Mass
« It was enough to see him say Mass, his holiness shone through, radiated. »
J. BOULET, Letter of 31 juillet 1941
For every priest, the mass is essential. It was so for Daniel JOËSSEL.
The testimonies are unanimous: his attitude while celebrating it left no one indifferent, certainly because he didn't just celebrate it, he lived it.
Could he not demand of himself, a priest, what he asked of others:
« Do you live mass » ?
He lived it and, especially during the summer camps, he invited the young people to live it, to have a real intimacy with Christ, inviting them to communion after a deep preparation. Often his preaching consisted of explaining the mass or preaching on charity.
The Mass was the source and summit, the centre of his life.
It was not only prayer, but an offering of himself.
His parish priest, Father MULLER, will say: « His mass was a preaching. »
At the front line, he suffered from not being able to celebrate it on certain days, and when he could do so, he prepared the liturgy as best he could, like the beautiful feast of Pentecost which he had prepared for 14 may 1940... but which the German invasion prevented him from celebrating.
The sanctity of the mass ... he would still think about it at the time of his death, asking his family to see to it that « 300 for those I would have said badly (for the venial sins I might have done in saying those masses) were celebrated. »
That's almost a whole year of masses, while he celebrated mass less than 6 years !