(The
full text of this sermon can be found in Apologia Pro Marcel
Lefebvre.)
My Dear Monsieur
l’Abbe,
My Dear Friends.
My Dear Brothers,
It is not in
this Exhibition Hall that your first Mass should have taken place,
you being a child of this city. It is in a large and beautiful church
of the City of Geneva that you should have celebrated this ceremony
so dear to the hearts of all the Catholics of Geneva. But, as Providence
has decided otherwise, here you are before the crowd of your friends,
of your relatives, of those who want to share your joy and the honor,
which God has done you of being His priest, a priest forever.
The history
of your vocation is the implementation of a plan. And I shall say
what our plan is.
You were born
of Protestant parents in this City of Geneva, and in childhood and
youth you followed the teaching of the Protestant religion. You
were well educated, and you had a profession, which gave you all
the world can hope for here below. Then, all of a sudden, touched
by the grace of God through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin
Mary, you abruptly decided, under the influence of that grace, to
direct yourself to the true Church, the Catholic Church, and you
desired not only to become a Catholic but also to become a priest.
I can still see you arriving for the first time at Econe; and I
confess that it was not without a certain apprehension that I received
you, asking myself if so rapid a passage from Protestantism to the
desire of becoming a Catholic priest was not an inspiration with
no future. That is the reason why you stayed some time at Econe
reflecting more deeply on the desire within you, your aspiration
to the priesthood. We all admired your perseverance, your will to
reach that goal, despite your age, despite a certain weariness of
ecclesiastical studies, of the study of philosophy, theology, Scripture,
Canon Law - for you were a scientist. And now, by God's grace, after
those years of study at Econe you have received the grace of sacerdotal
ordination.
It seems to
me to he difficult for anyone who has not received that grace to
realize what the grace of priesthood is. As I said to you a few
days ago at the time of the ordination: You can no longer say that
you are a man like other men; that is not true. You are no longer
a man like other men. Henceforward you are marked with the sacerdotal
character, which is something ontological, which marks your soul
and puts it above the faithful. Yes, whether you are a saint, or,
which God forbid, whether you are like priests who are, perhaps,
alas in hell they still have the sacerdotal character. This sacerdotal
character unites you to Our Lord Jesus Christ, to the priesthood
of Our Lord Jesus Christ in a very special way, a participation
which the faithful cannot have; and that is what permits you to
pronounce the words of consecration of Holy Mass and in a way make
God obey your order, your words. At your words, Jesus Christ will
come personally, physically, substantially under the species of
bread and wine; He will be present on the altar, and you will adore
Him; you will kneel to adore Him, to adore the presence of Our Lord
Jesus Christ. What an extraordinary reality!
We need to
be in heaven – and even in heaven shall we understand what the priest
is? Is it not St. Augustine who says “'Were I to find myself before
a priest and an angel, I should salute the priest first, before
the angel”?
So, then, here
you are, become a priest. I said that the history of your vocation
is a whole plan, it is our plan. That is profoundly true because
we have the Catholic Faith and are not afraid to affirm our faith;
and I know that our Protestant friends, who are perhaps here in
this assembly, approve of us. They approve of us: they need to feel
the presence amongst them of Catholics who are Catholics, and not
Catholics who appear to be in full accord with them on points of
faith. One does not deceive one’s friends; we cannot deceive our
Protestant friends.
We are Catholics,
we affirm our faith in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we
affirm our faith in divinity of the Holy Catholic Church, we think
that Jesus Christ is the sole way, the sole truth, the sole life,
and that one cannot be saved outside Our Lord Jesus Christ and consequently
outside His Mystical Spouse, the Holy Catholic Church. No doubt,
the graces of God are distributed outside the Catholic Church; but
those who are saved, even outside the Catholic Church, are saved
by the Catholic Church, by Our Lord Jesus Christ, even if they do
not know it, even if they are not aware of it, for it is Our Lord
Himself Who has said it. “You can do nothing without Me – nihil
potestis facere sine me.” You cannot come to the Father without
going by Me. “When I shall be lifted up from the earth,” says Our
Lord Jesus Christ, meaning He will be on His cross, “I shall draw
all souls to Me.” Only Our Lord Jesus Christ, being God, could say
such things. No man here below can speak as Our Lord has spoken,
because He alone is the Son of God, He is our God – Tu solus
altissimus, tu solus Dominus. He is Our Lord; He is the Most
High, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is for that
that Econe remains in being, it is for that that Econe exists, because
we believe that what the Catholics have taught, what the Popes have
taught, what the Councils have taught for twenty centuries, we cannot
possibly abandon.
We cannot possibly
change our faith: we have our Credo, and we will keep it
till we die. We cannot change our Credo, we cannot change
the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we cannot change our Sacraments,
changing them into human works, purely human, which no longer carry
the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is because, in fact we feel
and are convinced that in the last fifteen years something has happened
in the Church, something has happened in the Church which has introduced
into the highest summits of the Church, and into those who ought
to defend our faith, a poison, a virus, which makes them adore the
golden calf of this age, adore in some sense, the errors of this
age. To adopt the world, they wish to adopt also the errors of the
world, by opening on to the world, they wish also to open themselves
to the errors of the world, those errors which say, for example,
that all religions are of equal worth. We cannot accept that, those
errors which say that the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ
is now an impossibility and should no longer be sought. We do not
accept that. Even if the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ is difficult,
we want it, we seek it, we say every day in the Our Father, “Thy
kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” If
His will were done here below as it is done in heaven imagine what
it would be like if God’s will were really done here below as it
is done in heaven: it would be paradise on earth!
That is the
reign of Our Lord, which we seek, which we desire with all our strength,
even if we never achieve it; and, because God has asked that from
us, even if we have to shed our blood for that kingdom we are ready.
And this is what the priests are whom we form at Econe, priests
who have the Catholic faith, priests such as have always been formed.
So, something
has happened in the Church since the Council, already some time
before the Council, during the Council, and throughout the reforms,
has chosen to take a new direction, to have Her new priests, Her
new priesthood, a new type of priest as has been said. She has chosen
to have a new Sacrifice of the Mass, or rather let us say a new
Eucharist: She has chosen to have a new catechism, She has chosen
to have new seminaries, She has chosen to reform Her religious congregations.
And what have we now come to? A few days ago I read in a German
paper that in the last few years there are three million fewer practicing
Catholics in Germany. Cardinal Marty, himself, he who also condemns
us, Cardinal Marty, Archbishop of Paris, has said that Mass attendance
is down fifty percent in his diocese since the Council.
Who will say
that the fruits of that Council are marvelous fruits of holiness,
fervor, and growth of the Catholic Church?
They have chosen
to embrace the errors of the world, they have chosen to embrace
the errors which comes to us from Liberalism and which come to us
– alas, it must be said – from those who lived here four centuries
ago, from those reformers who have spread Liberal ideas throughout
the world, and those ideas have at last penetrated to the interior
of the Church. This monster, which is at the interior of the Church,
must disappear, so that the Church may find Her own nature again.
Her own authenticity, Her own identity. That is what we are trying
to do and it is why we continue: we do not want to be destroyers
of the Church. If we stop, we shall be certain, convinced, that
we are destroying the Church as those are engaged in destroying
Her who are steeped in that false idea. And so we wish to go on
with the construction of the Church, and we cannot do better to
get the Church built than to make these priests, these young priests
– showing always the example of a deep Catholic faith, of an immense
charity.
I think I can
say that it is we who have a true charity towards Protestants, towards
all those who do not have our faith. If we believe our Catholic
faith, if we are convinced that God has really given His graces
to the Catholic Church, we have the desire of sharing our riches
with our friends, giving them to our friends.
If we are convinced
that we have the truth, we should exert ourselves to make it known
that the truth can benefit our friends as well. It is a failure
in charity to hide one’s truth, to hide one’s personal riches and
not let those profit from them who do not have their own.
Why have missions,
why set off to distant countries to convert souls, if not because
one is certain of having the truth and desirous of sharing the graces
received with those who have not yet received them? It is indeed
Our Saviour Who said: “Go and teach all nations baptizing them in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. He
that believeth not shall be condemned.” That is what Our Saviour
said.
Strengthened
by these words, we continue our apostolate, trusting in Providence:
it is not possible that this condition of the Church should remain
indefinitely.
Courtesy of the Angelus
Press, Regina Coeli House
2918 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64109
Vol. XI, No.
1, Jan. 1988
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