The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 211: The One Priesthood of Christ (2024)

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

The priesthood of the Old Covenant among the people of Israel is fulfilled in the one priesthood of Christ. The Catechism compares the Old Testament priesthood, “powerless to bring about salvation,��� with the ordained ministry in the New Covenant. Fr. Mike unpacks the reality that there is only one true priest—Jesus Christ. His “priests” on earth are humble ministers. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1539-1545. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 211. We're reading paragraphs 1539 to 1545.

As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. And also you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications.

Today is day 211. We're reading paragraphs 1539 to 1545. Yesterday we started talking about these last two sacraments, the sacraments of service, sacraments of vocation, sacraments of mission. You might want to call them all of those things. The grounding for all of this, of course, is the fact that we've been initiated into the body of Christ. We've been brought into the family of God. We've been transformed into God's sons and daughters through baptism, strengthened by confirmation and fed by the Eucharist.

Of course, here we are trying to live this out. So yesterday we started talking about these two sacraments of mission, these sacraments of service called Holy Orders and Matrimony and yesterday we further talked about how Holy Orders is divided into essentially three degrees. The episcopate, which means bishops, the presbyterate priests and the diaconate deacons. And here we are today, we're looking at how was that priesthood realized in the Old Covenant and how is it fulfilled in Jesus Christ? That's it's pretty straightforward today, which is pretty amazing but also there's some beautiful prayers here a prayer from the ordination of bishops a prayer from the ordination of priests and the prayer from

The ordination of deacons that we're gonna look at and then of course everything culminates of deacons that we're gonna look at and then of course everything culminates everything goes back to the Old Testament because that's how God began calling his people in the priesthood of the Levites remember tribe of Levi but it gets fulfilled everything gets fulfilled in Jesus and in the establishment of his church so we're talking about that today as we launch into today let us throw ourselves into the Father's presence and place ourselves in the Father's presence and place ourselves in the Father's heart as we pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you and give you praise. We ask that you please send your Holy Spirit to bless us. Send your Holy Spirit to bless our local bishop. Send your Holy Spirit to bless our universal bishop, the Pope. We ask you to send your Holy Spirit to bless the priest who baptized us. Every priest who's ever heard our confession

and fed us with the Eucharist, every priest who's ever given us counsel, every deacon who's ever served in our parishes and served our families and served us individually. We ask you to please in this moment to bless all those priests who have died, who have gone before us, bring them into your presence,

purify them with your love so that they may dwell in your presence for all eternity. And we ask you to please bless us, Father. In the name of your Son Jesus Christ, by the power of your Holy Spirit, help us to be holy. Help us to be yours. Help us to love the way you love. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. It is day 211. We are reading paragraphs 1539 to 1545.

The Sacrament of Holy Orders in the Economy of Salvation. The Priesthood of the Old Covenant. The chosen people was constituted by God as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. But within the people of Israel, God chose one of the 12 tribes, that of Levi, and set it apart for liturgical service. God Himself is its inheritance. A special rite consecrated the beginnings of the priesthood of the Old Covenant.

The priests are appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. Instituted to proclaim the Word of God and to restore communion with God by sacrifices and prayer, this priesthood nevertheless remains powerless to bring about salvation, needing to repeat its sacrifices ceaselessly and being unable to achieve a definitive sanctification which only the sacrifice of Christ would accomplish. The liturgy of the Church, however, sees in the priesthood of Aaron and the service of the Levites, as in the institution of the Seventy Elders, a prefiguring of the ordained ministry of the New Covenant. Thus, in the Latin Rite, the Church prays in the consecratory preface of the ordination

of bishops, God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by your gracious word you have established the plan of your church. From the beginning you chose the descendants of Abraham to be your holy nation. You established rulers and priests and did not leave your sanctuary without ministers to serve you. At the ordination of priests, the church prays, Lord Holy Father, when you had appointed high priests to rule your people, you chose other men next to them in rank and dignity, to be with them, and to help them in their task. You extended the spirit of Moses to seventy wise men. You shared among the sons of Aaron the fullness of their

father's power. In the consecratory prayer for ordination of deacons, the Church confesses, Almighty God, you make the Church, Christ's body, grow to its full stature as a new and greater temple. You enrich it with every kind of grace and perfect it with a diversity of members to serve the whole body in a wonderful pattern of unity. You established a three-fold ministry of worship and service for the glory of your name. As ministers of your tabernacle, you chose the sons of Levi and gave them your blessing as their everlasting inheritance. The One Priesthood of Christ.

Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the one mediator between God and men. The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, priest of God Most High, as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique high priest after the order of Melchizedek, priest of God Most High, as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, holy, blameless, unstained. By a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified, that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross. The redemptive sacrifice of Christ is unique, accomplished once for all.

Yet it is made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ is unique, accomplished once for all. Yet it is made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Church. The same is true of the one priesthood of Christ. It is made present through the ministerial priesthood without diminishing the uniqueness of Christ's priesthood. Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers. All right, there we are, paragraphs 1539 to 1545. We have this going all the way back. You know, if you are familiar with the Old Testament, if you're familiar with the Bible in a year or just with the Bible itself, you recognize that here, if you remember from the very beginning,

where were the priests? And now obviously we have, I mean, the very very beginning, we have Cain and Abel, right? In the first chapters of Genesis. And what are Cain and Abel doing? They're offering sacrifices. Cain offers a sacrifice, Abel offers a sacrifice. The sacrifice of Cain is not accepted. Sacrifice of Abel is accepted.

And so you see these people are, they themselves are offering sacrifice. They don't have a priesthood, but really quickly after this, a couple of chapters after this, we see Abram coming back from the defeat of the kings he finds this mysterious character named Melchizedek and in the very first chapters here of Genesis I mean we're talking in chapter 14 of Genesis you have

Melchizedek and he is the king of Salem and a priest of God Most High so Abram coming back from again from the defeat of the kings he meets Melchizedek and on Mount Moriah, Melchizedek, this mysterious priest and king, right? He's a priest king. He offers a sacrifice of bread and wine on the top of Mount Moriah, and Abram gives him a tenth of everything. He blesses Abram,

and Abram gives him a tenth of everything. Now, later on, he's mentioned in the book of Psalms, he's also mentioned most explicitly in the letter to the Hebrews as being a unique kind of priest because we recognize that the Jewish people understood, well, let's go through this. So here's Melchizedek, king and priest, right?

So he, as Hebrews says, his priesthood is kind of eternal in some ways. That it's not necessarily rooted in genealogy the way that the Hebrew priesthood is, Jewish priesthood is rooted in genealogy. After this, it's so interesting. Originally the fathers of each family would be kind of like the priest of the family. So as an example, at the Passover, the father of the family would be the one who would offer the sacrifice of the lamb. And yet what happens after the Passover?

What happens after the Passover is the Jewish people are released from slavery in Egypt, they go through the Red Sea, God saves them again and again, and then they get to Mount Sinai and Moses goes up to receive the Ten Commandments from the Lord himself, he comes down and here the people are worshipping the golden calf, this false worship. Because of this and because only the tribe of Levi were the ones to fight against the people who were doing their worship, then it was that priests would only come from the tribe of Levi. So it was rooted in, you know,

how we say genealogy, rooted in genetics. It was rooted in that one family became, okay, that's the family where priests come from. So even if you were of a different tribe and you really, really wanted to be a priest, it didn't matter because you were not of the tribe of Levi. That was super incredibly important. That became the new distinction.

Keep this in mind. Originally, the father of the family was the priest of the family. That gets lost in some ways when it comes to the issue with the golden calf. And now it's only the Levitical priesthood only comes from that tribe of Levi. Now, both of those things are important to understand because

What happens in the new covenant? Well the new covenant priests once again are Established as the fathers. That's one of the reasons we call them father It's one of the reasons why only men can be priests. We'll talk about that in the days to come but we recognize that Priesthood is rooted in fatherhood But we recognize that priesthood is rooted in fatherhood. And later on, again, because of sin, priesthood is not just rooted in fatherhood, priesthood is rooted in this Levitical priesthood. Okay, so they were appointed.

What were they appointed to do? They were appointed to offer, to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins, which could never be enough. In fact, paragraph 1540 goes on to talk about this, that yes, they were instituted to proclaim the word of God and restore communion with God by sacrifices and prayer,

yet this priesthood nevertheless remains powerless to bring about salvation. Only the sacrifice of Christ would accomplish this. And yet we recognize that in the new covenant, there is this connection between the new covenant priesthood and the old covenant priesthood, with the priesthood in Jesus Christ and the priesthood of the Levites, the Levitical priesthood. And this is all connected, this is all mixed together. So originally, fatherhood, you also have this Levitical priesthood

that's consecrated for a certain purpose, a dedicated purpose, to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. You also have this Priesthood of Melchizedek. Remember here is this priest of God Most High Jesus is in some ways He he's the fulfillment of the fatherhood He's fulfillment of the Levitical priesthood and he is the fulfillment of the order of Melchizedek or the priesthood of Melchizedek In fact, again Hebrews talks about this and says that here is Jesus. He's a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. In fact, again, Hebrews talks about this and says that here is Jesus. He's a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. He is holy, blameless, unstained, and by a single offering he has perfected for all time

those who are sanctified. Again, that single offering being his unique sacrifice on the cross. And so here is Jesus who fulfills all of these prefigurements of the old covenant priesthood. Fatherhood, Levitical priesthood, and the priesthood of Melchizedek in Jesus Christ. He fulfills all of it. He is the one priest, and this is, we're coming to an end here,

but this is kind of really important. I ran this camp in the summertime for junior high and high school students, and one of the things we'll do is we have like a three-year cycle, and every third year, we talk about the mass, we talk about like everything we've been talking about during this whole section on the sacraments

At one point I asked the junior high high school students How many priests are there in the world and of course originally some of our like I don't know thousands or millions or something like that. How couple hundred? I don't know But then there's the one kid who always says one there's only one and there that's exactly right How many priests are there's only one, and that's exactly right. How many priests are there? There is one priest. And this is so important for us to understand. Paragraph 1545 highlights this. Just like how at the cross,

the redemptive sacrifice of Christ is unique, it's accomplished once for all, that has happened once, yet that same sacrifice, the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus is made present at every mass, right? That same sacrifice once for all is made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the church. Every time we celebrate the Mass, we're not re-sacrificing Jesus, we're merely re-presenting that one sacrifice once for all. In the same way, Jesus is priesthood. There is one priesthood of Christ. There is one priest and yet that priesthood. Jesus is priesthood. There is one priesthood of Christ. There is one

priest and yet that priesthood of Jesus is made present through the ministerial priesthood. So every priest you meet, that's not another priest. That's someone who is participating in and making present the one priesthood of Jesus Christ. And it doesn't diminish the uniqueness of Christ priesthood of Jesus Christ. And it doesn't diminish the uniqueness of Christ priesthood. There's a quote, St. Thomas Aquinas, building off of Hebrews chapter eight says, "'Only Christ is the true priest,

the others being only his ministers.'" So if someone were to ask you, how many priests are there in the Catholic Church or how many priests are there in the world? The answer is one. There is one priest. Jesus is the one great high priest. There are many ministerial priests.

Those are people who, again, these ministers who participate in Christ's priesthood, and then of course there's kingdom priests, all of us, everyone baptized is called to participate in Christ's priesthood in a very unique way as well. Now this is going to be highlighted in the next couple of days. And so one of the things I want us all to keep in mind, remember we said this yesterday, the day before, not everyone gets to participate in holy orders. Not everyone gets to participate in sacrament of matrimony, but all of us who have been baptized, we are participating in the priesthood of Jesus. You get to participate if you're a lay person. You get to participate in the priesthood of Jesus in a unique way.

You get to participate, if you're a lay person, you get to participate in the priesthood of Jesus in a unique way. That's the kingdom of priests, a nation, a holy nation, a royal people, people set apart for the Lord God. If you're a priest listening to this, a ministerial priest or a bishop listening to this, incredibly, you get to participate in this priesthood of Jesus in a unique way as well.

And so the highlight of all of this is the more and more you and I exercise either our kingdom priesthood or the ministerial priesthood of Jesus, the more and more we get to make present the great high priesthood of Jesus. The more you and I say yes to Christ in this way, the more he is made present and the more he is made known. Because one of the reasons, I've said this before,

I'll say it again though, one of the reasons why when we skip Mass, when we skip Mass we don't get the chance to exercise that priesthood. When I show up we exercise that priesthood and God is that much more glorified and the world is that much more sanctified. When we're willing as Kingdom priests to offer the pains of our day, to offer the joys of our day, to offer our loves and our losses, to offer our tears, to offer our suffering with the Lord, then we get to exercise that priesthood in union with the one unique priesthood of Jesus Christ. This is not just a thing for the past,

this is a thing that is completely present right now in this moment. You are living right now in this moment, you are a living embodiment in some ways, you are living extension of the priesthood of Jesus because of your baptism. And if you're again, as you're listening to this as a bishop, as a priest, or as a deacon,

you are in a unique way, that living extension of the unique priesthood of Jesus right now in this moment. And so to be able to just pray in this moment and say, okay, God, use this moment then. Let this moment be a moment of sacrifice. Let this moment be a moment of worship. Let this moment be a moment where you. Let this moment be a moment of worship. Let this moment be a moment where you are glorified and the world is sanctified.

Because we get to participate in the one unique priesthood of Jesus. I hope that makes sense. I don't know, it makes sense to me and it's just amazing, incredible. You guys, I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike.

I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.