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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, so be it.

May I be with the kings and counselors of the earth who build solitudes for
themselves? They accuмulate the gold of God's grace and the treasures of wisdom.

It is normal to live in a certain solitude with God. This interior solitude must
be built. And if we watch over its quality, it does not prevent us from living
in the midst of the world, and this world does not come to disturb our solitude
with God. On the contrary, if we do not seek to build up this interior solitude,
then it is the invasion of our soul, all the more easily because thoughts can
crowd together, numerous and hurried, inside our soul—much more numerous and
much more hurried than physical persons whom we would introduce into our house.

We are going to follow the course of the explanations of Saint Gregory the
Great.

First, he describes to us the state of the soul of those who are invaded.

Secondly, he describes to us what interior solitude is.

And thirdly, he shows us what is the outward radiance of those who cultivate
interior solitude.

1.  The invasion of the soul

First, the state of invasion of the soul of those who concern themselves with
the things of here below instead of concerning themselves with the things of
heaven.

He describes to us the state of the angry man who is angry with the entire
earth, with anyone who might bear him a grudge, do him harm—even imaginary—his
neighbors and all the people he might meet, who creates imaginary enemies, who
develops within himself the numerous peremptory arguments by which he will
definitively silence and throw to the ground the enemies he imagines.

And here is this poor man who had only a few worries but, because he does not
accept having to carry his cross with patience, he brings into his soul real or
imaginary enemies and develops at length the blows he is going to deal them. His
soul is invaded. And furthermore, for one or two real enemies whom he must
indeed tolerate because Providence willed it so, here he is creating imaginary
enemies for himself, and, fortunate still when he does not make rash judgments,
detractions, and calumnies within himself, treating as enemies not only those
who wish him no harm, but also those who wish him well.

Another example taken by Saint Gregory the Great: the one who submits to lust.
It is difficult to accuмulate real conquests and to multiply external faults to
infinity, but how easy it is to feed within oneself on imaginations that
reinforce one another. Saint Gregory remarks with great perspicacity that the
lustful person gives himself over all the more to the invasion of interior lust,
with accomplices in almost infinite number, because, as he does not commit the
sins externally, he believes himself free. Now, the devil, who read Saint
Gregory the Great before us, imagined this filth of bad images and henceforth,
alas, bad movies and bad things that linger on the internet, in which it is easy
to feed oneself whereas one would not have the idea of actually and physically
carrying them out.

And the proud man who constantly finds himself in a situation that does not suit
his great qualities, and who sees himself successfully conquering coveted
positions, important posts—not important for the work done there, but important
for the praise received there. It is a continual invasion inside the soul by the
great ones of this world. Not great saints, humble, great before God, and who
sometimes are great before the world because they are kings of the earth, full
of wisdom; no, I speak of the great who are flattered by the world and who
flatter the world—the great sinners, ultimately. Internally, one seeks their
backing, their support, their favor. And here is a poor sinner who is devoured
by ambition, who frequents in spirit all the antechambers of the great of the
world, even before having accomplished anything at all.

My very dear brethren, I must give myself some additional explanations on this
last situation. It is, I believe, the great sin today of Catholics who, seeing
the decadence of the Church, tell themselves that they can remedy it, that they
have, thanks to God, been gifted with the qualities that the Church needs today,
and who do not realize that the first necessary quality is humility.

It is easy, my very dear brethren, to believe we are doing a service to the
Church by rendering her great services that attract praise in spite of
ourselves. I say "in spite of ourselves" because we believe we are not seeking
them, and in reality, they are what we seek, and in any case, even if we do not
seek them, we delight in them, and when we begin to delight in them, then we
continue by actually seeking them. What is the criterion? It is that of
humility. He who truly serves the Church cultivates humility, does not seek to
put himself forward. And if he must be known by a large number of people, he has
been, as it were, pushed to this by necessity, in spite of himself. I think of
Bishop Lefebvre, I think of Bishop Williamson. This should be the case for all
of us, my very dear brethren.

If we want to do good to the Church, let us know how to do good, small on the
outside and great on the inside, and not the reverse, great on the outside and
small on the inside.

Pauline Jaricot did an immeasurable good to the Church with the crusade of the
Rosary. And the crusade of the Rosary was not a great work of which she was the
president and which she managed everywhere. No, it was a multiplied work.
Thousands and thousands of Christians who, each in their place, sought to win
over five people to say a decade of the rosary, so that, thanks to this, an
entire rosary would be said. And these five people who, modestly, had been
encouraged to say a decade of the rosary, when they discovered its value, sought
to communicate this treasure, and they in turn found five people to say a rosary
with them, each one a decade. They acquired a taste for it, and they ended up
saying the entire rosary and then the Rosary.

But I anticipate, my very dear brethren, I anticipate the third part, the
radiance.

This great vice of pride which rots the whole Church consists of those priests
and bishops who do not dare to oppose, when necessary, the great rulers of the
earth, contrary to what Saint John Chrysostom did, who told the empress home
truths, even at the cost of being exiled by her. No, on the contrary, they seek
to be well-regarded.

I am going to tell you something that happened to me not long ago. In our
apostolic travels, Father Marcel de la Croix and I met a generous woman who drew
from the street a man who was no worse than any other, but who had become a
beggar, almost a tramp. She was able to help him find his dignity as a Christian
again, not because she had decided to do great works, but precisely because she
sought only humble and small, but effective works, in a spirit of penance. And
then, thanks to this man, we got to know a Christian couple who believed they
were married and were not, because a civil marriage is not a marriage. And then,
other friends came and asked for a baptism of a child.

It was easy for us to propose marriage and baptism. We had at our disposal in
this region a chapel which was a very small church, much more a very small
church than a chapel, which is to say that it looked serious, beautiful,
majestic. And then, the use of this small church was taken away from us by the
modern priest, who looked rather unfavorably upon our apostolate as
traditionalists, fundamentalists, or what have you.

And here I was, telling the future bride and groom that the marriage would take
place outside, under a tent, in the garden of their friends. And I said to
myself, "but how can I give a sacred character to the Mass that I celebrate this
way, without a choir, being virtually the only one able to sing with my poor,
hoarse voice?" We had done the best we could, we had all put our whole hearts
into it, but still... and I feared that it would be very difficult to carry out
an apostolate under such conditions, but it was the opposite.

Through this marriage, performed under improbable conditions, those present went
straight to the point. And whereas, in a church, they would have believed we
were priests like any others, would not have really understood what we brought
in opposition to the modern church, and would not have well realized what was at
stake, they said to themselves that there must be serious reasons to justify our
performing an act as solemn as marriage under such poor and modest conditions,
and immediately the conversations turned to serious subjects, to the fact that
today one could no longer, or only with difficulty, find priests to hear
confession.

And if we had not had these adverse external conditions, we would have remained
in ambiguity; never would the fundamental subjects have been addressed. And
imagine if I had received the approval of the parish priest, and imagine if I
had sought the approval of the local parish priest, or worse, the approval of
the bishop, then I would have drowned an act that I would have believed to be an
act faithful to Tradition, I would have drowned it in the ambiguity of the
modern Church.

There, my very dear brethren, I believe it was worth telling you this, because
it is very concrete, because the beautiful great churches have not done good to
Tradition, because Saint Athanasius said, to console his faithful facing the
Ariens—the Arian heretics who had kept the churches and were putting the good
Catholic faithful outside—Saint Athanasius said to his faithful: they have kept
the churches, but we have kept the faith. Well, it is necessary in certain cases
to leave the church to show precisely that we keep the faith and that we prefer
the faith to the church.

2.  Creating in our soul an interior solitude with God

For this, my very dear brethren, we must create an interior solitude in our
soul. Oh, I know, many objections will be made to me: we cannot cut ourselves
off from the world, we cannot live out of our time; that is all well and good,
Father, for religious and perhaps priests, but in any case not for the laity.

It is not a matter of that, my very dear brethren, it is a matter of knowing
with what thoughts and what presence we populate the interior of our soul. Is it
the thought and presence of God, of the Blessed Virgin, of the saints, of the
angels?

Our interior solitude, my very dear brethren, is built particularly in the
prayer of the Rosary and the meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary. In
spirit, we transport ourselves to the grotto of Bethlehem, to the solitude of
Bethlehem. Furthermore, in spirit, we transport ourselves to the solitude of
Calvary, in the midst of the noisy world that surrounded Calvary. Let me
explain. There was on the summit of Calvary, with the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Most Holy Virgin, and Saint John, as well as the holy women, as it
were a solitude that enveloped them. They were strangers to the world, they had
risen above the world. The Blessed Virgin was occupied only with Jesus and the
souls to be saved. Saint John was occupied only with Jesus and Mary. The enemies
of Christ might well bark around Him like dogs and shake their heads like
calves—this is what Holy Scripture says, it is not I who invent it—the solitude
of the Blessed Virgin, of our Lord, of the holy women, and of Saint John was
nonetheless preserved. It is this solitude that we must create within ourselves,
my very dear brethren.

A confrere whom I particularly appreciate and who carried out his apostolate as
far as Australia and in foreign countries where Tradition was little present,
asserts that only those who made daily mental prayer held firm in the trials of
the Church, and he asserts that for this, one must make the Spiritual Exercises
of Saint Ignatius four times to learn how to pray well and how to enter into
this interior solitude, and to learn how not to let oneself be dragged out of
it.

We are fortunate, my very dear brethren. The struggle between the world and God
has reached such a climax that we are obliged to discover the riches of the
interior life which we might perhaps have passed by had it not been for this
struggle in which we are involved by Providence.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, be my refuge and my Providence!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, be my refuge and my Providence!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. So be it.