|
State of the question. It seems that He was not: (1) because it
is the duty of the priest to kill the victim or offer it in sacrifice,
and Christ did not kill Himself; (2) because in the Old
Testament, which is a figure of the New Testament, a man was never
offered in sacrifice; (3) because every victim that is offered to
God is consecrated to Him, but Christ's humanity from the beginning
was consecrated to God.
Reply. Yet the answer is that Christ was both priest and victim.
It is also of faith, for St. Paul says: "Christ also hath loved
us, and hath delivered Himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to
God for an odor of sweetness."[1550] It was also defined by
the Council of Trent in its canons concerning the institution of the
Sacrifice of the Mass and the priesthood of the New Law established
by Christ.[1551]
Theological proof. St. Thomas shows that Christ was not only a
victim, but a most perfect victim.
A man is in need of sacrifice for three reasons: first, for the
remission of sins, for which the victim for sin was offered in the Old
Testament; secondly, that man may be preserved in the state of
grace, for which the sacrifice of peace-offering was offered under the
Old Law; thirdly, that the spirit of man be perfectly united to
God, which will be most perfectly realized in glory. Hence in the
Old Law the holocaust was offered as symbolizing the state of the
perfect, in which the victim was entirely burnt in God's honor. But
Christ was a most perfect victim, being at the same time victim for
sin, victim for a peace-offering, and a holocaust, as clearly
established from the scriptural texts quoted in the argumentative part
of this article.
Reply to first objection. Christ did not kill Himself, but He
willingly exposed Himself to death, willingly offered Himself,
inasmuch as He willingly endured the blows of those killing Him, whom
He could easily have repelled, as shown in the Garden of
Gethsemane, when He answered those that came to apprehend Him with
such authority that they fell to the ground. Hence He had said:
"No man taketh it [My life] away from Me, but I lay it down of
Myself."[1552] It was the fire of love coming from heaven that
burnt the victim, says St. Thomas elsewhere.[1553]
The difference between Christ's death and the death of the martyrs
consists in this, that theirs is not a sacrifice in the strict sense,
although it is voluntary. Granted that the wound was mortal, the
martyrs, unlike Christ, were not free to preserve their life or give
it up, whereas Christ, unless the Father had given Him the command
to die for us, miraculously had it in His power not to die under the
blows inflicted upon Him. Hence Christ offered Himself as
holocaust.[1554]
Corollary. The priesthood of Christ cannot be more perfect, because
the priest cannot be more united to God, the victim, and the
people.[1555] Christ is God, moreover, Christ is both priest
and victim, and finally Christ is the head of His mystical body and
of all mankind.[1556]
|
|
