THE SORROWING AND SUBLIME CHURCH. MONS. MARCEL LEFEBVRE.

 

My beloved brothers, my dearest friends:

Here we are gathered once more in Econe, to participate in this very touching ceremony of priestly ordination. Indeed, if there is a ceremony that makes us live the most sublime moments of the Church, that is the priestly ordination. In particular, she reminds us of the Last Supper, during which Our Lord Jesus Christ made his apostles priests. It also reminds us of the coming of the Holy Spirit on the apostles on the day of Pentecost. In this way the Church continues and the Holy Spirit continues to expand by the hand of the successor of the apostles. Today we are happy to be able to confer priestly ordination on thirteen new priests.

There should have been no priestly ordinations this year since, as the studies have extended from five to six years, the consequences of that change gravitated to 1982. But particular circumstances, special occasions, have led us to ordain seven deacons of the church today. Fraternity and six others who are part of various sister congregations, who sustain the same struggle, with the same convictions and identical love for the Church. The day before yesterday I conferred priestly ordination on two members of the German district of the Fraternity, bringing the number of priests this year to fifteen.

Hopefully, by the grace of God and as the years go by, that number will increase, since our seminaries, especially those in Germany and the United States, are now going to bear the fruits of the work done in previous years.

The first ordination in Ridgefield (United States) will take place next year with three new priests. The same thing has already happened, the Zaitzkofen seminary in Germany.

We must pray that God will bless these seminaries and that those who are preparing for the priesthood receive in abundance the graces they need.

Dear friends, you who in a few moments will be ordained priests, today more than ever understand, you are sure that this ordination will place you at the very heart of the work of the Redemption of Our Lord Jesus Christ. By his sacrifice made on the Cross, Our Lord, in a certain way, promised to make priests, to make those whom he chose to continue his sacrifice, a source of graces, of Redemption, participate in his eternal priesthood, because it is the great God's work. God created everything for Redemption. It is his great work of charity.

God is charity. Everything that comes out of God is charity. He wanted to divinize us, to communicate to us that immense charity in which He burns from eternity. He wanted to communicate it to us and he did so through an extraordinary manifestation, by his Cross, by the death of a God, by his shed Blood. He wanted men chosen by Him to continue that Sacrifice in order to infuse souls with His divine life, to heal them of their defects, their sins, to communicate His own Life, so that one day that life may glorify us and so that we may be glorified. with God in eternity. That is the work of God.

For that He has created everything; All that world that we see He did it for the Cross, He did it for the Redemption of souls. He did it for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. He did it for the priests. He did it so that souls could unite with Him, particularly as a Victim in the Holy Eucharist. It is communicated to us as Victim, so that we too offer our lives with his and so that we participate not only in our Redemption but also in the Redemption of souls.

That plan of God, that thought of God that created the world, is an extraordinary thing. We are astonished at this great mystery that God has made on this earth. And precisely because the Sacrifice of Our Lord is found in the heart of the Church, in the heart of our salvation, in the center of our souls, everything that refers to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass touches us deeply, touches each of us. one of us personally, because we must receive the Blood of Jesus through Baptism and all the sacraments, particularly through the sacrament of the Eucharist, to save our souls. That is why we feel so much adherence to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and even more so from the moment he wants to touch it to make it, supposedly, more acceptable for those who do not have our faith, for those who do not have the Catholic faith. All those changes that have been introduced in recent years in what is most precious about the Holy Church, in the liturgy, have been made to bring us closer to our separated brothers, that is, to those who do not have our faith

Then our hearts and minds have been shaken, and our faith has been shaken. We have asked ourselves: Is it possible that this reality, the greatest, the most mystical, the most beautiful, the most divine of our Church, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, can be reduced? Diminish it in such a way that it is left at the disposal of heretics? We have not been able to understand it, and, excited, we wonder how, really, some clergy with ideas foreign to the Church, without true inspirations of the Holy Spirit, moved not by the Spirit of Truth but by the spirit of error, have been able to ascend to the highest summit of the Church and enact reforms that would destroy it. Unfathomable mystery! How could it be? How could God allow that? How could Our Lord, who had made all those promises to Peter and his successors, allow it, how could we come to see that reality in our time? Blessed are the faithful who lived before us and who did not have to consider and solve these problems!

In short, I would like to try to bring to your minds a little light about what I believe should be our course of conduct in the midst of these very painful events that the Church is experiencing. It seems to me that this passion that the Holy Church suffers today can be compared to the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. You know how stupefied the apostles themselves felt before Our Lord bound, after receiving the kiss of the betrayal of Judas. They take him away, disguise him with a scarlet cloak, mock him, beat him, carry him with the Cross and the apostles flee, scandalized. It's not possible! That the one to whom Peter proclaimed: You are the Christ, the Son of God, be reduced to that poverty, that humiliation, that affront, it is not possible! And the apostles flee.

Only the Virgin Mary with Saint John and some women surround Our Lord and preserve the faith; they don't want to abandon you. They know that Our Lord is truly God, but they also know that He is man. It is precisely this union of divinity with the humanity of Our Lord that has posed extraordinary problems. Because Our Lord did not want only to be a man: he wanted to be a man like

us, with all the consequences of sin, but without sin, exempt from sin. However, he wanted to suffer all the consequences of sin: pain, fatigue, suffering, hunger, thirst, death. Until death, yes, Our Lord did that extraordinary thing that scandalized the apostles, before scandalizing many and others who separated from Our Lord because they did not believe in His Divinity.

Throughout the course of the history of the Church souls are found who, astonished at the weakness of Our Lord, did not believe that He was God. This is the case of Arrio. Arius said to himself: “No, it is not possible, this man cannot be God, since he has said that He was less than His Father, that His Father was greater than Him; therefore, He is less than His Father. So, it is not God. And then he spoke those surprising words: "My soul is sad to death." How, He who had the beatific vision, who saw God in his human soul and who, therefore, was much more glorious than weak, much more eternal than temporal - his soul was already in eternity, blessed - could suffer and say: "My soul is sad to death", and then utter those unheard words that we could never have imagined on the lips of Our Lord: "Lord, Lord, why have you forsaken me?" That's when the scandal, unfortunately, spreads among the weak souls and Arius gets almost the entire Church to say: no, this person is not God.

On the other hand, others reacted and said: perhaps all that Our Lord suffered, the blood, the wounds, the Cross, all that is pure imagination. Are they actually external phenomena that happened? But they weren't real, something like that of the archangel Raphael when he accompanied Tobías and told him later: You believed that I ate when I took food, but no, I was nourished by spiritual food. The archangel Raphael did not have a body like that of Our Lord Jesus Christ; He had not been conceived in the womb of an earthly mother as Our Lord had been in the womb of the Virgin Mary. They said that Our Lord was a phenomenon like that, and that he seemed to eat and did not eat, that he seemed to suffer and did not suffer. Those were the ones who denied the human nature of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Monophysites, the Monothelites, who denied the human nature and will of Our Lord Jesus Christ: everything was divine in Him, and everything that had happened was but appearance.

See the consequences of those who are scandalized by reality, by Truth. I would make a comparison here with the Church of today. We have been scandalized, yes truly scandalized, of the situation of the Church. We thought that the Church was really divine, that it could never be wrong and that it could never deceive us.

And it really is. The Church is divine; the Church cannot lose the Truth; the Church will always guard the eternal Truth. But she is also human, and much more human than Our Lord Jesus Christ: Our Lord could not sin, he was the Holy One, the Just One par excellence.

The Church, if it is divine, and truly divine, provides us with all the things of God —particularly the Holy Eucharist—, eternal things that can never change, that will make the glory of our souls in Heaven. Yes, the Church is divine, but it is also human. It is supported by men who can be sinners, who are sinners and who, although they participate in a certain way in the divinity of the Church, to a certain extent - like the Pope, for example, because of his infallibility, because of the charism of infallibility. of the divinity of the Church, while still being a man - they are still sinners. The Pope, except in the case in which he uses his charisma of infallibility, can make mistakes, he can sin.

We do not have to be scandalized and say, as some do, in the Ariusian style, that, then, he is not Pope. Thus, said Arius: "It is not God, it is not true, Our Lord cannot be God."

We too are tempted to say: "He is not Pope, he cannot be Pope if he does what he does." (this is pure Arianism)

Or if not, instead, like others who would defy the Church to the point that everything would be perfect in the Church, we could say: “It is not a question of us doing something that opposes what comes from Rome, because everything is divine. in Rome and we must accept everything that comes from there”. (Monophysitism and monothelialism) Those who say so do like those who said that Our Lord was in such a way God that it was not possible for him to suffer, that all that were but appearances of suffering, that in reality he did not suffer, that in reality His Blood it did not flow, which were but appearances that affected the eyes of those around Him, but not a reality. The same is true today with some who continue to say: "No, nothing can be human in the Church, nothing can be imperfect, in the Church." Those are also wrong. They do not admit the reality of things. How far can the imperfection of the Church go, how far can - I would say - reach the sin in the Church, the sin in the intelligence, the sin in the soul, the sin in the heart and the will? The facts show us.

A moment ago, I was telling you that we would never have dared to place on the lips of Our Lord the words: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" And well, neither would we have ever thought that evil, that error, could penetrate into the bosom of the Church. Now we live that time: we cannot close our eyes. The facts appear before our eyes and do not depend on us. We are witnesses of what happens in the Church, of everything horrible that has happened since the Council, of the ruins that accumulate day after day, year after year in the Holy Church. As time passes, the errors spread more and the faithful lose the Catholic faith. A recent survey in France indicated that no more than two million French are still truly Catholic in practice.

We are reaching the end. The whole world will fall into heresy. Everyone will fall into the error because, as Saint Pius X said, there are clerics who have infiltrated the interior of the Church and have occupied it. They have spread the errors thanks to the key positions they occupy in the Church.

Now, are we obliged to follow the error because it comes to us by way of authority? Just as we must not obey unworthy parents who demand that we do unworthy things, so we must not obey those who demand that we deny our faith and abandon all tradition. There's nothing to do. Certainly, this union of divinity with humanity is a great mystery.

The Church is divine, and the Church is human. To what extent the failings of humanity can affect, dare I say, the divinity of the Church, only God knows. It is a great mystery. Having verified the facts, we must face them and we must never abandon the Church, the Roman Catholic Church; We must never abandon it, nor should we ever abandon the successor of Saint Peter, because through him we are united to Our Lord Jesus Christ. But if, unfortunately, dragged by who knows what idea or what formation or what pressure it suffers, or due to negligence, it abandons us and drags us along paths that make us lose faith, then, we should not follow it, even if we recognize that He is Peter and that, if he speaks with the charism of infallibility, we must accept it, but when he does not speak with the charism of infallibility, he may well be wrong, unfortunately. It is not the first time such a thing has happened in history.

We are deeply disturbed, deeply mortified, we who love the Holy Church so much, who have venerated her, who always venerate her. That is why this seminary exists, for the sake of the Roman Catholic Church, and that is why all those seminaries exist. We feel deeply wounded in our love for our Mother, thinking that, unfortunately, her servants no longer serve her, and even betray her. We must pray, we must sacrifice ourselves, we must remain like the Virgin Mary, at the foot of the Cross, not abandon Our Lord Jesus Christ, even though it seems that, as Sacred Scripture says, "He was like a leper" on the Cross. Well: The Virgin Mary had faith and behind those wounds, behind her pierced heart, she saw God in her Son, her divine Son.

We too, through the wounds of the Church, through the difficulties, the persecution that we suffer, including from those who hold authority in the Church, we do not abandon the Church, we love our Holy Mother Church and we will continue serving her in spite of the authorities, if necessary. Despite those authorities that wrongly persecute us, let us continue on our way: we want to preserve the Holy Roman Catholic Church, we want to continue it and we will continue it for the Priesthood, for the Priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the true sacraments of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for his true catechism.

Why, my dear friends? You know that I myself, and all my colleagues of a certain age here present, were ordained in the traditional Holy Mass; we have received the power to celebrate the Holy Mass and the Holy Sacrifice in the Roman rite of always. Remember that: I was ordained in that rite and I don't want to leave it, I don't want to abandon it. It is the Mass in which I was ordained and in which I want to continue living. It is truly the Mass of the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church.

Be faithful, faithful to your Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which will bring you so many consolations, so many joys, so many helps in your difficulties, in your trials, in the persecutions that you face and suffer. You will find the strength to suffer with Our Lord Jesus Christ all these insults, you will find that strength in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. By truly giving Our Lord Jesus Christ in his Body, in his Blood, in his Soul, in his Divinity to the faithful, you will also give them the courage to follow the Church in its tradition and to imitate the examples of all the Saints who all those who have been beatified, canonized, pointed out as models of holiness in the Holy Church have preceded. They will continue to be our model.

May the Blessed Virgin Mary, in particular, be our model. Let us ask her to make of you, dear friends, holy priests, priests as she wishes. If you invoke it in the course of your life, it will protect you and make you priests according to the heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ, his divine Son.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

 

Econe, June 29, 1982.