the mystical temple of god 590 CHAPTER 5 The Priest of the Mystical Temple In this Mystical Temple, Love performs all sacred [duties]: Love, the Priest, offers all the victims. This Love is pure, holy, fiery, heavenly; it flows from the fountain of eternal Love. In Leviticus chapter 2, it is commanded to the ancient Clergy: “Whatever sacrifice you offer, you shall season it with salt” (Lev 2:13). Of course the ancient sacrifices consisted chiefly of flesh; this has no taste without salt, and no preservation is possible. In the law of Christ, whose foreshadowing the ancient law was, it should be said more correctly: whatever sacrifice you offer, you shall season it with love. For, as Peter of Cluny53 observes: “Those in the law do not accept any sacrifice without salt, thus showing that no gift is pleasing to him without the covenant of love” (1. 5, ep. 16).54 This is confirmed by the saying of the most holy Father Ambrose: “Love alone distinguishes between the sons of God and the sons of the devil. Let them all sign themselves with the sign of the Cross; let them all respond Amen: let them enter the churches, let them fill the walls of the basilicas: the sons of God are distinguished from the sons of the devil by love alone.”55 Therefore, unless the sacrifices of the Mystical Temple are offered by the Love, the Priest, they are displeasing to God, and He completely rejects them. For if the intention of our works, whether [these works are] good or what they call indifferent, is not the best [intention], they will scarcely have any merit. That common axiom is not entirely unfounded: Whatever men do, the intention judges them all. Do you jump out of bed and apply yourself at once to various 53 Peter the Venerable (d. 1156) was elected Abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Cluny in 1122. Cf. Piolanti A., Pietro il Venerabile: ECat IX, 1450; Roczkowski, Julian, Piotr Maurycy ...Venerabilis: PEK XXXI-XXXII, 204-205. 54 There are six books by Peter of Cluny and in Book V there are only nine letters, in which this quotation was not found. 55 This is not the saying of St. Ambrose, but of St. Augustine. This quotation comes from St. Augustine’s In Epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos, treatise V, sect. VII, in: S Aurelii Augutini Hipp. Ep. Opera omnia, vol. XVI, Paris 1842, p. 511.
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