Who Offers the Mass? by Charles Cardinal Journet

In his book, The Mass: The Presence of the Sacrifice of the Cross, Charles Cardinal Journet provides a following insight into the question: Who offers the Mass?

Both Christ and the Church. (1) Christ’s sacrifice takes in the Church (this is primary); and (2) the Church’s sacrifice is taken up by Christ (this is secondary and dependent).

The Church participated in:

  1. The Bloody Sacrifice of the Cross – through Mary and St. John’s offerings of co-redemptive love at the foot of the Cross – offerings done through Christ, with Christ, in Christ;
  2. The unbloody sacrifice of the Last Supper – although Jesus alone in the line of worship entered His life into the bloody drama and transubstantiated the bread & wine into His Body & Blood, in the line of charity, the apostles entered into the redemptive sacrifice (through consuming the Eucharist and desires to stay faithful to the Lord);
  3. The unbloody sacrifice of the Mass – Ordained priests are the instruments of Christ through the words of consecration – they act in persona Christi and speak in the voice of the Bridegroom (“This is My Body”). The Church, before and after transubstantiation, acts through her priests in her own name, in propria persona and speak in the voice of the Bride. By uniting their personal offering to the priest, they can “support it, elevate it, and even go beyond it” (104). Christ desires that we “become by Him and in Him co-redeemers of our contemporary world” (105). The more our desires and sentiments are equal to His (cf. Lk 22:15, Phil 2:5), that is, to glorify the Father and save souls, the greater effects of this application of the saving Passion will take place. The heavenly Church is also present & intercedes for us (that our offering may be more meritorious, satisfactory, expiatory, and co-redemptive). “The Mass is, by the repetition of the unbloody sacrifice instituted at the Last Supper, the full existential entrance of the Church at every one of her moments into the redemptive bloody sacrifice, where her place is marked out in advance” (96).