Quotes by Saints about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
  • francis
    Posts: 10,848
    Augustine said: "He who devoutly hears Holy Mass will receive a great vigor to enable him to resist mortal sin, and there shall be pardoned to him all venial sins which he may have committed up to that hour."
    Thanked by 1G
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    St. Josemaria Escriva: "You say the Mass is long, and I respond: because your love is short"
    Thanked by 4M. Jackson Osborn Jenny BruceL rich_enough
  • francis
    Posts: 10,848
    It would be easier for the world to survive without the sun than to do without Holy Mass. (St. Pio of Pietrelcina)
    Thanked by 1Ben
  • ContinuousbassContinuousbass
    Posts: 357
    Genuine participation in the Mass cannot but produce fraternal love in the individual believer and in the whole ecclesial community.
    +JP2
    Thanked by 1JulieColl
  • donr
    Posts: 971
    "Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival"


    St. Paul 1st letter to the Corinthians 5:7-8
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    On the origin of the word "Mass" :

    The Eucharistic sacrifice is called Missa because in it there is a sending forth (missa = transmissio) from earth to heaven and from heaven to earth. The Church sends up to the throne of God by the ministry of the priest the Eucharistic sacrifice and prayers and the necessities and desires of the faithful; God in return sends down upon men the riches of heavenly grace and blessing. Or we may put it this way: Christ is sent into the world by the Father as a sacrifice, and in turn He is sent back again to heaven by the faithful as a sacrifice, in order to reconcile us to the Father and to procure for us all blessings.
    (Gihr, Nicholas, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book, Co.)
  • ronkrisman
    Posts: 1,396
    (Gihr, Nicholas, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book, Co.)

    This thread is "Quotes by Saints..." Rev. Dr. Gihr has not been canonized a saint. He wrote the paragraph in quotations many, many years before the publication of Josef Jungmann's magisterial study on the Mass. Had he been able to read that work of scholarship, he probably would be to first to admit that what he wrote about the word "missa" was only pious piffle, the stuff of fiction.
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • Andrew_Malton
    Posts: 1,189
    But of course Gihr's description of the sacrum commercium is not also piffle. Only the etymology.
    Thanked by 1ronkrisman
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,424
    Pious piffle.
    A priceless locution!
    Thanked by 1Gavin
  • francis
    Posts: 10,848
    now, now, my dears... stick to the quotes. when (if) we get to heaven Jesus will definitely declare the truth about his sacrifice on earth, and we will all listen and no one will refute him.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,220
    Speculative etymology.
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • G
    Posts: 1,401
    Yes, Julie, how DARE you contribute to thread drift, IS OUTRAGE! ;oD

    Okay, now I've gone and done it ... but thanks for the thread, Francis.
    There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious, He would have given it to us.
    -The Curé d'Ar, St. John Vianney


    (Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
    Thanked by 1JulieColl
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    Oops. Profuse apologies all around for derailing things.

    How about this from St. Ambrose (in Fr. Gihr's book):

    If only an angel would stand at our side and render himself visible, when we are burning incense at the altar, when we are celebrating the sacrifice! For you may not doubt that angels are present, when Christ is there, when Christ is being sacrificed.
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    St. Bonaventure really nails it here:

    Tolle hoc sacramentum de Ecclesia, et quid erit in mundo nisi error et infidelitas? Sed per hoc sacramentum stat Ecclesia, roboratur fides, viget christiana religio et divinus cultus.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    I'm about 90% sure that I understood 70% of that.
    Could you provide a more accurate translation than my brain is capable of producing?
    Thanked by 2donr JulieColl
  • ContinuousbassContinuousbass
    Posts: 357
    Take away this sacrament of the church, and what shall come to pass in the world except error, and unbelief? But in this sacrament the Church stands, faith strengthens, the Christian religion and Divine worship thrives.
    Thanked by 1JulieColl
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    Here's one more, this one by Venantius Fortunatus, poet, hymnodist and bishop (never canonized, sorry!) speaking of the stream of blood and water flowing from the altar in the Mass in whose torrent the earth, the sea, the starry firmament, and the whole word is cleansed:

    Unda manat et cruor: terra, pontus, astra, mundus quo lavantur flumine.

  • Ben_WhitworthBen_Whitworth
    Posts: 90
    The Mass and the Saints by Thomas Crean OP is a book of nothing but this sort of thing; e.g., "This sacrifice alone has the power of saving the soul from eternal death, for it presents to us mystically the death of the only-begotten Son. Though he is now risen from the dead and dies no more, and death has no more power over him, yet living in himself immortal and incorruptible he is again immolated for us in the mystery of the holy sacrifice." St Gregory the Great.
    Thanked by 2Adam Wood francis
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