Volume
2, Chapter III
19 March 1977
Dear Friends
and Benefactors,
We are going
on with our work and with God's blessing we will continue to go
on, for Tradition cannot cease to transmit Revelation until the
end of time. God has revealed Himself to us in Our Lord Jesus Christ.
This Revelation is today what it was in the past and what it will
always be. We must receive it such as it has been given to us.
The Revelation
was brought to an end with the last of the Apostles in order that
we might fix our gaze on Jesus Who is “the author and finisher of
faith" (Heb. 12: 2).
Saint Paul
summarizes this Revelation which he himself also received in these
words: "I judged not myself to know anything among you but
Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (I Cor. 2:2).
The Cross of
Jesus summarizes the whole of our faith and therefore the whole
of our conduct, all of our attitudes, our interior and exterior
life. It not only teaches us the truths necessary for our salvation,
but also the way to salvation and the combat, which must be waged
to achieve it. It shows the way to wage this combat against all
that is opposed to our salvation, whether it be within or around
us. The Cross is therefore the leaven and the law of Christian civilization
which is that of the salvation of souls by Jesus crucified.
To attempt
to diminish in one way or another the teachings revealed by the
Cross under the pretext of the historical development of society,
of historical conscience, evolution, etc. is to close the way of
salvation and deliver men up to other men, with no divine hope,
light or life. It is to make this world the antechamber of hell.
This is what
is being prepared for us by the elimination of any idea of combat
against error due to religious liberty, or against atheism, laicism,
and communism. Likewise by an ecumenism which delivers the Church
into the hands of her enemies, and lack of opposition to sin by
wiping out law in favor of conscience.
This new attitude
of the Church authorities is a negation of the Cross of Our Lord.
To ask us to follow this attitude, which lay under the surface during
the Council, and which is clearly expressed in the reforms and practice
of the Conciliar Church, is as much as to ask us to deny Christ
crucified. We cannot do so .
By the grace
of God our seminarians and young priests understand these things
well and do not wish to abandon the crucified Jesus either. They
demonstrate this by their dress, their daily lives and their preaching:
but essentially and above all by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Once again
this year we have numerous candidates for the seminary and our novitiates
to the Brotherhood and Sisterhood. The number of our houses continues
to multiply as we now have one in the province of Quebec in Canada
and another in Geneva. To satisfy all the requests for priests which
we receive it would be necessary to ordain a hundred a year! This
year, God willing, fourteen priests and twenty subdeacons will be
ordained. Five brothers as well as five nuns will receive the habit.
Three of the sisters will make their profession.
We hope that
we will soon be able to announce that the foundations of the seminary
chapel at Ecône have been laid! This will be a very important enterprise.
We know that we can count on you to help the seminary with a chapel
worthy of the honor and adoration that we must give to Our Lord.
Above all we
must pray and do penance to ask Our Lord, by the intercession of
the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph, to deliver Holy Church from those
who wish at all costs to ruin her and arrive at the great apostasy.
In gratitude
for all that you are doing in favor or our work for a true renovation
of the Church, may God bless you!
+Marcel
Lefebvre
Feast
of St. Joseph, 1977.
Courtesy of the Angelus
Press, Regina Coeli House
2918 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64109
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