THE CHURCH AND THE CRISIS OF THE SACRED: THE EUCHARIST IS THE REAL PRESENCE OF CHRIST AND THE HOLY MEMORIAL MASS INCRUING THE CALVARY SACRIFICE

In the letter of the 7 April 1913, Padre Pio da Pietrelcina wrote to his spiritual director Padre Agostino da San Marco in Lamis describing the mystical experience he had witnessed, where the weeping Lord Jesus complains of his priests calling them "butchers" precisely in relation to the celebration of the divine sacrifice and the provisions with which it was celebrated.

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

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The story of the Ambrosian priest Mattia Bernasconi and his idea of ​​celebrating Holy Mass at sea, as I have already dealt with in the past in my previous articles [see who, who, who], showed very well the level of weakness of the The sense of Faith circulating today among the clergy and the faithful. On the contrary, precisely because the clergy are the first to be deficient in The meaning of Faithi, of Tradition and knowledge of the Magisterium, the faithful feel entitled to behave accordingly, distilling their faith within a creed that is the result of an emotional drive and corporate solidarity.

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By the grace of God, after some time of inexplicable silence, the Archbishop of Milan has his say and says it with the authority of a pastor whose purpose is to defend the People of God entrusted to him against the shipwrecks of faith and sound doctrine. In spite of all those beautiful souls who for some time have defended the horrendous antics of putting into the sea with the sword, complaining of stiffness, ignorance and judgment all those who - including us priests - have had to say and have reacted ... because you know, in the Church there are other problems, the important things are certainly not these. Poor us!

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Just take an excerpt from the press release of the Ambrosian prelate [see who] to understand how much this Brother was wrong, so much so that he forced his bishop to such expressions:

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«I believe that Don Mattia's way of celebrating is nonsense without justification […] It will be a duty for Don Mattia to seriously resume liturgical training that allows us to understand how this behavior was possible and to prevent it from happening again ".

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As always the painful point it is given by the formation of the clergy, to always be taken care of and to be checked periodically over the years. Ignorant clergy leads to the consequence of an ignorant laity, in the etymological sense of the term. It is not only a problem of dogmatic theology that informs liturgical and pastoral theology but above all of an immersion in that dimension of mystery which touches the very heart of God and constitutes its spiritual texture..

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All the sacred mysteries, in the first place The holy Mass, they allow man to touch the action of the Holy Spirit in his own creaturality, working out salvation. If we don't allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us through the sacred mysteries, nobody will. The spirit of the world is unable to reinvigorate the withered bones of a God-forgetful life [cf.. This 37,1-14], it distorts everything in disordered emotionality, in do it yourself compulsive and sectarian solidarity, all things that cannot find a justification in the Church, especially when you push yourself to the limit of sacrilege.

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I think it is useful and constructive re-read some of the many comments of the "faithful" that appeared on the profile Facebook by Mattia Bernasconi, as well as in that of other presbyters. For example Giovanni Berti, the cartoonist priest of the clerically correct who immediately ran to the defense of his Milanese brother by making drawings to this. Here are some of the more interesting comments:

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«I am on the side of the priest who made the mass on the mat. And I defend it. God can be found everywhere, even at sea […] total solidarity with Don Mattia and his authentic testimony […] Don Mattia was and is also authentic in apologizing. The young priests who are nostalgic for the Council of Trent and who celebrate in Latin terrify me […] Mattia you haven't done anything wrong! I hope that the support of those who love you will give you strength and comfort you! […] Don Mattia the true word of God is practiced in this simple and humble way, we are all with you […] But Jesus must have been happy to be celebrated in such a context and then maybe someone who hadn't been to mass for a long time, he had a chance to remind those who have criticized it only out of envy, not to have the courage or the imagination to do it to them! How much hypocrisy… how many Taliban we have in the church […] Thank you Don Mattia for yet another teaching you have given me. The essence […] But apologize for what??? Offended who? Of zotic people? It does not seem to me that Jesus went to preach the faith around in a suit and tie had an altar all in gold!

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There is also a letter from a certain Don Paolo, entitled: "The mattress of the scandal and the Catholic dinosaurs", whose contents are comparable to those learned during a course online in theology, whose dogmatic teacher is the magician Oronzo. I am not here to open any debate on these expressions that speak for themselves and that, as I said earlier, they are just a mixture of emotionality and corporate solidarity. but yet, the tragic nature of a non-existent Eucharistic faith is evident and leaps to the eye, the lack of understanding for the violation of the mystery of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord combined with a luciferian denial of sin that nullifies any possibility of recovery of the offender and of recognition and expiation of the guilt. In short, to hear these testimonies, Mattia Bernasconi is more devoted to the Eucharist than Saint Pasquale Baylon, patron of Eucharistic congresses.

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My intent with this further article on the subject is to publicly reiterate to the Presbyterian Confreres and to the Venerable Bishops that our faithful have completely lost the sense of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Just as they have lost the meaning of the Eucharistic celebration of Mass as a bloodless memorial of the sacrifice of Calvary. And this is because of us priests! Definitely, if we still want to save the least that can still be saved, we must start afresh from the Eucharist, both as a mystery revealed by the Lord Jesus and as theological understanding and reflection within the Magisterium of the Church. Start from the basics, starting with children, educating their hearts to know how to see Jesus, to be with him in the Sacrament. My experience as a priest of the Order of the Capuchin Friars Minor, for years chaplain in a large hospital, today parish priest of a parish annexed to our Sardinian convent in Laconi, is the one that tells me that children easily fall in love with the Sacrament of the altar if we adults know how to provide them with the bare minimum to understand its mystery and the dignity of greatness. In my opinion, the concepts of faith in the Christian faithful should not be burdened and multiplied if they are not yet able to assimilate its essentials. The Eucharistic presence of Christ adored and proclaimed real in the celebration of the Holy Mass becomes the hyphen that allows me, at a later time, to have a more dilated and pure look, almost mystical, to see the Lord present in the poor, in the sick and in all the brothers I will meet.

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The hours of Eucharistic adoration, which in parishes are increasingly disappearing, they represent the real training ground in which to recognize the living Jesus. A Christian who does not worship and praise is a weak Christian. A priest who in his spiritual life does not feel the need to stand before Jesus in the sacrament is a bureaucrat and if he is also in the care of souls and does not peel his knees in front of the tabernacle he endangers his apostolic mission, his spiritual health and weakens the flock entrusted to him.

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If we were to observe the awareness of the presence of the Lord in most of the faithful who cross the entrance of a church, we will see some good ones: how many of them enter with decorous and not skimpy clothes? How many turn off their mobile phones or silence it out of respect for the Blessed Eucharist and out of respect for those present who are already in prayer? How many look for the red lamp that signals that the church is inhabited by the Eucharistic presence of the living Christ? How many kneel, once you get to the counter, and recite the prayers of praise and reverence to the Holy Eucharist like those taught by the holy doctor Alfonso Maria de 'Liguori or say a heartfelt "May the Most Holy and Divine Sacrament be praised and thanked every moment" ending everything with a doxology? How many of those who enter the church, they hurry to seek the comfort of the person of Christ in the tabernacle instead of hurrying to look for the wooden or plaster statue of the saint on duty, not understanding the substantial difference between simulacrum and real presence, between the worship of latria, dulia and iperdulia?

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And this could be just the beginning of a long collective examination of conscience that involves the faithful and priests together. We can go further by analyzing the Holy Mass: those who arrive on time so that the celebration can begin with the entrance song and end it with the final song? How many are the faithful still convinced that the Holy Mass is valid if it has arrived at least before the proclamation of the Holy Gospel? How many, during the consecration and elevation, they know how to look at the Body of Christ in the white host and the chalice with wine, Blood of the Lord? How many still firmly argue that to receive communion at Holy Mass just one Act of Pain without the need for any prior sacramental confession, even if you are aware of having failed to some commandment? How many are convinced that to receive sacramental Communion the only passionate desire that makes people say "I felt like taking the Eucharist" forgetting a Christian life that excludes habitual sin, the conditions of moral disorder and the impediments of conscience that would need a profound healing? How many are the faithful who present themselves to receive Communion from the priest only for baptisms, weddings and funerals, thinking that that communion thrown there is a duty due to etiquette and not as a response of faith? How many still go to Communion with candy or chewing gum in their mouths? How many still approach with contempt and derision, with no awareness of who you are going to receive? How many challenge the Church and the priest who distributes the Eucharist considering Communion as a proper acquired right? How many public advocates or defenders of positions such as abortion, l'euthanasia, divorce, coexistence, drug use, marriages outside the natural law, war and all those cases in which division abounds, hostility and oppression of the weakest today approach Communion with evident sacrilege?

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It seems normal to you affirm that, after all these inconsistencies, we can still believe in a serious and mature way in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist? The marine mass of Crotone is the tip of theiceberg of a pathological sacramental malaise that is affecting everyone.

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And when you point out this incompatibility, even with force, immediately you become one who judges, a betraying Judas or an anachronistic Catholic "dinosaur". Today these accusations become the most immediate way to discredit the adversary and defuse the goad towards the sanctity that is required of those who want to cross the narrow door [LC 13,24]. With this antidote, the prosecution charge, we get rid of any bigot, just as in politics the word fascist is used and in the LGBT community the word homophobia to silence opposing dissent.

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As a Capuchin friar I would have a good game in reminding everyone of the position, in relation to the Holy Mass, by Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. His, stigmatized priest, to each Eucharist that he celebrated or attended he relived on his flesh and in his soul the terrible pangs of the passion of the Lord Jesus with vivid realism. In the letter of the 7 April 1913, Padre Pio wrote to his spiritual director Padre Agostino da San Marco in Lamis describing the mystical experience he had been a spectator of, where the weeping Lord Jesus complains of his priests calling them "butchers" precisely in relation to the celebration of the divine sacrifice and the provisions with which it was celebrated. I wanted to cite an example dear and close to me, but I could go on to list other saints such as Blessed Carlo Acutis, eg, and other memorable pages in the history of the Church in which the importance of the celebration of the Eucharist and the Body of the Lord is reaffirmed.

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I'm not doing this to provoke a lynching of anyone, something that I would be careful not to do being a sinner more than the others but, Alas, I was also credited with this intention by someone who has read my latest articles, not just misinterpreting them, but just completely distorting them.

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Dear Brothers in the Priesthood and Venerable Bishops, I consider true and right the ministerial duty to affirm that when the limit of decency is exceeded in such a clear way with regard to the Most Holy Eucharist and the Holy Mass, as happened in Crotone, it takes the right indignation, the due reparation and the courage of fatherhood. Yup, knowing how to use virile paternity with immediacy and authority, that neither the Archbishop of Milan nor that of Crotone have been able to do immediately. As he said in 1972 the Venerable Father Divo Barsotti preaching the spiritual exercises to the Roman Curia under the invitation of Paul VI:

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"The Church has been endowed by God with a coercive power that she must exercise if necessary because if she does not exercise it, both the charity and the mandate that Christ has given her are lost".

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And as a father in front of the son who is wrong he does not strive with firmness and mercy, as we read in Hebrews [cf.. 12,5-11], so that this is repentant and not lost? Because it is from the correction that underlines the error that the charity is born that recovers the one who makes mistakes and surrounds him with mercy. For this reason we must not be afraid to affirm with the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that:

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"Our Savior at the Last Supper, the night he was betrayed, he instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood, with which to perpetuate over the centuries, until his return, the sacrifice of the cross, and to entrust thus to his beloved Bride, the church, the memorial of his death and resurrection: sacrament of piety, sign of unity, bond of charity, Easter banquet, in which Christ is received, the soul is filled with grace and the pledge of future glory is given " (See. CCC n.1323).

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Who helps us in this understanding of the Eucharistic mystery are our priests who are not masters but servants without ulterior motives:

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“They exercise their sacred function in the Eucharistic cult or assembly, where is that, acting in the person of Christ and proclaiming his mystery, they unite the vows of the faithful to the sacrifice of their Head and in the sacrifice of the Mass they make present and apply, until the coming of the Lord, the only sacrifice of the New Testament, that is, the sacrifice of Christ, who once and for all offers himself to the Father as an immaculate victim. From this one sacrifice all their priestly ministry draws its strength " [cf.. CCC n.1566].

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In the daily liturgical diakonia at the service of the altar made up of gestures, rites, signs and symbols, the priests, they celebrate the Eucharist in which the Lord renews his Easter redemption from sin and death in favor of man. This ritual language needs an appropriate space, that it is worthy of the greatness of the mystery that is celebrated in it. Therefore the Holy Mass:

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«Let it be done in the sacred place, unless in a particular case necessity requires nothing else; in which case, the celebration must take place in a decent place " [cf.. Sacramentum n. 108 and Code of Canon Law, Can. 932 § 1; cf.. S. Congress. for the Cult Div., Istr., Liturgical establishments, n. 9: AAS 62 (1970) p. 701].

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Like this, celebrating with lively faith and in a worthy way the Holy Mass, the priest and with him the Church, realizes what St. Ambrose Bishop of Milan says about the real presence of the Body of the Lord:

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«This bread is bread before the sacramental words; ma, intervening the consecration, the bread becomes Christ's flesh […] From which words the consecration is made and whose are these words? Of the Lord Jesus! All the things that are said before that moment are said by the priest who praises God, pray for the people, for kings and for others; but when it comes to fulfilling the venerable sacrament, the priest no longer uses his words, but of Christ. It is therefore the word that operates (traverses) the sacrament […] See how effective it is (operator) speaking of Christ? Before the consecration there was no Body of Christ, but after the consecration, I tell you that the body of Christ is now there. He said and it was done, he commanded and was created (cf Shall 33, 9)» [See. Ambrogio, Of the sacraments, IV, 14-16 (PL 16, 439 ss].

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With the last and definitive word of the Archbishop of Milan, on the story of the Mass of Crotone, we are moving towards the end of the summer 2022. Summer is ending, the Righeira Brothers sang in 1985, for us it would be enough that these liturgical and dogmatic oddities were to end, with the hope that in this period the bishops will be a little closer to the priests and a little less to the polls and politicians, since we still believe that Christ is the one and only Redeemer of humanity.

Laconi, 23 August 2022

feast of Saint Ignatius of Laconi

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