Description
MAKE A MASS OFFERING BY CHEQUE
To make a donation to the community of Sainte-Madeleine Abbey, please make your cheque payable to Monastery of Saint Magdalene and send it to :
Sainte-Madeleine Abbey - Secretariat
1201 chemin des Rabassières - 84330 LE BARROUX
specifying whether you would like a tax receipt (see information Tax benefits below).
Abroad: due to high bank charges, we can only accept cheques made out in euros, payable at a bank in France.
The monks thank you for your interest in their community and for your generosity.
Every Mass is celebrated for the Church and the whole world. But the priest may, at the request of the faithful, add a special intention: to pray for a deceased person, a family, a sick person, etc.
It has been traditional since the earliest centuries of the Church to accompany this intention with a Mass offering. This offering of money is not payment for a celebration, because a mass is priceless. It is an act of sharing on the part of the faithful that associates them more particularly with the celebration and enables them to contribute to the temporal needs of the Church and especially of the priests.
This tradition is not an invention of Christianity: already in the Old Testament, priests received a share of the sacrifices made to God (Leviticus, chapters 2 and 7). So there is an ancient tradition that testifies to the fact that priests must always be able to live from the altar, that is, from the share that God gives them in the goods that men offer to the Lord.
The amount of the Mass offering is set by the bishops for their diocese. For the diocese of Avignon, the proposed amounts are :
18 € for a mass
180 for a novena
570 for thirty
A novena is the celebration of Mass every day for 9 consecutive days. The faithful may request the celebration of a novena for any intention: to give thanks for a special grace, to pray for a deceased person, a sick person, someone in difficulty, etc.
A trentain (Gregorian trentain) is the celebration of a Mass every day for 30 consecutive days. It can only be celebratedfor a deceased person. The trentain is a very old custom that dates back to the time of Pope Saint Gregory the Great (end of the 6th century). In 1752, Pope Benedict XIV praised the custom, describing it as "pious, approved and reasonable". (Find out more about trentain)
For novenas and thirties, it is not necessary for the Masses to be celebrated by the same priest.
A Mass celebrated for a deceased person is priceless. It is the most powerful prayer we can offer to God for a loved one who has left us! "The Church has always honoured the memory of the dead and offered suffrages in their favour, in particular the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1032). The Holy Curé d'Ars used to say: "All good works put together do not equal the sacrifice of the Mass because they are the works of men, and the Holy Mass is the work of God: it is the sacrifice that God makes to men of his Body and Blood".
Each priest celebrates one Mass a day, with one particular intention. If we receive too many Mass offerings, we may temporarily suspend requests to celebrate novenas and thirties.
