TRANSLATION OF SERMON
In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Well, dear brothers, these three holy days known as the Sacred Triduum, the holy days, the holiest of the year, of our year, begin, you notice, with this Vespers Mass, the evening Mass. Why the evening Mass? Because it was on an evening of Thursday that our Lord instituted two things: the priesthood, on one hand, and then, simultaneously, the Holy Eucharist. The Gospel says it's the sign of His charity, of His infinite love. "He loved them to the end," meaning He is going to give them what is most sacred to Him. It's His testament, meaning He is going to bequeath what is most precious to His children who will remain on earth until the end of time. That day, He will leave many things to His apostles, of course, but on that Holy Thursday, He will entrust them with the priesthood, His priesthood, and the holy sacrifice of the Mass, the Holy Eucharist.
Well, dear friends, we must understand the greatness of what is happening, even if we indeed see with our eyes priests, we see the Mass, but behind these visible things, there is the action of the sovereign priesthood, of God, of our Lord Jesus Christ, sovereign priest, who acts through all the priests of the Catholic Church and who will give the faithful His body, His blood, His soul, His divinity, and His sacrifice, because He loved them to the end. So, how is it possible that our Lord can entrust the priesthood to mere men? Well, let us simply remember that our Lord Himself is the sovereign priest.
There were, you know, in the Old Testament, these priests, the priests of the tribe of Levi, the Levites, as they were called, who were tasked, indeed, with sacrificing animals, doves and such. There were different forms of sacrifice, but it was to announce the one who would be the priest par excellence, the true priest with a capital P, the divine priest, the priest of God. For what is a priest? What is a priest? The priesthood is the one responsible for offering the sacrifice to God, well, agreeable things to God, human things that are pleasing to God, offering sacred things. The priest partakes in giving sacred things, on one side he gives to men, and on the other side he offers them to God to reconcile God with sinful men. This was done symbolically in the Old Testament; there were propitiatory sacrifices, etc., it was Eucharistic, but it will be done truly in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord will thus be the sovereign priest, the only one who can offer a sacrifice pleasing to God, who will appease God from this tide of sins that floods all humanity.
And so, why is He truly a priest? Because, quite simply, He is a man, He has humanity, but He is God. He is God Himself in person. It is God Himself in person, you see, with His human nature, who can thus form the bridge between humanity, men, and the good God. And this is why, you see, He is, par excellence, the priest, the one the Jews should have recognized, not only as their savior but as their priest, the one who would, in a way, explain everything He did. This would give meaning to the Temple, meaning to all these sacrifices. Refusing all our Lord, well, we might say the Temple loses its meaning, nothing makes sense, because our Lord is truly the lamb, who is pure by nature, and perfect because He is God, and can suffer, who offers Himself as a victim. And at the same time, you see, He is a priest, He has the material of the sacrifice, that is, His body, His humanity, but He is also the one who offers the sacrifice at the same time.
And so, His priesthood, you see, allows Him to reconcile all sinful humanity, to redeem all men without exception, the worst of sinners, because His blood, which He will shed voluntarily, well, it is the precious blood. His love for the sinner is infinite. That's why we can never say, no, such a sin, our Lord cannot forgive.
It is unspeakable, we cannot say such things.
In itself, the sinner can refuse the blood of Christ. It is terrible, as the Hebrews did.
But in itself, this blood is purifying. And so, this priesthood, what is it going to do? Our Lord will entrust it, He will pass it on to His apostles, who will themselves become priests, but priests of Jesus Christ.
They will have this particular character, which means that when a priest is ordained a priest by a bishop, he has the power, he is close by his character to the hypostatic union of Christ. He can consecrate the body of our Lord. When the priest pronounces the words, "This is my body, this is my blood," it is not a symbol, it is a reality. It is our Lord who truly speaks through the mouth of the priest, who takes the priest and thus will be able to offer the sacrifice and subsequently offer it to the faithful the body, the blood, the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist is only the fruit of the sacrifice.
And this priesthood, you see, is there to redeem all humanity. And that is why the Church immediately became missionary, precisely, and spread throughout all the nations the Catholic priesthood, precisely, episcopates with priests, etc., to spread over humanity, precisely, this salvation, this forgiveness of sins, this redemption of humanity.
I would also like to insist on the fact that Satan is obviously at work, you notice, from the beginning. During these holy days, if our Lord does eminently holy things, at the same time, the demon makes his darkest plans. Through Judas, we already have the image of Satan working against Christ to destroy the priesthood, to destroy the Eucharist. One thinks even that perhaps Judas certainly received the priesthood, he was a priest, he was a bishop, terrifying. So, obviously, one could say that Judas is a bishop who is in hell. He will not be the first.
He will not be the last, excuse me.
And he probably also received Holy Communion.
Probably. It's an opinion. But look in what disposition he received all this. Precisely, he received all this without understanding the greatness of what he had received. And so, as Saint Paul said, the one who eats and drinks the body and blood of Christ unworthily, or without discerning the blood and the body, meaning he has no faith, eats and drinks his own judgment. Because he has no faith, he does not understand the greatness of what he receives. It is a lesson for all of us, dear brothers. Of course, we will have the necessary dispositions. But the first is already to believe that our Lord is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament and to respect Him as such.
The priesthood, then, will be, you see, already the object of attacks against the demon, by the demon. The demon will use his instruments. First, there is Judas. Then afterwards, it will be, of course, through heresy. But more especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, through Luther. Protestantism will be a great, a great war that will be waged against the Eucharist and the priesthood.
What did Luther do? Well, he destroyed the sacrifice of the Mass to make it only a Eucharistic meal. No, the Mass is not a meal, the Mass is a sacrifice. Or at least, more accurately, to make it a commemoration. And what is... There is no priesthood, there is no priest in Protestantism, there is no more priesthood. They can no longer spread over souls the grace of our Lord, the blood of our Lord. It is finished, it is sterile.
Here is this first great attack, you see, which will correspond, in fact, to the collapse of Christendom. And the second great attack, the one we are currently experiencing against the priesthood of the Eucharist, is modernism. Saint Pius X said modernism is heresy. It's not just anything.
And that's why, my dear brothers, we must really distance ourselves from this plague, from this heresy like the plague.
And I would say, the first to have to distance themselves, of course, are the faithful, but especially the priests. Priests should distance themselves at all costs from modernism because modernism, which is a work of hell, wants to destroy the priesthood. Who are the first victims of the new Mass? It is not you, it is not the faithful. It is the priest who celebrates it every day, this new Mass, which is Protestantized. It is the priest who is a victim of it. It is the bishops who will celebrate this whole Mass in this new spirit, which is no longer a spirit of sacrifice, which is a spirit of meal, a spirit of sharing, a spirit of, you see, another spirit, which ultimately destroys the sacerdotal spirit. So, are they priests? Are they not priests? We can have doubts, obviously.
But in doubt, of course, we must pray for these... I think that what we must do this evening is to pray for perhaps all these priests who are unaware, I would say, of the seriousness of the situation in which they find themselves.
And who must, once they have understood, this Mass, this canon that I am celebrating, finally, is not the traditional canon. I heard someone say earlier.
And this, the Our Father, is not the right Our Father. And then the offertory, but it was deleted, whereas, in fact, it has existed from the beginning, the offertory expresses what we are going to offer on the altar. This holy and spotless victim, you can read that later in your missals. Well, the priest, you see, realizing this reality, and of course, it is necessary to explain to them because if no one explains to them, how will they understand the seriousness of what they are doing or not doing? They have the routine, then they were taught, it was like that, the Mass, it's like that, and then do not think. And once they discover, if they are of good faith, well, there is a big problem, then the second stage arrives, which will be the decision-making. I must leave this environment, and I must join the Catholic tradition, those who really have a conception of the priesthood, which is that of the Catholic Church, the one I must join, those who have a conception of the Eucharist, in a Catholic way. I will not give communion in hand, I will not, I will keep my hands joined, etc., to respect the Holy Eucharist. I will not give communion to the divorced and remarried. I will not give communion to anyone. I will invite people to prepare well to receive Holy Communion. The Eucharistic fast also, to respect the three hours before communing.
Do you see? Not one hour. Or even not...
Here is, dear brothers, you see, this is it. If we want to restore Christendom, Monsignor Lefebvre understood this well, we must proclaim Christ king, of course, it's the first foundation, because a Lord wants to reign. But if He wants to reign, how will He reign? Also mainly through the priesthood. The restoration of the Catholic priesthood is essential. There is no other solution. You could search for all possible solutions, political, economic, financial, etc., media strategies, whatever you want. You could have all the money in the world to restore the situation. You could not, dear brothers. We must begin with the restoration of the Catholic priesthood. And where should it be restored first? In Rome.
It is in Rome that we must again find a pope who truly has the sense of the traditional Catholic priesthood. So, that is what we are doing this evening during adoration, accompanying our Lord, because one might think that our Lord, during His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, well, saw us.
He saw what we live.
He sweated blood probably seeing all His popes, Pope John Paul II kissing the Quran, all these traitors giving communion anyhow, His body, His precious body, trailing like that in baskets.
And He must have seen all that, our Lord. He saw all these sacrileges, all these offenses.
And so, we will make amends. You see, pray to console our Lord, accompany Him, even if we doze a little, because, there, but all this, my dear brothers, will bear fruit. Certainly, priests will awaken. There are already some who are beginning to realize that something is wrong.
And some even have the courage to tell their bishop, no, I no longer want to obey these things.
And it depends on you, dear brothers, it depends on you. It depends on the faithful who have understood this, who have understood this good fight. Here, we will pray all this in this spirit, of course, and then unite well with the heart of Jesus, with the Eucharistic and sacerdotal heart of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Topic: Maunday Thursday Mass (Read 276 times)