I have met people, friends and close relatives alike, who say that they have lost their enthusiasm to attend the Mass because they say that it is celebrated by "sinful priests" anyway. I think they're only lazy, first and foremost; but apparently, they are also misinformed.

The Mass is not the most common Sacrament avoided by many people with the aforementioned rationalization. Confession or the Sacrament of Reconciliation/Penance is even more neglected for innumerable reasons, which we will tackle next time. What we will focus on right now is the premise that if a person is a sinner, he cannot communicate grace. He simply cannot give what he does not have. Is this really so?

Not in the case of the Sacraments-- Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. These Sacraments were instituted by Jesus and were simply carried on by His disciples, and are further passed on from one generation of bishops to another until the present day. The Catholic Teaching says that Sacraments are "an outward sign of inward grace, a sacred and mysterious sign or ceremony, ordained by Christ, by which grace is conveyed to our souls." St. Augustine makes it all the more simple as he defined them as "a visible sign of an invisible reality."

The way the Sacraments have been designed only leaves me even more in awe of our God. Obviously, He considered not only our spiritual aspect, but also our physical form, in coming up with things that will serve as channels of His grace. We can look at the Sacraments as a body-and-soul kind of thing, too, as "they are an external and physical sign of the conferral of Sanctifying Grace."

Simply put, Sacraments are effective ex opere operato, which means that they are effective on account of the work themselves.

During the Christian persecution, there were priests and bishops who suffered "lapses" in faith, as they offered incense to pagan gods and surrendered liturgical books to Roman authorities-- after undergoing tortures. After the said period, a certain group of Christians, called Donatists, asserted that all the sacraments administered by these ministers were invalid. They claimed that the effectiveness of the sacraments depended on the holiness of the minister. The people who were once baptized by them had to be re-baptized since they were in a "state of sin" when they administered the sacrament; the first baptism was deemed invalid.

"These Christians eventually broke off from the wider Catholic Church... The Donatists, situated primarily in North Africa, asserted that bishops consecrated by sinful bishops weren't really bishops at all. St. Augustine and others spilled a lot of ink to refute this position regarding sacraments, which is characterized in the Latin as ex opere operantis, i.e. sacraments are effective on account of the one doing the work. While the Church calls her priests (and all Christians) to high standards of holiness, the sacraments are effective independent of a minister's holiness because a perfect God is ultimately providing the sacramental grace, not the imperfect human minister."

-Sacraments: Meeting God in Our Own World, Ancient-Future.net

"God communicates grace through the sacrament and he could not be impeded by sin. To say that the sacraments celebrated by these ministers who failed their faith during the persecution are invalid and should be repeated, is to conclude that sin is more powerful than God. St. Augustine's wisdom glittered in this argument: NOTHING, NOT EVEN SIN, CAN PREVENT GOD FROM ACTING."

-Know Your Faith

Anyway, were you actually thinking that the graces you receive from the sacraments were coming from the priests??? I hope not.

If only the "perfect" holy people would be allowed to celebrate the sacraments, our Church will surely suffer some spiritual death. But that's not the case. God can still use each of us regardless of our moral disposition. All good things come from Him and if it's for the sake of His good plan, He can bring something good out of something bad.

A friend of mine shared just now that he has read somewhere that "priests are like broomsticks; they can clean no matter how unclean they are... because they are priests forever even in hell."

So, go back to your Church and stop missing out on the many graces you can receive from the gift of the Sacraments. :-)