How great is our joy and confidence when we realise this!  We come together, let us say, on Sunday morning at the High Mass.  We are coming to offer the Blessed Sacrifice of our Lord’s Body and Blood.  But who, precisely, is to make the offering?  When we ask what this congregation is, what is the answer?  The congregation is the congregation of Christ’s Flock:  it is the Body of Christ gathered together for the worship of Almighty God.  The act that is to be performed is the act of a Body, not primarily of individuals.  Our participation in the act of worship in the full sense of participation is conditioned upon our being members of the Body.  If we are not members of the Body we have no recognised status as worshippers.  No doubt we each one have our individual aspirations and needs which we bring with us, but they are the needs and aspirations of a member of the Body of Christ, and our ability to unite them with the act that is to be performed grows out of our status as members of the Body; as such, we join our own intention to the sacrificial act and make our petitions through it.  But we are here as offerers of the Sacrifice, and may not neglect our official significance, and attempt to turn the Mass into a private act of worship.

We, then, the Body of Christ in this place, offer the Sacrifice of Christ.  What is the status of the priest?  He is a differentiated organ of the Body, not created by the Body, but created by God in the creation of the Body.  He is not separate from the Body, an official imposed upon it from the outside, nor is he a creation of the Body set apart to act upon its behalf.  He is one mode of the expression of the Body’s life—­the Body could not perfectly perform its functions without him any more than a physical body can perfectly function without a hand or an eye.  But neither has the priest any existence apart from the Body of which he is a function.  The Sacrifice that he offers is not his on behalf of the Body, but the Body’s own Sacrifice which is made through his agency.

But a complete body has a head; and of the Body which is the Church the Head is Christ.  We, the members, have our life from Him, the Head; we are able at all to act spiritually because of our union with Him.  He is our life; and the acts of the Body are ultimately the acts of the Head.  The Sacrifice which the Body offers as the means of its approach to Divinity is One Sacrifice of the Head:  and the priestly function of the Body has any vitality because it is Christ Who is its life, Who functions through the priest, Who is, in fact, the true Priest.  He Himself is both Sacrifice and Priest; and that which is offered here is indentical with that which is offered there.

Our life flows from our Head, is the life of Christ in us.  So closely are we associated with Him that we are called His members, the instrument through which His life expresses itself, through which He acts.  By virtue of the life of Christ of which all we are partakers, we are not only members of Christ, but members one of another.  Our spiritual life is not our own affair, but we have duties one to another, and all the members of the Body are concerned in our exercise of our gifts, have, in fact, claims on the exercise of them.