a difference between the substance of the Priest and the substances (He has two) of Christ, but the persons are the same. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate and correct to say that, during the Sacrament, the Priest is Christ, without any qualification.
Also, remember that we say that the Priest is Sacrament of Christ: since a Sacrament must not only resemble what it represents, but also be what it represents, it is necessary to say that the Priest is Christ.
I hope that helps…
~cmpt
December 29, 2008 at 7:33 am
Good catch. But finding heretical priests at a NO mass is like finding stoners at a Grateful Dead concert. Shooting fish in a barrel.
And might I say…I just LOVE the Pope’s mitre! So, much nicer than the old crooked cross-bow his predecesor carried around. Is Benny a class act or what?
December 29, 2008 at 2:14 pm
The Church teaches that sacraments confer grace by signifiying… that is, the very act of what they signifiy is “where” the conferring of Grace happens. This is why if a priest fails to use certain words at the proper time, the sacraments are invalid. The priest is a “sacrament” of Christ at Mass… and if he signifies less than he should by lowering his own signification as Christ, he does less than he should. Does God in his mercy understand when a priest messes with the words and bless us anyway? I hope so. Does this excuse the priest? Absolutely not.
I inderstnad Nzie’s point about the priest needing blessing as well as a human being. But at Mass, the priest IS Christ, sacramentally (actually, the bishop is, and the priest stands in for him). And the words he says are the words of Christ at certain times… such as as the Eucharistic prayer, which is the priest acting as the Head of the Mystical Body (that is, Christ), the priest “becomes” (sacramentally)Christ by offering and pleading to the Father just as Christ does at God’s right hand. This is why the EP is not said to the people– it is addressed to the Father as Christ communicates with the Father.
December 29, 2008 at 5:32 pm
That the priest is Christ throughout the Mass cannot be taken too far. After all, the priest does say “I confess to Almighty God … that I have sinned”. That the priest really is persona Christi does not stop him acting simultaneously also as his own person. The sacrifice of the Mass that the priest enacts also benefits the priest.
December 29, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I wouldn't go as far as point b) in your post, but I have the same problem with the priest these days. Father is very nice but likes to change words, like
my and your sacrifice -> our sacrifice (yes, I know you have the wrong translation in English anyway),
faith of your Church -> our faith,
Happy are those who are called -> Happy are we who are called.
That is nothing new, since many priests around here do the same. But the "May almighty God bless us" is really irritating. I wanted to go to father and tell him that I feel sorry he did not bless us at the end of the mass, but I knew I could not keep the discussion in christian (and Christmas) spirit afterwards, so I didn't go. I've already told him once he shouldn't change the words of mass like I do with all new priests who I meet (if they do liturgical abuses, of course). I'll probably try once more and afterwards it's on them if they continue.
Anyone can say "May almighty God bless us", only the priest can say "May almighty God bless you" because he has the power to act in persona Christi.
December 29, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Deusdonat,
I think you’re referring to the Crozier, not the Mitre, no? The Mitre is the pointy hat.
December 30, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Were you, other Catholic bloggers and the laity so scrupulous regarding the Catholic pastoral practices and its whoring of marriage you might have some good effect.
I am not faulting you for exposing what you have, as I agree with you. But the issues surrounding the policies of the Catholic Church, particularly when their tribunals have substantiated, again and again the validity of a marriage yet the Church “pastorally” welcomes unrepentent adulterers with open arms even as they destroy the lives of their real spouses and their own children, are scandalous. It is huge scandal that you (all catholic laity but especially journalists online and in other media outlets) mostly ignore, when rather you should be frontally assaulting the Church to push it to adequately listen to those of us its practices have ruined and often driven from the Catholic Church.
The “canonists” hold sway with catholic media and they downplay the seriousness of violated valid marriages, when, if they had even shreds of honesty(which belies their lack of moral qualifications to act in the positions they do) they would openly demand that the Catholic church facilitate methods for accountability for some canonists who have shown complete disregard for truth and have twisted and even fabricated tales of woe to “justify” poor jurisprudence, resulting in catastrophic nullities of valid marriages.
Canonists, as those in our first instance decision and the priest who sponsored my wife’s knowingly perjured libellus(petition) should be excommunicated and if clerics, they should be expelled from their vocations! The abuse they do is as lethal to families and especially children as has been the physical child abuse which many priests have been expelled over. Far more people are negatively affected by the malignant priestly advise to “get a divorce because I know someone who was granted an annulment for a similar situation”, than have been abused by priests. Priests who give such advice are the scum of the earth and have no business in the priesthood or the Catholic Church.
I do not really care if this post offends you or anyone else or some people are offended by my “taking over” this topic with this post.
Start dealing with this scandal as the huge cancer that it is in the Catholic Church!
Thank you for pointing out how such
“apparently small” liturgical changes can have serious consequences, even like annulments that are granted properly yet still malign the permanence of all marriage, since they “appear” to end a marriage, that if properly understood would be know to have never existed in reality.
Karl
December 30, 2008 at 10:34 pm
D-Mac… you are right. I also hate these distortions which you write about. What I am seeing is bad ecclesiology. (Most all of our liturgy problems flow from a distorted understanding of who the priest is in the midst of the Church.)
The main point of distinction I would make is that a blessing is a presidential function, not a celebrant-function, and as such the priest is functioning in a different manner than when he is confecting the Eucharist.
Case in point: a bishop who is not ‘celebrating’ Mass, may ‘preside’. In these circumstances, he leads the introductory rites, presides over the Liturgy of the Word and perhaps preaches, and then is asked to give the blessing at the end of this Mass. Another priest, however, will be the celebrant of the Eucharist. (This distinction in function is the basis of my disdain for calling a solo priest-celebrant a “presider”… what a priest-celebrant does is much deeper and more distincitve than ‘preside’ at Mass. To ‘celebrate’ Mass is the distinctive priestly ministry. For non-sacramental ceremonies (Liturgy of the Hours, for instance), yes, all a priest does is preside, but at Mass we need to use more accurate language. The ‘presider’ and ‘celebrant’ need not be the same person. The custom in some places of calling the celebrating priest a ‘presider’ is simply lame sacramental theology, but I digress.) The blessing does not flow from the fact that the priest just celebrated Mass… indeed, in the circumstance of a bishop presiding when another priest celebrates, the celebrant is not the one giving a blessing. The blessing, thus, is the exercise of a different aspect of priestly ministry– a sacramental rather than a sacrament.
When a priest confects the Eucharist, he is standing in persona Christi, taking the first person pronouns and references of Christ to make the sacrament happen. However, in the concluding rites (after the post-Communion prayer), a very subtle change takes place. When giving a blessing, he is blessing out of his own person to “you”, filled with the grace of Orders. Orders, of course, is only animated by the personal power of Christ, but I think it could be said that a blessing is a ‘delegation’ that properly belongs to the priest in his own person, rather than requiring the priest to intimately assume the plenary and special identity of the Persona Christi to confer the grace of a blessing.
If I am not mistaken, blessings at the end of Mass were originally connected and reserved to the ministry and person of the bishop… a vestige of that understanding is the on-going practice of a bishop blessing people as he walks in procession.
This is a bothersome distortion when a priest includes himself in the blessing (“may Almighty God bless us…”), and I think it betrays an impoverished understanding of who the priest is in the midst of the Church and what he does at Mass. Ironically, he sets aside the ideal of “servant leadership”, which is presumably the excuse of making this ‘correction’ making his blessing self-inclusive, self-referent, and self-interested rather than purely out of the motives of ‘pastoral charity’.
Put this in line with the priestly greeting, “The Lord be with you” and the common illicit distortions of verbs and pronouns found around that greeting. Same problem.
I suppose that one could say, “It’s pride, stupid.”
(“Anything to the contrary notwithstanding.” I reserve the right to be corrected by Fr. Charlie Meyer on all of this 🙂
January 1, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Thanks CarpeNoctem… I knew when I wrote this that I was throwing the words around a little loosely. “In persona Christi” deserves in fact a very narrowly regulated usage properly speaking. I knew someone would write and and tidy that up a bit. So I appreciate your clarification and your charitable way of clarifying!