Chapter II. On the Application of the Sacrifice of the Mass

The application of the Sacrifice of the Mass is the intention by which the priest wills that the fruit of the Sacrifice pass to the benefit of a certain person.

354. Principles. - I. In order that a share of the general fruit may be received, the application of the priest is not necessary; it suffices that he will to celebrate according to the mind of the Church, for such an application is always implicitly included in the general intention of the celebrant. Likewise, in order that the most special fruit may come to the priest himself, it is not necessary that he will specially to apply it to himself; for this is always applied to him of itself. Indeed, there are some who think that this fruit is so proper to him that it cannot be applied to another.

II. The application of the priest is required, however, in order that the special or ministerial fruit may come to someone. For the priest, and he alone, bears the person of Christ; therefore, just as he alone offers the Sacrifice for others in the person of Christ, so also he alone applies its fruit.

III. Although the priest has promised the Mass to no one, he ought to make some application of the special fruit. The reason is: 1. Because in his ordination he received, by the institution of Christ, the power of effecting the Sacrifice and, consequently, of applying its fruit; but that power would remain useless if the priest did not use it. 2. Moreover, if no application is made, there is no reason why it should profit one person more than another; therefore, the unapplied fruit remains in the general treasury of the Church, and consequently becomes less useful. - Billuart, diss. 8, art. 4.

355. Questions. - QUESTION 1. Must the application of the fruit of the Mass be actual?

Reply. Negatively; it suffices that it be habitual, namely, that once made it is not retracted. The reason is that this application is made by way of donation, and thus through an intention once possessed the priest has already donated the fruit of his Sacrifice; consequently, it is owed to the one to whom he donated it and, when the Mass is celebrated, it comes to that person unless the donation is revoked. - St. Lig., no. 335. It is expedient, however, to make the application of the Mass before it is begun. But if the priest has not done this either before the consecration or at least in the consecration of the second Species, he cannot afterward apply the Sacrifice specially to anyone. - St. Lig., ibid.

QUESTION 2. If a priest, forgetful of a prior intention, elicits a new one while celebrating, which is to be judged valid?

Reply. It cannot be determined in general. The priest should consider which intention was predominant in his mind ¹. For the rest, in practice it matters little; for since one or the other is certainly valid, it will be sufficient on another occasion to apply the Mass to the one to whom it was not applied.

¹ Lugo (De Sacramentis, disp. 8, nos. 121, 123) explains which intention prevails in this way: If today you wish tomorrow's Mass to be applied altogether for Peter, so that this application is from now on to be preferred to any application to be made through forgetfulness of it, but tomorrow you apply the Mass for another, today's application will not be judged revoked, because it was more universal and revocatory of tomorrow's application.... If each act of the will were equal, the later would prevail. For just as a later testament always prevails over an earlier one, even if, when he makes the later one, a man does not remember the earlier one made by him, so, if yesterday you applied today's Mass for Peter, and today, forgetful of that act of will, you apply it for Paul by an equally absolute and efficacious act of will, this later one seems to be preferred.

QUESTION 3. Must the intention of the celebrant be explicitly determinate?

Reply. Negatively. It suffices that it be determined implicitly. Thus the application is valid if you say: I offer this Sacrifice for the one who gave the stipend; for the one for whom the Superior wills the Mass to be said; for the one for whom the foundation requires it; for the greatest sinner; for a soul afflicted by a graver temptation; for the soul in Purgatory needing greater help, or more pleasing to God; for all the souls in Purgatory; for the one to whom I am bound to apply it; for the person or intention determined in writing or in the mind at the beginning of the week, etc. On the contrary, this application is not valid: I offer so that God may apply this Mass. - See Cases, vol. II, no. 325 et seq.

356. QUESTION 4. If a priest has accepted stipends from ten persons, does he satisfy his obligation by celebrating with a confused and indeterminate intention?

Reply. Entirely negatively, because an intention determined at least to a certain person is required; otherwise, there is no reason why the Mass should be applied to one rather than to another, and thus it would be applied to no one. - St. Lig., no. 335. Nevertheless, if he were to intend to apply each Mass to those ten persons, applying one tenth of each Mass to each, he would satisfy the obligation, because the fruit of the Sacrifice is divisible and there is allotted to each what is owed to him. For, by receiving a tenth part of the fruit in each of ten Masses, each one, when the tenth Mass has been offered, has already obtained the whole fruit owed to him ². - St. Lig., no. 335, with many others.

² The Author replies thus according to the opinion of those who teach that only a limited fruit is received from the Mass, namely, that which the divine disposition has determined; yet he himself had said above (no. 352) that this opinion rests upon no solid reason. But according to the more probable and most common opinion, of which there was discussion above (no. 352 with the note), each person would receive the whole fruit owed to him from each of the ten Masses. Therefore, when the tenth Mass had been offered in this manner, each would have received a fruit ten times greater than if one Mass had been applied for each individually.

357. QUESTION 5. How must the application be determined when stipends are given by many unknown persons, as commonly happens in pious pilgrimages?

Reply. The intention must be made for those who gave the earlier stipends. This is easily accomplished when the same priest is to satisfy all the obligations; nor does it hinder that he may happen to distribute a portion of the Masses to be celebrated to other priests, because he can distribute them in the same order in which he received them, and thus the application appears sufficiently determined. A greater difficulty seems to be present if a sacristan or another person has collected many stipends from diverse persons and distributes the commingled money to several priests, which is an ordinary and frequent case. For how, then, must the application of the Mass be made? I answer: nothing else must be done, nor can anything else morally be done, except that the application be made according to the temporal order in which the stipends were given by the faithful, in accordance with the axiom sometimes employed in a matter of justice: He who is prior in time is stronger in right. Indeed, it is not even necessary that the priest attend to this explicitly, since he is judged to will to act in this way, because natural equity demands it. Hence, if from a common fund, for example, from a box placed in the church, or from a distributor of Masses, you have received stipends for twenty Masses, no other care ought to rest upon you except that you say Mass twenty times according to the intention of the giver. The distributor himself is judged to have the same implicit intention, namely, successively to assign the stipends according to priority of time. The priest can, however, interrupt the aforesaid order by an express intention for some grave cause, for example, if some other Mass is urgent, or if he has received a larger stipend so that he should not delay the Mass, etc.

358. QUESTION 6. Is an application made for a living person whom you believe to be dead valid, if you were bound to celebrate for him only after he had died?

Reply. Entirely negatively. The reason is that the obligation bears upon making the application for the dead person in order to relieve his soul from the punishments of Purgatory; but that end is not obtained while the Sacrifice is offered for a living person. Hence, because of an error of this kind, the priest must suffer the loss of his stipend ³.

³ The Author's resolution perhaps regards a chimerical case. Whatever may be said of the probability of the case, the resolution, if considered in itself, can deservedly appear somewhat too severe. The reason is that the satisfactory fruit of the Sacrifice can benefit even a living person and exempt him from the punishments of Purgatory. Moreover, a living person is capable of, and shares in, those fruits also of which the dead are not capable. And from this comes the practice of some who, solicitously seeking this assistance for themselves, endeavor to have all or a large part of the Masses determined by them offered in advance while they are among the living.