| Editor : Abbé Georges de Nantes | N° 73 – October 2008 |
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A CONFERENCE BY BROTHER BRUNO OF JESUS
at Maison Saint-Joseph - Sunday, 28 September 2008
THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE LITTLE BROTHERS OF THE SACRED HEART
1958 - 2008
Our Father has often related that from the day that he had the project of founding a religious community, he wondered… how to set about it, where to begin? When the moment came, there was nothing simpler! The singing of the first vespers of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows on 14 September 1958 marked the beginning… and the rest followed « from moment to moment » until today…
« The brothers, few in number, will withdraw into hermitages, oases of Peace in the midst of the world, for the praise of the Glory of God. They will live poor there, in solitude and silence.
« Thus will they vigilantly await the return of the Lord that will not be long in coming » (Art. 1)
For fifty years we have risen each morning thinking that perhaps the return of the Lord is for today. This is not a futurology; it is supernatural hope, the mainspring of our brotherly charity, which is always vigilant, active, smiling…
The Lord is coming. Let us be prepared…
One of the bishops who were consulted in 1957, Mgr Guerry, the Archbishop of Cambrai, Brother Gérard’s diocese, declared to him that this sentence would have to be changed:
« Thus will they vigilantly await the return of the Lord that will not be long in coming. »
For him, this « Thessalonian mentality » was no longer acceptable today, any more than it was in the time of St. Paul, « for it is undoubtedly in tens or hundreds of centuries that the Lord will return. » What did he know about it? As Brother Gérard used to say: « I call that thinking that he is God the Father… »
The project of founding a community in the footsteps of Father de Foucauld went back as far as 1956. On the advice and following the mediation of the scholarly Dominican who got us involved in the scientific study of the Qur’an, Fr. Théry, our Father had written the draft of the Rule in one go – out of obedience! – the hundred and twenty articles of a “Provisional Rule” under which we have been living for fifty years… It will be “Provisional” as long as it has not received canonical approbation.
Another bishop, Mgr Richaud, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, declared that it had « a too pronounced eschatologism », that is, focused too much on the end of time, and a regrettable « spirituality of hostility towards the modern world ». Article 11: « The brothers will not believe in the world or its enterprises; they will not place their hope in them, they will not have love for them… » The Abbé de Nantes was unaware that he was taking the opposing view, five years in advance, of the Second Vatican Council during which these same bishops were going to reform the Church for the « tens » or « hundreds of centuries » that remained to be spent on earth, to adapt it to the “demands of the modern world,” and to come to assist its « enterprises »… The complete programme for a “Counter-Reformation” was already contained in the rest of the article:
« … They will, however, believe in the Church, they will live according to her hope and in her charity. She will constantly be the object of their prayers, but above all the object of their admiration. They will identify themselves with her and it is in her that they will experience mystical union with God thrice Holy. »
In the end, it was Mgr Le Couëdic, Bishop of Troyes, who offered the Abbé de Nantes the possibility of coming to carry out his project in his diocese.
In the evening of 14 September 1958, we sang vespers in the chancel stalls of the church of Villemaur. It was not precisely a « hermitage », but an « oasis of peace in the midst of the world ». Yes! The world is a desert, and those who stop off here find peace. For fifty years it has been so, especially in the midst of the sandstorm that arose in this desert almost immediately, starting with the death of Pius XII and the accession of John XXIII less than a month after our foundation.
The Abbé de Nantes was, without delay, going to turn this country rectory into a real hive of activity, like Father de Foucauld at Beni-Abbès. A year passed in fruitful parish “pastoral” activity, but it also extended to a family of “Friends”, the addressees of a regular Letter reflecting the contemplative life of our Father, a disciple of Father de Foucauld.
Then from 1959 on, Villemaur was transformed into an entrenched fort from which the Abbé de Nantes dealt terrible blows to the antichrist Adversary, who was mounting his assault against the Church and Christianity, like Father de Foucauld in his small fort in Tamanrasset. In conformity with our Rule:
« Let them expect, however, the hatred of false brethren and evil shepherds to whom their Order will deal terrible blows. let them accept the persecutions to which the slaves of the Devil, who maintain the peoples in infidelity, will subject them. »
« For, more than all else, the Evil One detests those who announce his final fall, the transient illusion of his reign and the imminent victory of the Lord Jesus. » (Article 119)
He entered the battle in September 1959 in the Letter to My Friends no 58, under the title: “The Mystery of the Church and the Antichrist”:
« I have reached the conclusion that all the individual and social ills from which we suffer are dependent on much deeper evils of far greater strength and which are neither ineluctable nor natural. They are the work of the enemy, of Satan himself. […]
« Once you have seen that, you cannot remain silent! »
He no longer remained silent, until today when, despite the malady that reduces him to silence, « he speaks still », like Abel assassinated by Cain…
« If it were simply a question of world communism and its adepts, or of Muslim fanaticism, which is expanding at a formidable rate, then one could have said that the danger has long been discovered and the enemy sufficiently unmasked. But now we are concerned with a much more agonising form of diabolical domination at the very heart of the Church and as St. Pius X foretold, it is acting insidiously in the name of the Church through her ministers and her institutions, often under cover of authority but always in agreement with and favouring the Church’s outside enemies. I say these things not lightly but with fear and trembling, because at the end of ten years of research I now see the evil in its depth. »
HARBINGERS OF THE STORM.
That was thirty-five years ago – in 1959. Ordained a priest in 1948, he had already understood everything in 1949, as his first articles in Aspects de la France, signed Claude Seyssel, attest.
Since then, since he left the seminary, « always on the alert, always in thorns, on sharp pebbles; I am like a ball in a tennis match, he was able to say along with St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort. It is scarcely pushed to one side when, hit hard, it is sent to the other side. This is the destiny of a poor sinner. This is how I have been without respite and without rest for thirteen years since I left Saint-Sulpice. » (Letter to his sister, July-August 1713) Thus it was for the Abbé de Nantes, to the letter! When he left the seminary in June 1948, he was appointed philosophy and theology professor for the Country Missionary Brothers in October: « I taught them St. Thomas and thus immunised them against the lifelong progressivism and modernism that their elder brothers, trained at Saulchoir [the Dominican scholasticate], had contracted there. » (CRC n° 110, p. 4). His success was such that it very quickly became insupportable for the latter.
On the occasion of the death of Marc Sangnier, for whom the Republic had a national funeral, he had the Letter on the Sillon by St. Pius X read in the refectory. « My students listened to me only too well! Fr. Épagneul bluntly dismissed me in June 1950, going as far as to forbid me to return to fetch my books and see my students who were to be led by religious obedience down very different paths. »
That same summer 1950, he was requested to return no more to St. Bruno’s Parish in Grenoble. Fr. Bolze, its parish priest, said that in the three months of summer, the Abbé de Nantes had demolished their avant-garde apostolate.
The “tennis ball” rebounded and became the chaplain of the Blind Sisters of St. Paul, Boulevard Denfert-Rochereau in Paris. He also studied in order to finish his thesis on The Person and Relation. It was rejected by his thesis master, Canon Lallement, professor of metaphysics, who accused him of Modernism! He was already being torn between progressivists and integrists!
Every two years… In 1952, another hard blow: the Abbé de Nantes was expelled from the diocese of Paris because of his contribution to the Action française journal, Aspects de la France.
« I had to resign myself to interrupting my contribution to a. f. and my theology thesis in order to return to my diocese. Mgr Caillot wanted to appoint me theology professor at the theological seminary of Grenoble, but a cabal kept me from it. After three months of underhanded tricks, I found myself on the streets of Paris, not knowing to which saint I should turn. My boxes of books cluttered my room at Marie-Thérèse [a residence for priests in Paris] and I had no destination for them! The reading of my breviary with its numerous psalms of distress was my only solace that summer. »
This time the ball rebounded to St. Martin’s Oratorian College at Pontoise, where he was an incomparable philosophy professor… so much so that two of his students would not let him out of their sight… until today! The 100 % graduation rate of his students did not prevent him from being chased out by a cabal after two years. After another two years as professor at the College of Normandy in Clères, and after further affronts, would the founding of The Little Brothers of the Sacred Heart of Villemaur provide the “tennis ball” with a resting place ? Indeed not!
THE STORM.
The first clashes took place at the level of the “sector” to which the three parishes of Villemaur, Pâlis, and Planty belonged, together with the priests of the Mission of France from Aix-en-Othe. One of them, during a meeting of the deanery, scoffed at the « thingamajig » in speaking about the monstrance that some used constantly: « If it amuses them, it’s fine with me!... » The parish priest of Villemaur cut him short: « Just whom are you talking about? » He got up, went out slamming the door, returned to Villemaur and started to dig, dig, dig in the garden of the rectory… until he was out of breath… « Just whom are you talking about? » He had meant : « You seem to forget that you are “talking about” Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar! » He then wrote to the priest in question to tell him: « I left because you were speaking ill of the Blessed Sacrament and boasting about having done away with benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the veritable bedrock of the authentic pastoral action of the present Catholic Church. »
Father de Foucauld would not have acted otherwise.
Here is a highly significant incident, harbinger of the storm that would not be long in breaking. At that time, brothers Gérard, Christian and I were in the military in Algeria, in the footsteps of Father de Foucauld, to defend French Algeria that was betrayed precisely by the people from the Mission of France. It was on the subject of this betrayal of Christianity by the men of the Church, accomplices of the government, that the tone was going to rise and important things happen. At the end of its autumn meeting, which was held in Paris from 11 to 13 October 1961, the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops of France published a “Declaration on Violence before the Law of God”. It was a condemnation of all use of force in the service of French Algeria, by a skilful falsification of Catholic morality, according to which all violence was condemnable, all use of force was intrinsically bad, without any distinction made between the aggressor and the person attacked, without any recognition of legitimate defence or the fighting of a just war.
« Peace is supposed to fall on us from above by dint of a unilateral truce and the unconditional “love” of an unrepentant cutthroat. What sheer folly! The surest way to enforce it would be to serve an arrest warrant on the most pure, the most innocent of our colonists and our soldiers, and to accord a clerical amnesty to Yousef Saadi and his gang of cutthroats. » (Letter n° 109, May 1962)
That was exactly what would happen, beginning with the “arrest warrant” served on the Abbé de Nantes himself who recalled to his parishioners from the pulpit « their duties of justice and charity towards their Christian brothers and French citizens who had been handed over to fellagha knives ». He feared nothing and no one. He cited Portugal as an example « over which hangs the luminous apparition of Fatima », and which stood up to the revolutions in Goa, Timor, Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea.
The France of de Gaulle, however, was not the Portugal of Salazar. On Wednesday, 14 March 1962, after Mass, four inspectors presented a search warrant and an order for the parish priest of Villemaur to be kept under police surveillance. Finally the prefect and the bishop agreed to put him under arrest and in solitary confinement in the Major Seminary that was devoid of seminarians, under the guard of « Father Superior »…
He wrote to us from there: « I am indeed quite well here. It is a house arrest without guards and without bolted doors. I had to endure, however, meetings with Monseigneur that were much more distressing than the interrogations of the police. I had to explain my viewpoint and for that I am glad, but I was not listened to and understood and could not be. There is a wall of incomprehension that cuts us off now from our confreres or superiors. »
This was due, above all, to the new moral doctrine taught by the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops of France. A Council, however, was soon going to canonise this doctrine. So? Well! Our Father would stand up to the Council, and to the Pope himself! For « the truth takes precedence over any other consideration, and there is Christian charity only in the truth », he wrote to us. What about the community? Mgr Le Couëdic had obviously attempted blackmail concerning the Order’s future, and Mgr Philippe would do the same in Rome the following year. It did not work, however:
« I expressed my certitude as to our duty of open insurrection in the name of the Church and the Truth. »
The community was none the worse for it, on the contrary! It was united for life, as much and more than by a canonical recognition, postponed sine die due to the fact that, with the Council taking place, revolution was going to spread from the Church of France to the whole world. The first victim of the conciliar revolution was the parish priest of Villemaur.
At the precise moment when the first session of the Council was unfolding in a euphoria of boundless love that was to bring about soon the great universal reconciliation, we – Brother Gérard and I – were refused advancement to Holy Orders (December 1962). This was but the beginning. In a letter dated 10 May 1963, Mgr Le Couëdic announced to our Father, in terms of an overflowing affection, his decision to expel him from his parishes, enjoining him to leave Villemaur « at the latest in mid-June of this year 1963 ».
What promptness! The parishioners requested an audience with Monseigneur. The meeting was stormy, but revealed the substance of the matter. When they attacked the Communists, four municipal counsellors who had triggered the entire affair, Monseigneur put a quick end to it: « Leave the Communists alone. You see, the parish priest must be the priest of everyone; the Communists are just as much his sheep as the others, and it is not the Abbé de Nantes who will bring them back into the fold; the way he sets about it, it is impossible. » This is the Council through and through!
Our Father nevertheless asked him to defer his departure to 15 September, « which would show consideration for my honour and my interests as well as the good of souls and the high esteem that I retain for this diocese, its priests and its bishop… »
At the same time as the letter from Monseigneur, our Father received one from Brother Christian who asked to enter the community! Isn’t that great? Brother Gérard wrote to him: « You must really have a sporting nature to want to incorporate yourself into a small flock whose members are banished in one way or another, with no apparent future in the Church or in the world, who are suspected of integrism, racism and other villainies! It is with the assurance, however, of marching in the truth, of loving and serving the Church, and above all of being called to console the Heart of Jesus; and this gives a strength and a joy that no one will take away from us. »
As for our Father, he replied to Brother Christian by announcing to him his intention of going to Rome:
« Since these events and this terrible encyclical [Pacem in Terris, by John XXIII], I need to go there to see, hear, observe people and submit my thoughts, my case.
« Perhaps I will find the solution for the future there. It is impenetrable to me. My son, in all of this I am nothing and I repeat the words of St. Paul: “Foris pugnæ, intus timores”, external conflicts, internal fears. The grace of God alone supports me and your enlistment among the Little Brothers, which is a meritorious death to yourself and a salvation for your soul, is much more, and first of all it is an entry into a family, the vocation of which is to put nothing above the service of the Truth and the Church.
« It is grand to enter into this family and this obedience at the most sinister, the darkest moment. Then nothing appears on the horizon other than the Cross, resplendent in the darkness. »
The letter was dated 14 May. « Yesterday, I wept when I sang the hymn “J’irai la voir un jour” at the end of the exercises of the month of Mary. I felt as though I no longer had a place on earth where I could rest my head and bring you close to me, as though I no longer had a home but in Heaven and on the Heart of my Mother; but this feeling was ineffably sweet. You will share in it, as a good brother. »
« If we lose everything, are scorned, driven out, what does it matter, because it is in the service of God and souls. I love, we so love, this Truth and this Church for which we are hated that this martyrdom is a joy. The only preoccupation for me is to remain very faithful to the wisdom and prudence of God; for you, my son, it is to espouse my thoughts and decisions. »
Had he not written in the Rule: « They will accept, for both themselves and their Order, to be considered as nothing » (Art. 8)? We were beginning to apply the Rule to the letter. Our Father was in Rome during the Conclave that would elect a successor to John XXIII, who had died at that juncture. He was unable to hold back inexplicable tears during the Mass that he celebrated for Spanish nuns on the very day of the election of Paul VI. He ran to St. Peter’s to receive the benediction of the new Pope, but he arrived too late… He sent us the Letter to My Friends no 144, written from Rome before the election of Paul VI, addressing himself to the cardinals:
« The holy institution of the Conclave permits you to elect a good pope who leads his flock to the sources of Life and Truth. You could also, out of fear of the ravenous wolves, elect a not so good one, who will let evil grow with the good, or even a bad one, who will lead the Church to her ruin without any concern for his infallibility. » This is a premonition of what the pontificate of Paul VI would in fact be.
After him, John Paul I rose up against the ravenous wolves, and he died because of it…
From this trip, our Father brought back the firm resolution to seek no longer any support in the Vatican and to leave everything to Providence. This would also be the resolution of Cardinal Luciani, the Patriarch of Venice, the future John Paul I, who said: « The Devil is in the Vatican! »
Thus it was that we moved into the Maison Saint-Joseph in order to begin there a true community life in accordance with our Rule… on Monday, 16 September 1963! « The brothers, few in number, will withdraw into hermitages. » (Article 1) This time, that is really what it was, at least in the beginning… « as lost children of the Church ». After having celebrated morning Mass in Villemaur, we made our first visit to the Blessed Sacrament in the church of Saint-Parres-lès-Vaudes in the evening, and chanted vespers in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin. On the 18th, Brother Christian entered into the second year at the seminary in Reims. Brother Gérard and I were preparing to pass the degree of theology at the “Catho” [Institut Catholique de Paris], going now and then to Paris to see what things looked like in the courses, but with the Abbé de Nantes as professor, as in 1953 at St. Martin ten years earlier…
We were ready to respond fully to our vocation.
MISSIONARY MONKS
MONKS.
We would not merely content ourselves with awaiting the return of the Lord: « Their contemplative life will be marked by these two characteristics: praise of the Church to the Holy Trinity, and a call of the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit, for the return of her Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. » (Article 10)
Monseigneur had deprived our Father of his office of parish priest, but we nonetheless formed a cell of the Church. We did not break ranks in this large family of the Church, occupied with praising, not a “god” that she would have in common with the “other religions”, a faceless, speechless god, without any physical presence, but the Holy Trinity, that is to say the Three Divine Persons, through the recitation of the Divine Office, meditation, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament:
« Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly, and I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He Himself is offended. Through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I ask of You the conversion of poor sinners. »
It is not my own personal praise. It is the praise of the Church. The monk forms one with the others; the prayers of everyone support me. Mass, Office, Rosary, and Way of the Cross in common, this is our contemplation.
It is not a gaze fixed on the luminous cloud, but the voice, the gesture, the upright or prostrate body, the eyes attentive to the reading, the will devoted to the work of praise, and the intelligence and heart entirely occupied with recapitulating all the truths, splendours, goodness of the Mystery related by Holy Scripture, the life of the Lord and the saints, the manifestations and apparitions of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary:
« Holy Scripture will be the object of their continual meditation. The treasures of patrology, The history of the Church and the lives of the saints, the doctrines of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, the mystical Doctors of the Carmel and of the French School, and the teachings of the Sovereign Pontiffs will be the theological documents sufficient for the continual study of everyone. Everything else must harmonise with and lead back to them. » (Art. 34)
This means that study must have an important place in our life, but it is subordinate to prayer and service of the Church. Otherwise, study fuels pride, self-idolatry and, finally, makes one stupid and malicious… That is why:
« The brothers will mutually inform each other about their works and will find in this general exchange and in the direction of their superiors a sure protection against vain erudition or soul-destroying specialisation. May each one be able to understand the mystical or apostolic fruitfulness of the works of everyone else. » (Art. 33)
« The first fruit of the contemplative life is attachment to the Church, interior fidelity to her thought, and participation in her efforts of sanctification. » (Art. 18)
At the moment when everyone criticises her and wants to “reform” her, this is a fine programme of Counter-Reformation!
MISSIONARIES.
Precisely. Providentially relieved of the care of his parishes, our Father was going to be able to focus all his attention, and consecrate all his time to the study of the acts and teachings of the new pope, Paul VI, and of the second session of the Council. He was led to criticise it rigorously in virtue of the remainder of this article: « The Holy Spirit and the Apostolic Magisterium will find among the humble brothers of this Order a strict correspondence to the lights and inspirations that they divinely pour out incessantly in order to satisfy the needs of each era and each country. » (Art. 18) This excludes all participation in the enterprises of those who either want to separate themselves from the Church or “to open her to the world”:
« The brothers will desire to manifest in everything the wisdom contrary to the madness of the world and the virtues opposed to its vices. So that the Son of Man, when He returns, may find faith on earth at a time when the charity of many has cooled, they will assist the Church by their supernatural faith and generosity more than by all calculation and human industry. » (Art. 19)
This would be the conduct of our Father in 1968 when he was summoned to Rome in order to answer for his criticism of the Council, and then in 1969, when he turned out the integrists who had come to Maison Saint-Joseph one July evening in order to attempt to drag the Abbé de Nantes into their schism!
It was the same in 1973, when he took to Rome a book accusing Pope Paul VI of heresy, schism, and scandal.
This was the opposite of Mgr Lefebvre who feigned total submission to Paul VI, but set himself up on his own in order to maintain the ancient rites, and finally separated himself from the Church!
« faced with the doctrines and societies that the Devil creates in order to deceive, if that were possible, even the elect, they will show forth the power and the splendour of the Church of God. » (Art. 19)
« Faced with the doctrines and societies that the Devil creates », it is not permitted to be “liberal”, on pain of leading astray the elect themselves.
Those are the doctrines that originate in secret societies that are unknown, elusive. Their doctrines, however, are recognisable even in the conciliar texts and pontifical teachings beginning with the encyclical Ecclesiam suam, of 6 August 1964. The purity of the faith of our Father would allow him to discern the truth. Contemplation gave him a pure perception and very rigorous clear-sightedness on what comes from God and what is against God. Thus, it is in his firm, unshakeable opposition that « the power and the splendour of the Church of God » manifests itself, and not in the pomp of the conciliar Assembly flattering the world.
At the school of the Abbé de Nantes, we have not ceased to study, not only to finish our degrees in theology with flying colours, needless to say with such a professor! – but to know and savour the divine mysteries, and to defend them against the errors of the Council and Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, continued today by Benedict XVI.
There was a bright spot, a truce in this exhausting battle: the thirty-three days of the luminous pontificate of John Paul I, during which our Father pronounced his perpetual vows… on 15 September 1978, thirty years ago. Then it resumed for twenty-five years with John Paul II.
THE VICTORY OF THE LORD IS NEAR AT HAND
We saw again at the camp this summer, a film, The Visitor, taken from a novel entitled Catholics, by Brian Moore. The film is from 1973, the year of the first action of our Father in Rome. It expresses the debates and anxieties that troubled the Catholic Church, The Church attacked from all sides, in the years that we studied during this camp: 1966-1978, from the Post-Council to the death of Paul VI.
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1921 into a Catholic family of nine children, Moore lost his faith in his youth. This film expresses well the malady of his soul, to which we ourselves are exposed in these times of apostasy.
Placing himself in the circumstances of the years that followed the Council, he presents a visitor sent by the Vatican – described, in an extraordinary anticipation, as an enormous administration where there is no longer the Faith – to a Benedictine monastery isolated on an island along the Irish coast. They continue to celebrate the Tridentine Mass there, but the Father Abbot has also lost his faith. Finally, out of obedience, but also out of real and profound indifference, the Father Abbot submits to Rome and abandons the Tridentine Mass… without regaining the Faith for all that! The end! It is truly depressing!
The author cannot conceive of anyone escaping this massive, pervasive, and universal loss of faith, neither in Rome nor in the heart of Donegal, in Ireland. Even if we suppose that a Father Abbot continues to celebrate the Mass of St. Pius V somewhere, and remains the only one in the world to believe in and teach original sin, Redemption, the Cross, inevitably this man will say one fine day: « All is lost! » Perhaps his monks will have confidence in him, but he, alone, at the top of this very small pyramid of his monastery, the day when he says to himself: « Fundamentally, is all that true? » who will come to support his faith? No one.
Then, the last people attached to the Tradition will feign belief in it, but they will not really believe. Either they will be ignorant, inferior monks, or else people who will simulate a faith that has been lost long ago, because it will have been lost by everyone. This is all that the author of the film can imagine, having himself lost his faith. Thus, he was unable to represent for us a saint preserving his community in an impious world, keeping the dogma of the Faith, truly believing it.
Our Father imagined a better scenario from which a beautiful film could be made. It is a Christmas tale, published for Christmas 1967 in the supplement to number 3 of The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the XXth Century:
« The bell rings interminably in the frosty night. The monks gathered under the cloister, hunched in their ample white cowls, enter into the church for Christmas matins. It is very cold and few are the faithful lost in the darkness of the large nave. Soon rises up the magnificent and sweet chant of the invitatory: “Christus natus est nobis: venite adoremus”…
« Yet the fervour, the insistent joy of the Gregorian melody, which the cantor at the lectern does his utmost to make manifest, does not succeed in warming hearts. Sadness overwhelms these men of God and these few people, despite Christmas. It seems that at the memory of the ancient Christian elation, their sorrow, their anxieties, are even more burdensome and dampen every upwelling of joy. »
There follows a description of the great pity that afflicted the Church of God then: « This monastery subsisted, isolated, beaten by the floodtide of general hostility. »
A Visitor arrives in the middle of the Midnight Mass, « a voyager slowed down by the snow. He presents himself to Father Prior, kissing the ground to implore mercy for his tardiness. Then he goes to the last place in the chancel. I am unable to put a name to this face. His habit is ours; he is a brother of our Order, but who? Where does he come from in this night, with this cold, and on what mission? In any case his presence is pleasant to us, as a reminder of our union with many other centres of fidelity and resistance, Catholic brethren scattered throughout the world, also persecuted and scorned, but attached to us by the very strong bonds of the same tenacity, the same love. Yes, already we were consoled. This sweet cheerfulness, however, changes into a suave and overflowing joy when, after the Gospel, having requested the benediction of the Father like the least among us, he turns towards the brothers and towards the people, motioning to them to be seated. We have the feeling that something grand, marvellous is coming true and we do not dare believe that it is not a dream. The cold ceases. All of us, our faces turned towards him, we fervently await his words.
« “Why be afraid, he says to us, men of little love? Why do you hesitate to rejoice at the Light that shines, once again this night, on this hill, in the darkness of a depraved world?” »
You have identified Him: « You have My Word… You also have My Cross… You also have My Body… »
« It was at the moment of the consecration that He disappeared in a ray of light. »
We are not novelists, but we have the Faith. It is not a question of making a film; it is a question of saving our faith. It is a question, however, of understanding that the main temptation of our time, and which may become even worse in the years to come, will be to say: When everyone has lost the Faith, why will I still keep it? The Devil is counting on this. The weapons of the Devil at the present hour are all-powerful, terrifying weapons. Why? Because if truly the Church, in her generality, loses the Faith, everyone will say: I do not see why I should be more intelligent than all the others and why I should keep it!
Thus, we must re-read Article 119 of our Rule, which anticipates this extreme:
« May the brothers and sisters expect, however, the hatred of the false brethren and the bad shepherds to whom their Order will deal terrible blows. may they accept the persecutions that the slaves of the Devil, who maintain the peoples in infidelity, will make them suffer, for more than anything else, the Evil One detests those who announce his final fall, the transient illusion of his reign and the imminent victory of the Lord Jesus. »
In order to denounce the snare of the Devil and avoid it, it is necessary – and it suffices – to say that Satan will be rejected and the whole world will be converted and will recover the Faith from a monastery that will have kept the bright flame of the fire of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Do you follow me? This is our whole vocation.
We announce the final fall of the Evil One. It seems as though everything is against us. It seems that everything is going against the true Faith, that the Church is on the verge of disappearing. Well! We have the Faith and we say that they are only infernal powers; on the day that God wills, these powers will crumble.
We know, with certitude, that in the end, Christ will prevail. We are guaranteed « the final fall of the Devil and the transient illusion of his reign ». The present power of the Devil is only an illusion that cannot last. It is the strength of our demonstrations of Catholic Counter-Reformation that gives us an absolute certainty. The power of Communism in China, in Vietnam, in Colombia? It is an illusion. Freemasonry in Manhattan, likewise, and the increase in power of Islam is illusory. The real country still exists, not only in France, but also in Vietnam, Colombia, Algeria. In this, we are not progressivists. We do not give ourselves over to any illusion in vogue, to any propaganda of pseudo-institutions, pseudo-civilisations, pseudo-religions, pseudo-doctrines. All of that only lasts because of the weakness of the good, the disorder of the Church, the failings of men of the Church in their faith, in their fight for the Faith. It is not solid!
On the other hand, the “Visitor” sent by the Vatican in this film is persuaded that we are entering into an era of definitive civilisation, that we will never reconsider the achievements of socialism, mechanisation, the liberty of man, etc. He is absolutely convinced of it and he loses his faith.
As for us, we say: yes, perhaps in the depths of Ireland, there are still some who believe, but the true Faith that will save the world is that which, in the heart of Paris, in the heart of civilisation, will announce the final fall of the Devil, « the transient illusion of his reign »…
« And the imminent victory of the Lord Jesus ». This is the specific characteristic of our Rule. Part of our vocation is to say: « It will come soon! » This is in contrast to those who moan saying: « We will not see that! Perhaps a change will take place, but not before a hundred years! » Never have we heard our Father speak thus! But:
« I am always expecting it for tomorrow morning. Why? Because Christ has only to breathe on the power of the Devil and it disappears. It is not solid. I say this not only in virtue of my religious faith, but also in virtue of my doctrinal and political analysis of current events: “It will not last!” » (cf. Is 7:7 !)
This is our faith, enlightening our analysis of political matters themselves, which gives us to see them with clean and true eyes, while the others are blinded by their apostasy.
We have absolutely nothing in common with a monastery lost along a creek in Ireland, where they continue to say the Mass of St. Pius V with the same number of candles as fifty years ago, to be sure to lose nothing! No. We go to Mass at the parish, quite simply, at Saint-Parres-lès-Vaudes!
This is precisely what distinguishes us from the integrists, even if the difference of opinion that separates us is very painful. This is what is missing in the film: the third way, the CCR, the only path of salvation.
We understand easily that it may be the destiny of the Father Abbot of an integrist monastery to lose his faith and to continue to keep up appearances as though nothing was the matter! The integrist who had refused to examine, to “get involved in politics”, to analyse anything of the modern world, has stopped thinking: I keep my traditions, I stay home more and more withdrawn from everything and I no longer agree to obey anyone, in any matter! One fine day, the temptation to say to himself: « I am the object of an illusion » will prevail. This is not, however, our case because our role is not to keep traditions; it is to analyse the modern world in the light of our Faith and to say what comes from the Devil and what comes from God.
On the other hand, if you do not want to accept the new Mass, but keep the ancient Mass, with the asperges as well, while saying that the Pope and the Council are very good, and that it is the tide of history – because that does not hold together – one day you will lose your faith!
While we simply say:
« Change the Pope, give us a good Pope! If tomorrow the Pope dies and is replaced by a good Pope who does his job, the restoration of Christianity will begin! » This is what we experienced during the thirty-three days of the pontificate of John Paul I… Thus, apostasy is not fatal.
The Devil makes it believed that his taking possession of the world is progressive, implacable, irresistible, and that, one day or another, he will dominate everything. The person, however, who understands the Message of Our Lady of Fatima, the “Secret” of Mary, knows that this domination of Satan is a punishment for the incredulity with which the Church welcomed the promises of Our Lady, and of her refusal to obey Her demands. It is the “bad Christians” who earn us that, and it is the sin of everyone. The Virgin of Fatima, however, has said there will be punishments, and then her Immaculate Heart will triumph.
We will return to Christendom.
I hope that you are well convinced of it. We need, more than ever, to preach the Counter-Reformation and reaction against what is destroying us. We need to conduct ourselves as valorous soldiers of Christ in order to combat Hell without a spirit of retreat. While the Devil would tolerate leaving a small chapel to subsist there, in the depths of a more primitive region, in order not to seem too persecuting, he will do all he can to suppress us, it is obvious. Our Father warned us about it, and never let himself be reduced to silence:
1° either by the persecutions of civil or ecclesiastical authorities;
2° or by the dissidence that attempted to destroy our community in 1989 by bringing to a head « the hatred of false brethren » provided for in Article 119;
3° or by the exile that only succeeded in 1996 in procuring him the occasion to put into practice Article 73 of our Rule, according to which « reclusion may be requested from the Father General as a privilege or imposed by him as a remedy to the infidelity of the brothers. It will last at least a year but will not be longer than three years. »
It lasted three months, enough for the “recluse” to bring back his “Auto-da-fe”, an absolute weapon against the Council!... without experiencing the slightest hesitation in his faith, which he instilled in us together with an unfailing hope, never growing weary of recalling to us the words of Christ: « Take courage, I have conquered the world! »
Amen!