In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, so be it.
Well, dear brothers, I had planned to preach about Our Lady today.
Indeed, the 26th of April, Our Lady of Good Counsel, is a great feast.
It is worth recommending to read about this magnificent image, this image of unknown origin,
which has a grandeur like that of a postcard, located in Gennazzano, Gennazzano in Italy.
And there are wonders in this regard, with battles won for Christians in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries,
with George, I forget the name of the family, of Skanderbeg, an Albanian prince.
An Albanian who was raised by capture by the Turkish sultan,
and who, in his youth, around 20 or 25 years old, when the vizier and the sultan had captured him well with his brothers,
turned against the sultan and led extraordinarily victorious wars,
thanks to Our Lady, whom he visited regularly.
So this beautiful image of Our Lady, Gennazzano.
And this Skanderbeg is an extraordinary man, who accomplished many feats throughout his life,
due to his physical strength, but above all, his moral strength, his strength he drew from Our Lady.
And then, while reading the second Alleluia of the mass of this third Sunday after Easter,
there is an extraordinary fact that Our Lord Jesus Christ repeated several times
to the disciples of Emmaus and afterwards to all the disciples,
when he said that he had to suffer in order to enter into his glory.
So it is on this subject that I would like to pause for a few moments.
We say this in the horizon of the Angelus, which, of course, is not recited during the Easter time.
We say this, that through his passion and through his cross,
we may arrive at the glory of his resurrection.
So, through his passion, his cross, the resurrection.
And we would like to be blessed, we want to, and we have this desire, of course, to be blessed,
without going through sufferings, without going through tribulations, without going through tests.
It is an illusion. Our Lord Jesus Christ went through it.
Before him, the prophets went through it.
All the prophets endured torments, humiliations, even ignominious deaths.
The great prophets, Isaiah, who announced the coming of the Messiah and his passion, his cross, his death.
He is the great prophet who announced all these extraordinary events.
Well, he was sawn in two, from top to bottom, with a wooden saw.
Imagine the torment he endured for our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jeremiah, who also announces the cataclysms, a bit of the apocalypse before Saint John, in the Old Testament.
He is dragged. He will die in the gutters, in captivity.
Thus, the great prophets, even the lesser prophets, have endured great torments for Jesus Christ.
They are blessed now. They have suffered for our Lord Jesus Christ, who announced them.
Our Lord Jesus Christ also predicted to the apostles that they would be in glory,
but that before glory, they would drink their chalice.
The chalice is bitterness. The chalice is passion. The chalice is martyrdom.
All martyrs. Even Saint John, who suffered martyrdom, did not die from it,
but he was scalded in boiling oil in Rome, at the Latin gate.
So, he is not a martyr because he was invigorated by his extreme torments.
But he did, in a way, endure martyrdom.
As for the other apostles, all martyrs.
So, through passion, through the cross, to his resurrection.
And our Lord Jesus Christ emphasizes this in his different appearances, my dear brothers.
To the disciples of Emmaus, who are babbling, who are dreaming,
they recount this story that happened two days ago, since it occurs on Easter Sunday.
Our Lord Jesus Christ joins them. They do not recognize him.
And Jesus Christ, this stranger to them, asks those two disciples, Cleopas and his companion, "What is this that is happening to you?
What are you talking about?" "How?
You are not aware of what happened?"
The stranger says to them, "What?"
He did not say, "No, I do not know." He would have lied.
But he says, "What?" He wants, this stranger, for his two companions to open their hearts.
And that is what happens.
Thus, the companions recount the terrible events that occurred during these days of passion.
And so, once their hearts were opened, the stranger shakes them, saying, "Oh, foolish men!"
Foolish men. You are truly like a heart, a closed heart.
Finally, their hearts opened. But still, their hearts were closed.
Their ears were blocked. Their eyes were also closed.
This is what it means to have closed intelligence.
Heart without understanding. Foolish man.
Should it not have been necessary for Christ to suffer in order to enter into his glory?
And there, our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is him, we know, they did not know it at the time,
they recognized him afterwards, our Lord Jesus Christ will open the Scriptures.
Beginning with Moses.
So Moses, who wrote the Pentateuch.
Thus, at the very beginning, he will review all the facts that pertain to his passion.
How we would have loved for this to be transcribed.
It was not done. In any case, not in the Gospel.
Authors, of course, have dissected the Holy Scriptures, and the work is done.
But, during this journey, our Lord Jesus Christ will open their Scriptures.
And little by little, not only the letter of Scripture, but the meaning of Scripture.
All Scripture, Jesus said in another passage, all Scripture speaks of me.
The Old Testament speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And these disciples of Emmaus did not have understanding.
They saw without seeing.
Thus, they were internally blind.
Their hearts were closed in on themselves.
And Jesus Christ shows them the importance of his passion for his glory.
A few days later, our Lord Jesus Christ, between the Resurrection and the Ascension,
appears not only to two disciples, but to the apostles and to several disciples.
And he will review the same facts.
He will open their understanding.
Saying, it was necessary for Christ to suffer all these things in order to enter into his glory.
Jesus Christ is our model.
And since he is our model, we must take him as our example.
And when we suffer something, whether it be physical, moral, pain, whatever the cause
and source of the pain, we must always refer each of us to our Lord Jesus Christ.
How did he experience these sufferings?
At Calvary, there are three crosses.
That of the just one and that of two unjust ones.
But, after a certain time, the thief, who will become the good thief, reflects.
And he will confess the innocence of our Lord Jesus Christ and confess his sins.
For us, this is justice. But he did nothing wrong.
And from that moment, the thief, who becomes good from bad, will offer all his sufferings
in union with those of Jesus Christ.
And his sufferings are different.
He suffers, but no longer like a convict, like a damned soul.
But he suffers like an elected one.
And his suffering is different.
This does not mean that he no longer suffers.
Of course, he suffered until the end.
But he offered his suffering.
And his suffering has been meritorious.
Whereas the other's sufferings are worse.
Because he does not have Jesus.
And to suffer without Jesus is a total horror.
To suffer with Jesus is a beneficial boom.
It is the assured heaven.
So let us see, well, this thief who was bad, who becomes good, stole Jesus' heart.
This is what Saint Augustine says.
So he remained a thief until the end.
It is wonderful.
Wonderful.
He accomplished his work to the end.
But he changes.
He changes the attitude of his soul.
So, we must keep this in mind, my dear brothers.
Sufferings are everywhere.
Physical and moral.
Whether physical or moral, or both.
Or sometimes only moral, when we have robust health.
But we always have, and no one can say no,
"I do not suffer from anywhere."
We suffer for ourselves.
We suffer for our families who are not Catholic.
We suffer for hardened sinners who refuse to convert.
We suffer.
Sometimes we do not want to recognize it.
But suffering is everywhere.
Suffering is everywhere.
We can distract ourselves by various means.
There is not just alcohol; waking up is difficult, I do not know.
But I have been told.
In short, suffering is truly universal.
But our Lord Jesus Christ has mitigated our sufferings.
Because we know through him that there is a heaven.
The modern world refuses.
Oh, this modern world, it is ancient.
Since sin exists, this world is modern.
But in the bad sense of modernity.
This world is without God.
And consequently, a world without God is a dreadful world.
And we clearly see it nowadays.
Suffering is there, but we distract ourselves.
We distract ourselves to forget eternity.
But when the soul finds itself alone with itself, in silence, it reflects.
And this is also one of the causes of this world that refuses silence.
Because silence helps to reflect.
Always noise, always chatter, always clamor.
But God is not in the clamor.
God is in silence.
And the disciples of Emmaus moved away from Jerusalem.
They were not in silence, they were in silence themselves,
but in a deaf silence, in a bad silence.
And Jesus Christ came to bring silence to them, by speaking to them.
And little by little, they would later say, "Our hearts were warmed while he spoke to us."
Because they forgot themselves.
Their suffering also came from the fact that they no longer thought of anything but themselves,
of their own suffering.
And that, this is a cause of great suffering as well.
When one forgets Jesus Christ and thinks only of one’s troubles, one’s difficulties, one’s problems, etc.,
then one forgets Jesus.
But when we think of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are carried by him.
In suffering, he carries us.
And without him, suffering crushes us.
There are many lessons with our risen Lord Jesus Christ.
Through passion and through his cross, we may arrive at the glory of his resurrection.
To glory.
We are made for the glory of God.
This glory is what the angels sang at Christmas to the shepherds who were disposed to receive our Lord Jesus Christ.
The shepherds forgot themselves.
They moved, which was an effort for them.
But they forgot themselves to seek our Lord Jesus Christ.
And the angels sang the glory of God, not resurrected, but coming to resurrect souls.
That is the essence of Christmas.
Our Lord Jesus Christ comes to earth to resurrect us from here on earth through grace, sanctifying grace.
We can ask Our Lady, in concluding, to help us unite our sufferings with those of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Lady is present in the key moments of our Lord Jesus Christ's life.
She is always there, discreet, very discreet, but present at important moments.
And the most important, of course, is the Annunciation, Christmas, Cana, of course, this great miracle where our Lord Jesus Christ anticipates,
by his very discreet request, the hour of his redemption.
Our Lady tells the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
Our Lady is also present at this very important moment of the Passion.
She stands. Stabat Mater Dolorosa.
Dolorosa, of course, she is sorrowful.
She weeps.
She is very human, Our Lady, of course, but
she stands.
Standing physically, but above all spiritually.
She is not crushed because she has not sinned.
She is the Immaculate.
Our Lady stands and helps us in our crosses, whatever they may be,
to stand firm in our souls.
Not to be crushed by our actual burdens, sometimes exaggerated, or even imaginary.
And then, we lose the sense of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In any case, she is present.
She stands, Our Lady.
She will receive on her knees, as 33 years before, but in a very different way,
our Lord Jesus Christ, no longer living but inanimate.
Our Lady, always there, present in the very important moments of our Lord Jesus Christ's life.
She will also be present, of course, between the Ascension and Pentecost.
This is the mystery in a few weeks.
Our Lady is present to give the apostles the strength for upcoming battles after Pentecost.
No doubt, they will have the Holy Ghost.
Nevertheless, they will endure many contradictions, humiliations, even to martyrdom.
Our Lady is there to encourage them with her prayer, through her maternal presence as she is immaculate.
She has already received the Holy Ghost, but through her presence, she will communicate
to the souls of the apostles the Holy Ghost.
These young apostles had such need of God’s strength.
And so for us, dear brothers, let us ask the Virgin Mary for that strength in trials, whatever they may be again.
Our Lady will always grant us this strength to fight, to be victorious against ourselves, against the world, against the devil,
who seeks to harm us in every way, so that our Lord Jesus Christ may be in our resurrected souls.
And this resurrected soul does not die anymore.
It is grace, sanctifying grace, and all the actual graces that are like successive influxes
to help us do good and avoid evil.
So be it.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, so be it.
Topic: Fr Dominique Rousseau - sermons (Read 972 times)