{"id":25730,"date":"2010-07-27T14:56:25","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T18:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2010\/07\/the-priest-is-a-fighting-man\/"},"modified":"2010-07-27T14:56:25","modified_gmt":"2010-07-27T18:56:25","slug":"the-priest-is-a-fighting-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2010\/07\/the-priest-is-a-fighting-man\/","title":{"rendered":"The priest is a fighting man"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"Fr<\/a><\/p>\n

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
\nin the post-war years, expressed this mystery [of the priesthood] very eloquently in a beautiful
\npastoral letter that he wrote to his priest on Holy Thursday of 1949:<\/p>\n

At the altar, the priest, like
\nChrist, is the [sacrificial] victim. But he is also the sacrificer; he is then
\nthe dreadful man, the one who works death, the one who slays sin and burns it,
\nthe one who is crucified and who crucifies, the one who cannot save the world,
\nnor will consent to its salvation, save through nailing it to the Cross.
\n“Without the shedding of blood there is no redemption” (Heb. 9.22)… That is why
\nthe priest in relation to society must always be somehow or other its
\nadversary. He will never be forgiven for recalling and perpetuating, from
\ngeneration to generation, Christ, whom they thought they had suppressed
\nforever… Far from being a fatherly adviser or a good-natured citizen, a priest
\nis, like God, a terrible being. He is a fighting man… Like Saint Michael, he
\nchallenges the Dragon, dragging him out of ambush by healing men’s hearts, so
\nas to crush one by one his ever resurgent heads. Although it is too frequently
\noverlooked, a priest is an exorcist…; he has the power and the duty of
\nexpelling the Devil (Cardinal Suhard, Priests Among Men<\/i>, pp. 82-83; 44-45).<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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: … Continue reading The priest is a fighting man<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2482,1818],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}