PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST. - I. DOCU-
MENTI DELLA RIVELAZIONE [DOCUMENTS OF REVELATION]. - The religious relationship between creatures and the Creator is not exhausted in an internal, external and social communication, which is translated into a mediation. The priesthood is precisely a mediation between God and men exercised by a minister chosen and often consecrated with a particular rite.
Man, individually and socially, feels the need of a mediator for his relations with God. This need perhaps has its roots in the consciousness of sin, more profoundly in the feeling of his own nothingness before the Infinite. To respond adequately to such a feeling, a man could not suffice, even one haloed with holiness; a superhuman man was needed, that is, one who transcended the conditions of the simple man.
Here the origin and the reason for being of the priesthood of Christ is grafted in, which exhausts and surpasses every other priesthood, realizing the perfect mediation between man and God in the work of reconciliation of the one with the other.
That Christ is a priest is a truth explicitly revealed by God. Already in the Old Testament the future Messiah is foretold as Priest with a solemn formula: « Iuravit Dominus et non poenitebit cum: Tu es sacerdos in aeternum secundum ordinem Melchisedech » (Ps. 110).
St. Paul takes up and develops the motive of this divine oath, demonstrating its fulfillment in Jesus, whose priestly dignity and function he outlines in that epistle to the Hebrews which may be called the code of the priesthood of Christ the redeemer (v. EBBEL, EPISTOLA agli).
The plot, quite evident, unfolds around three fundamental points: the transcendence of Christ as Son of God with regard to the angels and the prophets; the priesthood properly so called of the Redeemer; his sacrifice. Three points over which the concept of mediation dominates. Mediators are the prophets, mediators the angels, the classic mediator is Moses, but Christ surpasses them all as mediator by virtue of his condition as Son, while the others are servants and ministers. Even in his humanity, which makes him like us and inferior to the angels, Christ transcends all creation because that humanity is proper to the Word « splendor of the glory (of the Father) and impress of his substance » (Hebr. 1, 3). Preexisting, as God, in the bosom of the Father from eternity, already creator of the world, he comes into the world for the definitive revelation of the Father and clothes himself in flesh in order to be able to fulfill the redemptive mission with the priesthood, which is mediation in act between heaven and earth. No priesthood, no sacrifice had succeeded in placating divine justice, in reconciling man with God; for this the Son takes a body, in order to immolate it in homage to the divine will (ibid. 10, 5 ff.). Thus Jesus Christ is born a priest, according to the eternal design of God, who manifests him as his true Son and priest according to the order of Melchisedech (ibid. 5). The Apostle demonstrates the superiority of the priesthood of Melchisedech over that of Aaron, to conclude that Christ abolishes the Jewish priesthood, establishing his own which will be eternal, as much greater than the ancient one as the New Testament of which Christ is the mediator is greater (ibid. 9). And the mediation of Christ is perfect because of his intimate vital communion with the Father, by force of the divinity, and with men, by force of the humanity. In the third place, St. Paul exalts the bloody sacrifice of the Pontiff of the New Testament, setting it in contrast with the sacrifices of the Old.
The Fathers have before their eyes a rich harvest from which to draw the doctrine of the priesthood of Christ, which returns insistent and firm throughout the Tradition. The Savior is called « eternal Pontiff » (sempiternus Pontifex: St. Polycarp, Phil. 12, 2); « Supreme Pontiff » (St. Ignatius martyr, Ep. ad Philadelph., 9, 1); « Our Priest and God » (St. Justin, Dial. cum Tryphone, n. 115). St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Or., 38, 16) underlines the singular condition of Christ on the Cross, priest and victim together: ut agnum offerri et ut sacerdotem offerre. But the question of the priesthood of Christ is agitated and deepened at the time of the Nestorian heresy (5th cent.) and in the other Christological struggles that dragged on until the 7th cent. See, for example, St. John Chrysostom, in the commentary on the epistle to the Hebrews. But more than he, St. Cyril of Alexandria had to occupy himself with the subject, in contrast with Nestorius and other Antiochenes, who, dividing Christ God (the Word) from Christ Man, did not want to recognize any priestly function in the former, but only in the latter. St. Cyril, by force of the profound hypostatic union and of the consequent communication of idioms, claims the title of pontiff and priest for the Word himself insofar as united with the human nature.
Christ, according to the divine Revelation, is certainly Priest and Pontiff who accepts the Sacrifice as God and offers it as man, being himself at the same time offerer and victim: «Pro nobis sibi victor et victima et ideo victor quia victima; pro nobis sibi sacerdos et sacrificium, et ideo sacerdos quia sacrificium» (St. Augustine, Confess., X, 43, 69; cf. id., De Civ. Dei, X, 20).
The reactions against this truth transmitted in the first Christian generations derive from errors concerning the person of Christ. The magisterium of the Church adopts the doctrine of St. Cyril of Alexandria, who in the anathematism puts mediation in relation with the priesthood and attributes both the one and the other to the Word according to the human nature, recalling the divine Revelation: «Mediator homo Christus Jesus (I Tim. 2, 5) Pontificem et Apostolum confessionis nostro factum esse Christum divina Scriptura commemorat...». The Council of Trent reconfirms the truth of the priesthood of Christ and develops it in the Eucharistic sphere (sess. XXII, cap. 1). Pius XI in the encyclical Quas primas (AAS, 17 [1925], p. 508 ff.) unites in one and the same treatment the Kingship and the priesthood of the Redeemer.
II. THEOLOGY OF THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST OF C
Theology, in possession of this abundant testimony of written and oral Revelation, flourishes and develops, following the lines of the thought of the Fathers, in the scholastic era. The fruit of this theological elaboration is found in St. Thomas (v. especially: Sum. Theol., 3ᵃ, q. 22).
1. Perfection and characters of the priesthood of Christ
The Angelic Doctor studies the nature and perfection of the priesthood of Christ in the light of the concept of mediation. The true priest is the mediator between God and men (ibid., q. 22, a. 1), inasmuch as his office consists in communicating divine things to men and human things to God. In view of original sin, priestly mediation takes on a reparative function, which is concentrated in the expiatory Sacrifice. Now Christ is the perfect mediator, as is revealed in St. Paul (I Tim. 2, 5). In fact the mediator is truly such if along the line of being he stands between two extreme terms (ontological mediation) and if he is capable of joining them by communicating their goods to one another (moral mediation). Christ as God-Man fully realizes these conditions in himself: he is distinguished from the Father and the Holy Spirit personally, and according to the assumed human nature he is distant from God; moreover he is distinguished and distant from men, because his human nature is united hypostatically with the Word and is full of grace and of incomparable holiness. On the other hand, consubstantiality unites him to the Father and to the Holy Spirit in the unity of nature, and consubstantiality with us makes him a man of our specific nature. By this double bond Christ is in a position to fulfill the reconciling function between God and men, which is the proper end of the Incarnation. He is therefore the perfect mediator, of whom the prophets and priests of the Old Testament are only approximate images (Sum. Theol., 3ᵃ, q. 26, aa. 1-2). By logical consequence Christ is constituted Priest of a singular perfection, as the hypostatic union is singular, on which his mediation and his priesthood rest.
The essential characters of this priesthood can be reduced to three. a) Christ constitutes himself priest not by an additional vocation, but by virtue of the hypostatic union. So that Christ does not become, but is born a priest, when the Word is made flesh. The function of mediation and of priesthood certainly does not befit the Word as such, because that function necessarily implies a certain inferiority before God. For this reason St. Paul admonishes that Christ is mediator as Man (I Tim. 2, 5), and the Fathers and theologians, with St. Thomas, declare that the subject of the priesthood of Christ is his humanity (Sum. Theol., 3ᵃ, q. 22, a. 3, ad 1). But it is also true that this humanity cannot be thought of nor subsist independently of the Word, who assumed it. Already St. Augustine had forestalled the difficulties when he wrote (Serm., 12, 21): «Ecce mediator: divinitas sine humanitate non est mediatrix, humanitas sine divinitate non est mediatrix, sed inter divinitatem solam et humanitatem solam mediatrix est humana divinitas et divina humanitas Christi». More concisely St. Thomas (loc. cit.): «Licet Christus non fuerit sacerdos secundum quod Deus, sed secundum quod homo, unus tamen et idem fuit Sacerdos et Deus». b) Christ is priest and victim together (Sum. Theol., 3ᵃ, q. 22, a. 2). The end of the priesthood and of the sacrifice is to elevate the soul and unite it with God. Sin had dug an abyss between creatures and the Creator: an abyss that no man could have filled, because sin, having in itself something of the infinite, morally demanded an infinite reparation. The solution of the problem is the Incarnation, by which a mediator comes to be constituted capable of suffering, through his humanity, and capable of satisfying infinitely by his sufferings, because he is a Divine Person subsisting in that human nature. Christ mediator and priest offers the one Sacrifice worthy of God, that is, his humanity immolated on the Cross for the redemption of men. c) The priesthood of Christ is eternal, as St. Paul affirms. One must distinguish eternity of state and eternity of function. The priestly state of Christ, deriving from the hypostatic union itself, which is indissoluble, is evidently eternal. But the priestly function is not eternal, at least in its principal act, which is the sacrifice. Christ immolated himself once for all, and therefore in his glorious life he can no longer celebrate the sacrifice of himself.
2. The priestly acts of Jesus Christ
As mediator between God and men, the priest exercises his mission, as has been said, by offering human things to God and divine things to men. Two gestures: one ascending, the other descending. The first is expressed especially by the sacrifice accompanied by prayer; the second by the distribution of divine gifts (graces). a) The priestly act par excellence is the sacrifice (v.). It is of faith that Jesus Christ by his death on the Cross offered to the Father a true and perfect sacrifice (Council of Ephesus, anatham., 10; Council of Trent, sess. XXII, cann. 3-4). More than all others St. Paul insists on the sacrificial character of the Savior's death: Christ, our pasch, has been immolated (ἐνύθη, a technical term proper to sacrificial language: I Cor. 5, 7); Christ gave himself for us oblationem et hostiam (προσφόρῳ καὶ θυσίαν = offering and bloody victim; Eph., 5, 2); Christ is victima pro peccato (ἀμαρτία: II Cor. 5, 21), is a propitiatory victim (ὑπατήριον: Rom. 3, 24). In the letter to the Hebrews (9-10) the Sacrifice of Jesus is exalted above all the sacrifices of the Old Testament. St. Peter too (I, 1, 18-19) speaks of Jesus as the immaculate lamb who redeemed us with his precious blood. The thought of the Fathers is unanimous. Origen, In Num., 24, 1: «In his omnibus hostis unus est agnus, qui totius mundi potuit auferre peccatum et ideo cessaverunt ceterae hostiae, quia talis haec fuit hostia, ut una sola sufficeret pro totius mundi salute». St. Augustine, De Trin., 4, 13: «Morte sua quippe uno verissimo sacrificio oblato...». St. Cyril of Alexandria, Adv. Nestor., 3, 1: «Seipsum Patri pro nobis tanquam odoratissimam victimam obtulit»; and in the X anathematism: «Obtulit autem semetipsum pro nobis in odorem suavitatis Deo et Patri». St. Thomas makes the death of Christ the object of profound theological meditation (Sum. Theol., 3ᵃ, qq. 46-48). The free obedience and above all the love with which Christ goes to meet the death preordained by the Father are the formal reason of the Sacrifice of the Cross. The gallows is transformed into an altar and death takes on a sacrificial character of infinite value because of the love with which Christ accompanies his immolation (ibid., q. 48, a. 13). In vain Faustus Socinus in the work De Jesu Cristo Salvatore, II, and Auguste Sabatier in the work La doctrine de l'expiation et son évolution historique (Paris 1903) attempted to remove from the death of Christ its sacrificial value. Their theory, fundamentally heretical, remains confuted by what has been set forth above, concerning the doctrine revealed by God in the Old and New Testament and defined by the infallible magisterium of the Church.
But also among Catholics the question of the sacrifice of Christ has been variously agitated in the modern age. It is especially the French school of the Oratory (Cardinal De Bérulle, Condren, Olier) that occupies itself with mystical fervor with the priesthood and the sacrifice of Christ, speaking insistently of a celestial, eternal sacrifice of Christ.
With the best theology, under the guidance of St. Thomas, one may conclude with these fixed points: a) Christ as Priest celebrated no other true and proper sacrifice than that of the Cross, of which the Eucharistic one is an anticipation and a continuation. That sacrifice is essentially oblation and immolation. b) Christ as Priest enters heaven with his glorified humanity and therefore impassible, incapable of undergoing any further sacrificial treatment, indeed now definitively stripped of every character of victim. c) Therefore Christ in heaven, while remaining in his priestly being, does not formally continue his sacrifice either as oblation or as immolation, but applies its fruits to souls, which in this way attain eternal life. This is the consummatio sacrificii, admitted in heaven even by St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 22, a. 5), who thus explains the eternity of the Priesthood of Christ inasmuch as «virtus illius hostiae (Christi crucifici) semel oblatæ permanet in aeternum» (ibid., ad 2). d) The priestly function of Christ in heaven is exercised, according to the text of Heb. 7:25, through interpellatio, which theologians interpret in various senses. St. Thomas, In Ep. ad Hebr., comments thus: «Interpellat pro nobis primo humanitatem suam, quam pro nobis assumpsit, repræsentando. Item sanctissimae animae suae desiderium, quod de salute nostra habuit, exprimendo, cum quo interpellat pro nobis». Therefore the application of the fruits of the Redemption, which is a priestly function, takes place in heaven by virtue of the humanity assumed by the Word and immolated on the Cross for the redemption of men. A humanity that speaks for itself, with its glorious scars and with the ardent desire of the soul for our salvation.
For the Eucharistic Sacrifice and its connection with that of the Cross, v. MESSA.
3. The second priestly act of Christ is prayer
The Gospel attests that Jesus prayed frequently in public and in private; indeed it lets us know that Jesus often spent the entire night in prayer. As a seal of this life of intimate converse with the Father, St. John has preserved, in his Gospel, the sublime prayer of the Last Supper, a priestly prayer and testament of love. And St. Paul in Hebrews recalls the fervent supplications of Jesus as Priest to the Father: «Qui in diebus carnis suae preces supplicationesque ad eum, qui possit illum salvum facere a morte cum clamore valido et lacrimis offerens, exauditus est pro sua reverentia» (Hebr. 5:7). St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 21) treats this delicate subject with his usual perspicacity. Prayer, he says, is a manifestation of the will made to God for the purpose that it be fulfilled. This is possible only in a creature, which is not capable of realizing by itself all that it wills.
Christ therefore prays insofar as he is Man. But by virtue of the hypostatic union the prayer of the soul of Christ is proper to the Person of the Word, and therefore one must say that the Word prays according to the assumed humanity, analogously to what has been said of Christ as mediator and priest.
Jesus as Priest throughout his entire earthly life prayed for us men, but the efficacy of his prayer, like that of his redemptive work, does not save all. His prayer, though most efficacious, is connected with the mystery of predestination and of the reconciliation of Grace with free will.
4. The third priestly act of Christ is the distribution of Grace and of glory
Mediation in act is at the same time the Redemption and the priesthood of Christ. Now the Redemption is the production of Grace through the satisfaction and merit of Christ crucified, Grace ordered to the conquest of eternal life.
Here the question of the causality of Grace returns. It is known that the principal cause of Grace is only God and therefore Christ insofar as he is Son of God; but the instrumental cause is the humanity assumed as organ of the Word. And since Christ is Priest according to his human nature, which he offered in a bloody Sacrifice on the cross, it is evident that the distribution of Grace is a proper act of Christ as Priest. Every soul that is sanctified and saved passes through Calvary and enters heaven through the merits and action of Christ as Priest and Victim. The Sacraments are a prolongation of the priestly humanity of the Redeemer; it is Christ who baptizes, who absolves, who repeats the gesture of his immolation at the Altar. The sacramental character is a configuration of the Christian to Christ as priest.
III. CONCLUSION
St. Paul rightly reduces Christianity to a soteriology and concentrates this soteriology in the mystery of the Cross. Christ, God-Man, Mediator, Priest and Victim for the redemption of the human race: this is the Christian religion.
The Sacrifice of Christ, the Priest, is an itinerary of God toward man and of man toward God, an itinerary that traverses the cycle of creation, by which God, under the impulse of an infinite love, in a certain way goes out from himself in order to return to himself. This itinerary is Christ himself, who called himself "the Way." He stretches between the world and God to reconcile them and unite them in love by his priestly act.