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Christopher of Avendaño in Spain was a Carmelite who also functioned as ‘preacher of his Catholic Majesty’, which meant that he occasionally celebrated Mass at the court in Madrid.
Text quoted in French by Réné Laurentin (in Maria, Ecclesia, Sacerdotium, Nouvelles Éditions Latines, Paris 1952, pp. 317-318) and translated into English by John Wijngaards.
‘Let us now pay attention to the title of our discourse which says
“that the virgin has possessed the dignity of the priesthood without its
[sacramental] character .... ” The most knowledgeable Raymond Jordan said
that all privileges and all dignities of the Church can be found in Mary to the
extent they are compatible. That is why I say that the dignity of being a
priest is in her without its [sacramental] character.
St Epiphanius calls
her both “a priest and an altar” . . . Let us pay attention to this
word “priest”, for it is not without reflection that he calls her
such, but with all the more reason because the Virgin’s words: “see
the handmaid of the Lord, let it happen to me according to your word”,
became as the words of consecration by means of which she consecrated the
divine Word to become flesh and blood.
Just as the priest, through means
of the words of consecration: “this is my body” consecrates the body
of Jesus Christ under the species of bread, and by the words over the chalice,
his blood under the species of wine, and just as the priest produces him in the
host, in the same way the Virgin has conceived him, achieving in this way that
he who was God’s natural Son became a son [=her son] once more, there
where the Bible says: “Let us make man according to our image” (Gen
1, 26).’ Marial, French edition, p. 209.
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