Dignity of the CATHOLIC priesthood. Saint John Chrysostom.

 

Note. When Saint John Chrysostom speaks of the priest, he refers to the Catholic priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek established by Our Lord Jesus Christ at the Last Supper and not the one emanating from the Second Vatican Council, which is of human and Protestant origin (if it exists as such). ) contrary to the divine.

When you contemplate the Lord sacrificed and placed on the altar, and the priest who prays and attends the sacrifice, and all those present bathed in the purple of that most precious blood, do you perhaps think that you are still among men and that you tread the earth? Don't you feel rather transferred to the Heavens where, banished from your soul all carnal thought, you look with naked soul and pure mind the very realities of glory? ¡Oh wonder! ¡O kindness of our God! The

who is seated in glory next to the Father, is taken at that moment into the hands of all, and allows himself to be embraced and embraced by those who want. They do so with the eyes of faith.

¿Do you want to see the sovereign sanctity of these mysteries? Imagine, I beg you, that you have before your eyes the prophet Elijah; he looks at the huge crowd that surrounds him, the victims on the stones, the stillness and the absolute silence of all and only the prophet who prays; and, suddenly, the fire that comes down from heaven on the sacrifice... All this is admirable and fills us with astonishment.

Well, move now from there and contemplate what is fulfilled between us: you will see not only wonderful things, but something that surpasses all admiration. The priest stands here, not to call down fire from heaven, but to bring down the Holy Spirit; and he prolongs his prayer for a long time, not so that a flame from on high consumes the victims, but so that grace descends on the sacrifice and, burning the souls of all those present, leave them brighter than refined silver.

Who is there, then, so crazy, who is so lost in judgment that he proudly despises such a tremendous mystery? ¿Do you not know that, without a particular help of God’s grace, there would be no human soul capable of withstanding the fire of that sacrifice, ¿but that it would consume us all absolutely?

If someone carefully considers what it means to be a man still wrapped in flesh and blood, and yet be able to come so close to that blessed and most pure nature; that one will be able to understand how great is the honor that the grace of the Spirit granted to the priests. Because by the hands of the priest not only the said mysteries are fulfilled, but others that are in no way behind them, either because of their dignity in themselves, or in order to our salvation.

Indeed, the inhabitants of the earth, who still have their conversation on earth, have been entrusted to administer the treasures of Heaven, and have received a power that God never granted to the angels or the archangels. To none of these did he say: whatever you bind on earth will also be bound in heaven (Mt 18, 18). It is true that those who exercise authority in the world also have the power to bind, but only the bodies. The bond of the priest touches the soul itself and penetrates into the heavens. What the priests do down here, God confirms up there; the sentence of the servants is confirmed by the Lord. What else is this, but to have granted them all the celestial power? Whose sins you shall forgive, he says, will be forgiven them; and to whom you retain them, they shall be retained (Jn 20, 23). What power can be greater than this? All judgment has been given by the Father to the Son (Jn 5, 22); but I see that this judgment has in turn been entirely placed by the Son in the hands of his priests (...)

Without the dignity of the priesthood we could not save ourselves or achieve the goods that have been promised to us. Because if no one can enter the kingdom of heaven, if he is not regenerated by water and the Spirit (cf. Jn 3, 5), if he who does not eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Lord is excluded from eternal life (cfr. Jn 6, 53-54), and all this can only be accomplished by the holy hands of the priest, how could anyone escape the fire of hell and reach the crowns that are reserved for us?

The priests are the ones who beget us spiritually, those who through Baptism give birth to us. Through them we clothe ourselves with Christ (cf. Rom 13, 14; Gal 3, 27), we are buried with the Son of God (cf. Rom 6, 4) and we become members of that blessed Head. So that priests should deserve more reverence than magistrates and kings, and it would even be fair to pay them greater honor than our own parents. Because the latter beget us by blood and the will of the flesh (cf. Jn 1:13), but the former are the authors of our birth from God, of blessed regeneration, of true freedom and of divine filiation by grace.

The Jewish priests had power to rid the body of leprosy; I say wrong: they only had the power to examine those already cured of it, and we well know how disputed the priestly dignity was then. But the Christian priests have received power, not over the leprosy of the body, but over the impurity of the soul; not to examine the cured leprosy, but to absolutely cleanse it. Therefore, those who despise the priest commit a greater sacrilege than Datan and his henchmen, and deserve more severe punishment (cf. Num 16).

(...) But not only in order to punish, but also to do us good, God has given priests greater power than natural parents. The difference that runs between the present life and the life to come goes from one to the other, since the one begets us for the former and the other for the latter. In addition, parents cannot free their children from bodily death, they are not even capable of removing from them an illness that attacks them; the priests, on the other hand, often cure a sick soul and save the one that is about to be lost; They mitigate the punishment they deserve for some, while they prevent others from falling at all. And that not only because of his teachings and admonitions, but also with the help of his prayers. And so it is that priests not only have the power to forgive sins when they regenerate us through Baptism, but also those we commit after our regeneration (...). In addition, natural parents can do little or nothing in favor of their children, when they offend some character or powerful on earth, the priests, on the other hand, reconcile us many times, not with magistrates or emperors, but with God himself. angry at us