You might notice His Excellency's advice in the topic:
The Crisis of the Church is an opportunity for Sanctification...pre-2012
SPIRITUALITY The Chardonnet No. 233
Unofficial Firefox Translation from the French,
The last paragraph - Good Friday and Easter
Sermon of H.E. Bishop Tissier de Mallerais in Saint-Nicolas on November 11, 2007
My dear faithful,
My presence here takes place in the framework of this symposium, this theological meeting on modernism and on the encyclical of St. Pius X that he condemned in 1907. St. Pius X denounced the modernists a hundred years ago, saying, “They hide, alas! in the very bosom and in the heart of the Church”
Pascendi, an encyclical still current
Now, it's a little bit the parable of today where the wicked are mixed in the field of the world with the good; the tares is mixed with the good grain, the heretics are mixed with the Catholics, alas in the Church. So this parable is very current.
But [for modernism], the Lord would not wait for the end of the world because heretics are a special case. St. Pius X had already torn them from the bosom of the Church and it would still be necessary today for the Holy See to act to tear the tares off the good grain. St. Pius X added: “The danger is today in the bowels and even the veins of the Church.” And he specified that the modernists carry the axe, the knock, not to the branches and the branches, that is to say, to all the truths of faith, but to the very root of faith, by perverting the very notion of faith, by making it a subjective faith: it is the believer who manufactures his faith instead of receiving it from God through the Church. And so modernist faith is a vital, human creation, and not the adherence of the intelligence to a truth received from the outside, supernatural, adherence because of the authority of God which reveals, because of the absolute truthfulness of God who can neither be wrong nor deceive us.
The True Catholic Faith
So you see, in our Catholic faith, dear faithful, everything is divine. The object of faith is the mystery of God that no one can understand with his natural reason.
Second, the reason for adhering to this mystery is the authority of God that reveals. And finally the purpose of faith, it is God Himself who is our ultimate supernatural end. Everything is supernatural in faith. On the contrary, in the modernist faith, in all the current writings that appear, it is a natural faith, a creation of the purely natural and fanciful consciousness. You see how much the Church would need to be purged of this modernism today.
The conduct to be held
What is the conduct we must have in today’s life knowing that modernism has infiltrated even the hierarchy to its highest degrees? Should we seek peace after forty years of struggle? Wouldn't it be good to sign a peace? And some propose to us to sign peace, to cease the struggle at last, to put peace in the Church, to stop constantly opposing the modernists. “Let us sign peace, let us accept the Council, at least apparently, and everything will be settled.” (...) A cardinal who is dead now, told me twenty years ago: “Sign everything and then you do what you want. Here you go! Sign what you will be given to sign and then you are free to do what you want.” Well we did not follow and Archbishop Lefebvre did not follow this path of duplicity; he did not want to sign an apparent agreement and seem to accept the errors of the Vatican Council Il. He didn't want to do a simulation of acceptance.
The example of Eleazar
We have in Sacred Scripture an example of this solidity of spirit, in Eleazar of the time of the Macchabees, in Israel, when the Greeks forced the believers of that time, the Jєωιѕн stakes, to eat pork meat which was forbidden by the law of Moses. Then they proposed to Eleazar, that instead of giving him pork, they were going to bring him veal and so he could eat it in all conscience and not disobey the law of Moses. In secret he would eat veal instead of eating pork and so he would appear not to violate the law of Moses. So he replied, "No, I do not want to set a bad example to all the young men and let it be believed that Eleazar, who came to an advanced age, has apostasized the law of Moses. On the contrary, I will give an example of firmness and fidelity to our holy laws.”
Well, this must also be our conduct, let us not seek a peace in which we would pretend to accept the Council to do what we would like. No! No! give the testimony of our refusal of conciliar errors.
This is a first point of our attitude: the perseverance to denounce errors in the name of our fidelity to the holy laws of God.
Another attitude that we are suggested is to want to win the victory immediately, without waiting for the real moment of victory. “Here is the Motu proprio of Benedict XVI, it is victory, we have victory, it is over.” Terrible temptation of errors! Victory is not yet won, dear faithful, do not believe that they have victory easily, it will last a long time; let us prepare for a long-term fight.
And we have another example in the history of the Macchabees when a certain Joseph, the son of Zechariah, says to himself when he sees the triumphs of Judas Macchabeus: "I will imitate them and we too will fight against the pagans around us and make a name for ourselves. We will make a name for ourselves by fighting our fight, too, to have victory too, to have a separate victory.” And that's how he fought and got a complete defeat. All were massacred by the enemies. Why were they slaughtered? Because these people were not of the race of those by whom Israel was to be saved. So when we see, alas, those who leave us to have victory too soon and sing victory too soon, well these are not those by which the Church will be saved. These are the examples of Sacred Scripture. So, no haste, dear faithful, let's not sing victory and continue to persevere in the humble daily fight.
The crisis of the Church is an opportunity for sanctification
And it is on this fight that I would like to insist. This fight — this is the third point of my little speech — is a grace of God to us. We forget too much that Providence directs everything. That there are heretics in the Church is a great damage, but it is beneficial for the good, says St. Augustine. The presence of the wicked exists so that the good may be exercised in virtue. Thus the presence of heretics within the Church exerts perseverance in the faith of true Catholics.
It is a grace at the beginning of the XXI century that we are this handful of faithful who still resist modernist heresy and have kept the integral faith by the grace of God. Therefore we would be in a certain way in the thanksgiving, in all humility, for it is not through us but by the grace of God that we have been maintained in faith, especially by the struggle of our dear parents or grandparents for forty years. So thank the Good God for placing us in the Church at that time to fight, and not to twiddle our thumbs but to continue this struggle of our fathers, a struggle of the faith that has lasted for forty years and that can last another twenty or thirty years. So let’s arm ourselves with patience [...]
A battle and spiritual weapons
We must arm ourselves for this fight. It is a spiritual struggle. “You have not,” said St. Paul, “to fight against the flesh and blood but against the powers of darkness which are poured out into the air,” that is, against the devil and his suppositors. It is not the modernists who must be physically killed, it is the devil who must be hunted, of which the atmosphere of the Church must be purified.
It is a spiritual struggle, a struggle of mind and therefore we must arm ourselves with spiritual weapons that are first of all healthy faith, based on healthy philosophy. Let us train ourselves in the sound philosophy, let us take advantage of the lectures that can be given to us about it, the healthy readings, St. Thomas Aquinas. Let us also form the catechism of the Council of Trent, which is the quintessence of the Catholic faith opposed to modernism today; the simple catechism of St. Pius X newly republished which is a booklet of Catholic doctrine. So let's work on formation!
Secondly, since this fight is spiritual, we must also arm ourselves in the heart, we must change ourselves, let us change! This is through the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius that resurgence of grace, on solidity of spirit, liberal souls that we are often. So, dear faithful, subscribe to the retreats preached according to St. Ignatius in our dear houses of spiritual exercises: Pointet, Gastines, Caussade and elsewhere. Let us take advantage of these spiritual exercises that renew hearts, that convert hearts. This fight is not a properly intellectual struggle, it is also a struggle of Christian virtue.
Finally, dear faithful, let us turn to the Most Holy Virgin Mary, triumphant of the demon in all the great struggles of God. She kept the faith while the apostles doubted when Jesus was at the tomb. She kept the faith, she did not waver, she lived in faith, in the certainty of the imminent resurrection of her Son Jesus Christ. Let us ask the Blessed Virgin, who was called the faithful Virgin, Virgo Fidelis, to keep our virginal faith.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Msgr. T. de Mallerais
non-official
* The oral style has been preserved
LE CHARDONNET December 2007
Painting: Saint Augustine reminded Christians that the struggle of the faith is an opportunity for a noble perseverance.
French original here:
https://www.cathinfo.com/sspx-resistance-en-francais/valeurs-traditionnelles/msg1021026/#msg1021026