Seventh lecture

It is, after all, a ceremony that is to take place for each individual in front of the entire audience; and if I am to present the meaning of this ceremony, I must say that these ceremonies, which we perform step by step, signify the gradual becoming a priest. Today would be the first stage of contemplation. It should be noted first of all that in the cultus that will be incumbent upon you, the sacrifice of man's consecration forms the center everywhere, so that everything always tends back to the sacrifice of man's consecration. You must be aware that in the modern conception of religion, the more external conception of man's consecration is the usual one. There one actually grasps the Act of Consecration of Man only as an after-effect of the Lord's Supper, which Christ Jesus practiced with his disciples, while the Mass, the Act of Consecration of Man, is basically a continuous event that flows from the Mystery of Golgotha. For in the proclamation of the gospel, in the sacrifice, in the transubstantiation, in the communion lie all the spiritual events - expressed through external cultic acts - which are a continuation, a perpetuation of the working of the Mystery of Golgotha.