Ten years after Fr. Hamel: a priest struck at the altar, his blood joined to the Sacrifice

Ten years ago, on 26 July 2016, an eighty-five-year-old priest was killed in his church in Normandy while he was celebrating Mass. Two men had assailed him at the foot of the altar and cut his throat; the attack was claimed by men invoking the jihad. « Begone, Satan! » were, it is said, his last words. This weekend, his diocese and his town commemorate the tragedy.

Scripture knows no greater love: « Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. » And Saint John, caught up to Heaven, saw where those who fall thus repose: « I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. » To strike a priest at the altar is to strike the Sacrifice he offers; the blood of the minister mingles with the Blood he had just consecrated, and his place is marked out beforehand — under the altar, among the witnesses.

We do not pronounce the judgment that belongs to the Church alone; we name the fact: a man died on account of the faith, at the hands of his enemies, without rendering evil for evil. His murderers meant to silence the Mass; they made of him a witness whose blood still speaks. Against the hatred of the faith, tradition sets not vengeance but the martyr's charity — for even his « Begone, Satan! » is an exorcism, not a curse. Ten years on, this bell tower become a place of prayer repeats a truth the world forgets: one may kill the priest, one does not kill the Mass.

Sources. Gospel according to Saint John, XV, 13; Apocalypse, VI, 9; Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.