Blessed Columba Marmion on the Sacrifice of the Mass

[Following a brief discussion about how prayer and the Eucharist are the principal means for growing in holiness and in perfecting the life in Christ]:

The Eucharist is another means, but more powerful.  When we pray, God communicates His gifts, under certain conditions.  In the Sacrament of the Eucharist, it is God, it is Christ Himself who gives Himself to us; the Eucharist is specifically the sacrament of union which nourishes the divine life and keeps it within us.  It is of the Eucharist that Our Lord was able to say very particularly: “I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10).  By receiving Christ in Holy Communion, we unite ourselves to Life itself.

But before giving Himself as food for the soul, Christ has first been immolated; it is only in the Sacrifice of the Mass that He renders Himself present under the sacramental species.  That is why I must first speak to you of the oblation at the altar, postponing until my following address my talking to you about Eucharistic Communion.

Let us, then, say what the Sacrifice of the Mass is, and what power of transformation into Jesus it contains for our souls.

The subject is an ineffable one.  Even the priest, who makes the Eucharistic Sacrifice the center and sun of his life, is powerless to put into words the marvels Christ Jesus’s love has amassed there.  Everything that a man, a created being, is able to say of this mystery which has issued from the heart of one who is God remains so much short of its reality, that when someone has said everything he knows about it, it seems as if he had said nothing about it at all.  There is no subject of which the priest loves more to speak, and of which he altogether dreads to speak, so holy and so high is this mystery.

Let us ask faith to enlighten us; the Eucharistic Sacrifice is, par excellence, a mystery of faith, Mysterium fidei.  In order to understand anything about it, one must go to Christ, by repeating to Him the words of St. Peter when Jesus announced this mystery to the Jews, and even some of His disciples were scandalized and left Him: “To whom shall we go, O Divine Master?  You are the only one who utters words that lead us to eternal life.” (see John 6:69).  And above all let us, as St. John said, believe in love, “know and believe the love God has for us.”  (1 John 4:16).  Our Lord willed to institute this sacrament at the very time when He was about to give us the greatest testimony of His love for us, by His Passion, and He willed that it be perpetuated among us “in remembrance of” Him.  It was like the last thought, the last testament of His sacred heart: “Do this…in remembrance of me.” (1 Cor. 11:24).

The Council of Trent, as you know, has defined that the Mass is “a true sacrifice,” which “recalls and renews the immolation of Christ on Calvary The Mass is offered as a true sacrifice, properly so called.” (Sess. XXII, can. 1).  “In this Divine Sacrifice which is accomplished in the Mass there is contained and there is immolated in an unbloody manner the same Christ who, on the altar of the cross, offered Himself in a bloody manner.  There is but one single Victim; and the same Christ who offered Himself on the cross now offers Himself through the ministry of the priests; the manner of offering Himself is the only difference.” (Sess. XXII, can. 2).  Thus, the Sacrifice of the altar essentially renews that of Golgotha; the difference resides only in the mode of the oblation.  If, then, we want to understand the greatness of the Sacrifice offered at the altar, we must consider for a moment what it is that constitutes the value of the immolation of the cross.  That value derives from the dignity of the High Priest and of the Victim.

–From Christ, Life of the Soul, by Blessed Columba Marmion

The Post Wherein I Engage in Speculation about the TSA Strip-or-Molestation Policy

Those who know me, or who read this space with any regularity, know that I enjoy speculating based upon small sample size.  It is harmless fun for me, a source of annoyance to my wife, and usually cause for another government file to be opened on my blog.

Today’s speculation will hit at least two of those goals.  So, without further ado, here is my current line of thought on the TSA sexual assault policy:

1.  The goal of thwarting terrorism (by non-governmental employees, that is) is the last and least motivation for any of this or previous modes of screening.  Get real.  The goal of the government is to intimidate, harass, humiliate and condition its subjects.  Yes, I said subjects. 

Why, timman, would the government want to do this?  What possible benefit can it derive?  Good questions, noble reader, which I will attempt to answer.  A populace that will submit to such indignities as these in order to engage in what is basic to a free society will submit to other indignities for other basic activities.  People who do not stand up for the integrity of their own bodies, who allow themselves to be stripped, groped, searched and treated as criminals for the privilege to fly in a pressurized metal tube and eat 2 oz. of peanuts will submit to anything.  The government won’t need to waterboard us to get us to comply with its program of the day.

If for some reason this strip-or-be-groped policy stands (which I believe it won’t, see below), then look for the practice to spread to other modes of travel.  After all, the porno-scanner companies can make lots and lots of machines, and the Fed can print all the dollars necessary to buy them.  Right now, you can take a relaxing train trip to Phoenix, for example, and almost forget that we live in a nascent police state.  No idiotic and demeaning security procedures.  Some degree of human service.  How long will that last, I wonder?  Then Greyhound.  And then, after our government betters heroically save us from some truck filled with explosives on I-70 JUST. IN. THE. NICK. OF. TIME!, we can look forward to “TSA Welcome Centers” on the interstates.  After all, far more people travel by means of these federally-financed arteries than do fly.  We are so, so vulnerable to attack there. Right?

In the end, one of the great hallmarks of the classic police state will be achieved without much fuss:  the tight control over purely domestic travel.  All to keep us in our place safe.

2.  What the government really fears is the widespread rejection of its control that is exemplified in this story.  Private security procedures that are run, or at least controlled by, the very companies and airports that have a vested interest in satisfied, free human customers, will actually have the goal to prevent planes from being blown up– it is bad for business, you see.  An airline, an airport, does not benefit from a terrorist attack.  But the TSA does.  It receives further justification for its existence, and further funding for expansion.  It is quite simple, really.  The question cui bono?– who benefits?– should be asked when thinking of any of this.  If anything gets the TSA to back off of the strip/grope plan, it is the fear that airports and airlines will take their ball and go away.  That cannot be allowed to happen.

3.  Finally, I think that this whole strip/grope policy and the outcry over it are part of a conscious plan by DHS with two possible outcomes, either of which are positive for it.  They want to see to what lengths we will submit.  If the peep-show were meekly accepted, great.  If we allowed ourselves and our families to be fondled by government-employed perverts, even better.  That is serf-conditioning.  But, hey, lots of us aren’t submitting to it.  We win, right?  Well, in a limited sense, yes, but I think the pilot union “rebellion” against the porno-scanners portends the real endgame of TSA:  biometric screening and database accumulation.

Right now, according to the National Journal, pilots and the TSA are in talks to substitute a biometrics screening process for the strip-or-grope.  What is this?  The government will take your fingerprint(s) and iris scan and keep a computerized database with all of the information it sees fit to maintain, so it can easily track your movements and decide if you are “safe” to fly.  Of course, this could never be abused to allow it to prevent political opponents from flying, or to allow them to monitor where you are in the country at all times.

Imagine, if you will, that the porno-scanners never existed.  No groping.  But the TSA announces that, in order to fly, all passengers will have to have their fingerprints taken and irises scanned to create a permanent electronic database that any government official anywhere at anytime could access.  I would have formerly supposed that the outcry at this would have exceeded anything we see now.  After all, what right does the government have to do this?

But now, I am afraid that such a scheme will be presented as a “win” for citizens who triumphed over being sexually assaulted in order to fly.  Taking an iris scan is not immodest.  It is quick and painless.  It will be presented, and I fear also received, as a reasonable alternative to what we have now.  If this is the goal of the TSA in the current situation, it is fairly brilliant.

Or look at it in a different way.  Let’s say, after 9/11, some brilliant bureaucrat opined that it would be nice if every single person in the U.S. were forced to provide the government with their fingerprints and iris map so they could be monitored.  No way, though, we could get that done.  Right?  But if this is applied to airport security, over time, it would get done.  Then again, extend the process to Amtrak, buses, and interstate travel generally.  That will get practically everybody.

Hence, without ever holding an actual “card”, we will have a de facto national ID card.

Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions.  But isn’t that what speculation is all about?