Preaching the first Mass of a newly ordained member of his monastic community, Benedictine Father Ambrose Bennett cited “Emmanuel Cardinal Suhard, who served as Archbishop of Paris
in the post-war years, expressed this mystery [of the priesthood] very eloquently in a beautiful
pastoral letter that he wrote to his priest on Holy Thursday of 1949:
At the altar, the priest, like
Christ, is the [sacrificial] victim. But he is also the sacrificer; he is then
the dreadful man, the one who works death, the one who slays sin and burns it,
the one who is crucified and who crucifies, the one who cannot save the world,
nor will consent to its salvation, save through nailing it to the Cross.
“Without the shedding of blood there is no redemption” (Heb. 9.22)… That is why
the priest in relation to society must always be somehow or other its
adversary. He will never be forgiven for recalling and perpetuating, from
generation to generation, Christ, whom they thought they had suppressed
forever… Far from being a fatherly adviser or a good-natured citizen, a priest
is, like God, a terrible being. He is a fighting man… Like Saint Michael, he
challenges the Dragon, dragging him out of ambush by healing men’s hearts, so
as to crush one by one his ever resurgent heads. Although it is too frequently
overlooked, a priest is an exorcist…; he has the power and the duty of
expelling the Devil (Cardinal Suhard, Priests Among Men, pp. 82-83; 44-45).