First published in France by Editions Albin Michel

First English translation by Society of Saint Pius X—Great Britain 1986

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lefebvre, Marcel, 1905-1991.

[Itinéraire spirituel. English]

Spiritual journey : according to St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa theologiæ : revised translation / Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. -- Second edition.

pages cm

Previously published: Kansas City, Mo. : Angelus Press, 1991.

Includes bibliographical references.

1.  Catholic Church--Doctrines. 2.  Catholic traditionalist movement. 3.  Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274. Summa theologica.  I. Title.

BX1751.2.L4292 2011

230’.2--dc23

2011050134

©1991, 2011 The Society of Saint Pius X

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Spiritual Journey

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

According to St. Thomas Aquinas

in his Summa Theologiæ

Revised Translation

2915 Forest Avenue

Kansas City, Missouri 64109

Preface

The pages which follow are addressed especially to you, priests and seminarians of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X, to you who, on this day, will renew your promises in this Catholic and Roman society, officially approved by the Ordinary and by the Roman authorities.

If the Holy Ghost permits me to put in writing the spiritual thoughts which follow, before entering—if it please God—into the bosom of the Holy Trinity, I will be allowed to realize the dream of which He gave me a glimpse one day in the Cathedral of Dakar. In the face of the progressive degradation of the priestly ideal, my dream was to transmit the Catholic Priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ in all its doctrinal purity and in all its missionary charity, just as He conferred it on His Apostles, just as the Roman Church always transmitted it until the middle of the twentieth century.

How should I carry out what appeared then to me as the sole solution to revive the Church and Christianity? It was still a dream, but there appeared to me already the need, not only to confer the authentic priesthood, to teach not only the sana doctrina approved by the Church, but also to transmit the profound and unchanging spirit of the Catholic priesthood and of the Christian spirit, essentially bound to the great prayer of Our Lord which His Sacrifice on the Cross expresses eternally.

The priestly truth is totally dependent upon this prayer; that is why I have always been haunted by the desire to show the means for true priestly sanctification according to the fundamental principles of Catholic doctrine concerning Christian and priestly sanctification.

Gladly, I borrow the ever so expressive words of St. Paul: “For we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves merely as your servants in Jesus” (II Cor. 4:5).

Remember your prelates, who have spoken the word of God to you. Consider how they ended their lives, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today, yes, and forever. Jesus Christus heri, hodie, et in sæcula (Heb. 13:7-8).

Behold their faith!

It is because the reign of Our Lord is no longer the center of attention and of activity for those who are our præpositi [our prelates], that they lose the sense of God and of the Catholic Priesthood, and that we can no longer follow them.

O Immaculate Virgin, who, by the extraordinary privilege of your Immaculate Conception, dost teach us all of the fundamental truths of our Faith and hast merited to be the Mother of the Eternal Priest, form in us the Priest of Jesus Christ and make us less unworthy to participate in this Divine Priesthood!

† Marcel Lefebvre

On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception

of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1989

Prologue

Very dear Readers,

At the close of a long life (for I was born in 1905, and I now see the year 1990), I can say that it has been marked by exceptional world events: three world wars, that which took place from 1914 to 1918, that which took place from 1939 to 1945, and that of the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965.

The disasters caused by these three wars, and especially by the last of them, are incalculable in the domain of material ruins, but even more so in the spiritual realm. The first two paved the way for the war inside the Church by facilitating the ruin of Christian institutions and the domination of Freemasonry, which has become so powerful that it has deeply infiltrated the governing body of the Church with its liberal, modernist doctrine.

By the grace of God, instructed as early as my seminary days in Rome about the mortal danger of these influences by the Rector of the French Seminary, the venerated Father Le Floch, and by the professors, Reverend Fathers Voegtli, Frey, and Le Rohellec, I was able to verify, during my entire priestly life, how their calls to vigilance, based on the teachings of the Popes and above all of St. Pius X, were justified.

I was able to verify at my own cost how this vigilance was justified, not only doctrinally, but also by the hatred it provoked in the liberal laity and clerics—a diabolical hatred.

The innumerable contacts occasioned by the duties conferred upon me with the highest civil and ecclesiastical authorities in numerous countries, particularly in France and in Rome, showed me very clearly that opinion was generally favorable to all those who were disposed to compromise with the liberal, Masonic ideas, and unfavorable towards those determined to remain firm in traditional doctrine.

I believe I can say that few persons in the Church have been able to become as well informed as I have been able myself, not by my own will, but by the will of Providence.

As a missionary in Gabon, contact with civil authorities was obviously more frequent than as Vicar at Le Marais-de-Lomme in the Diocese of Lille. This time of mission was marked by the Gaullist invasion; we were able to witness the victory of Freemasonry against the Catholic order of Pétain. It was the invasion of the barbarians without faith or law!

Perhaps one day, my memoirs will give some details on these years from 1945 to 1960, and will illustrate this war inside the Church. Read the books of M. Marteaux on this period; they are revealing.

The rupture between Liberalism and the doctrine of the Church was growing both in Rome, and outside Rome.

The Liberals were able to choose Popes like John XXIII and Paul VI, causing their doctrine to triumph in the Council, a marvelous means of making the whole Church adopt their errors.

I was present at the dramatic contest between Cardinal Bea, representing Liberalism, and Cardinal Ottaviani, representing the doctrine of the Church, when it was clear after the vote of the seventy cardinals that the rupture was a fact. To those who were not engaged in self-deception it was evident that the support of the Pope would go to the Liberals. And now this problem was exhibited in broad daylight! What would the bishops do, aware of the danger which threatened the Church? All could see the triumph, within the Church, of new ideas, born of the Revolution and the Lodges: 250 cardinals and bishops rejoiced at their victory, 250 were horror-stricken, 1,750 tried not to ask questions, but simply followed the Pope: “...we shall see to it later!”

The Council proceeds and the reforms multiply as quickly as possible. The persecution of traditional cardinals and bishops begins, and soon we witness the persecution of priests and religious everywhere who attempt to preserve Tradition. It is an open war against the Church’s past and her institutions: “Aggiornamento, aggiornamento!”

The result of this Council is much worse than that of the Revolution; the executions and the martyrdoms take place in silence; tens of thousands of priests and religious abandon their vows; others leave the religious life; cloisters disappear; vandalism invades the churches; altars are destroyed; crosses disappear; the seminaries and novitiates are emptied.

The civil societies that are still Catholic become secular under pressure from Roman authorities: Our Lord should no longer reign here below!

Catholic teaching becomes ecumenical and liberal. Catechisms are changed and are no longer Catholic. The Gregorian University in Rome has become coeducational, with St. Thomas no longer the basis of the teaching.

In face of this universal and public state of affairs, what is the duty of bishops who are officially responsible for the institution which is the Church? What will they do? Many consider this institution to be untouchable, even if it no longer conforms to the end for which it was instituted! Those who occupy the seat of Peter and the bishops are responsible. They are the ones who said that the Church had to adapt to the times, that the excesses would pass, that it is easier to accept the Revolution in their diocese—lead it rather than resist it.

Among traditionalists, a good number, henceforward despised by Rome, handed in their resignations. Some, like Archbishop Morcillo of Madrid and Archbishop MacQuaid of Dublin, would die of sadness, as well as many good priests.

It is obvious that if many bishops had acted like Msgr. de Castro Mayer, Bishop of Campos in Brazil, the ideological revolution within the Church could have been limited, because we must not be afraid to affirm that the current Roman authorities, since John XXIII and Paul VI, have made themselves active collaborators of international Jewish Freemasonry and of world socialism. John Paul II is above all a communist-loving politician at the service of a world communism retaining a hint of religion. He openly attacks all of the anti-communist governments and does not bring, by his travels, any Catholic revival.

These conciliar Roman authorities cannot but oppose savagely and violently any reaffirmation of the traditional Magisterium. The errors of the Council and its reforms remain the official standard consecrated by the Profession of Faith of Cardinal Ratzinger in March 1989.

No one denied that I was recognized as an official member of the episcopal corps. The Annuario Pontificio confirmed it, presenting me as Archbishop-Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Tulle, until the moment of the consecration of bishops in 1988. It is under this title of Catholic Archbishop that I have rendered service to the Church, ravaged by its own people, by founding a Society for the formation of true Catholic priests, the Priestly Society of St. Pius X, duly approved by Msgr. Charrière, Bishop of Fribourg, Switzerland, and endowed with a letter of commendation by Cardinal Wright, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy.

I rightly foresaw that this Society—which wanted to be attached to all the traditions of the Church: doctrinal, disciplinary, liturgical, etc.—would not remain for very long approved by the liberal destroyers of the Church. But the mystery is that there were not fifty or a hundred bishops to act as Bishop de Castro Mayer and myself did, as true successors of the Apostles against impostors!

It is not pride and self-importance to say that God in His merciful wisdom saved the heritage of His priesthood, of His grace, of His revelation, through these two bishops. It is not we who chose ourselves, but God has guided us in upholding all the riches of His Incarnation and of His Redemption. Those who feel they must minimize these riches and deny them can only condemn us. This can only confirm their schism with Our Lord and His Kingdom, by means of their secularism and their apostate ecumenism.

I can hear them say: “You exaggerate! There are many good bishops who pray, who have the Faith, who are edifying...” They may have been saints, but as soon as they accept the false religious liberty, hence the secular State; false ecumenism, and hence the admission of many ways of salvation; liturgical reform, and hence the practical negation of the Sacrifice of the Mass; the new catechisms with all their errors and heresies—they are officially contributing to the revolution within the Church and to its destruction!

The current Pope and bishops no longer hand down Our Lord Jesus Christ, but rather a sentimental, superficial, charismatic religiosity, through which, as a general rule, the true grace of the Holy Ghost no longer passes. This new religion is not the Catholic religion; it is sterile, incapable of sanctifying society and the family.

One single thing is necessary for the continuation of the Catholic Church: fully Catholic bishops, who make no compromise with error; who found Catholic seminaries, where young candidates for the priesthood can nourish themselves with the milk of true doctrine, placing Our Lord Jesus Christ at the center of their intellects, of their wills, of their hearts; who have a living faith, profound charity, a devotion without bounds, uniting them to Our Lord. They will ask, as did St. Paul, that we pray for them, that they advance in understanding and wisdom of the Mysterium Christi, of the mystery of Christ, where they will discover all of the divine treasures.

Let them prepare themselves to preach Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ Crucified... “importune, opportune,” “in season, out of season” (II Tim. 4:2).

Let us be Christians! So that all the human, rational sciences may be enlightened by the light of Christ, who is the Light of the World and who gives to each man his intelligence when he comes into the world.

The evil of the Council is the ignorance of Jesus Christ and of His Kingdom. It is the evil of the fallen angels, the evil which is the way to hell.

It is because St. Thomas had an exceptional knowledge of the Mystery of Christ that the Church chose him as her Doctor. Let us love to read and re-read the papal encyclicals on St. Thomas and the necessity of following him in the formation of priests, so that we shall not hesitate to proclaim the richness of his writings and, above all, of his Summa Theologiæ, in communicating to us an unchanging faith and the surest means to arrive at prayer and contemplation, those celestial shores which will then never be separated from our souls, inflamed by the spirit of Jesus, regardless of the ups and downs of this earthly life.

† Marcel Lefebvre

St. Michel-en-Brenne

January 29, 1990

Feast of St. Francis de Sales

Dedication

Under the Patronage of the Virgin Mary

Desirous of placing those who aspire to sanctity—and especially to priestly sanctity—in the best condition for arriving there, it seemed to me indispensable to evoke the particular action which the Virgin Mary has by the will of God in this effort to attain holiness, and this even before considering the elements and essential steps towards sanctity.

If the Word Incarnate, who had absolutely no need of a mother to come among us to accomplish the Redemption, wished that His divine person should receive a body and a soul in the bosom of Mary and that, during thirty out of thirty-three years, He should remain subject to His Mother and be, in a certain way, formed by Mary, how can we imagine that we, poor sinful creatures, have no need of the effective aid of Mary to form us into Christians, and priests?

We will have, I hope, the occasion to speak more completely of this necessary influence of Mary for the sanctification of our souls, but it seemed to me necessary to evoke this condition sine qua non of our sanctification right from the beginning in order that this study be entirely made under her protection and with her help.

“Tota pulchra es, O Maria, et macula non est in te—

Thou art all fair, O Mary, and there is not a stain in thee.”

Spiritual Journey

According to St. Thomas Aquinas

O Sapientia, quæ ex ore Altissimi prodiisti,

attingens a fine usque ad finem,

fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia,

veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiæ.[1]

This is what Our Lord, coming among us, will teach us. He is Wisdom Incarnate; He is the Prophet; He is the Priest; He is the King. His divine soul is the temple housing all these riches.

Is there a cradle, or the birth of a child among men, over which has shone in an incomparable fashion all the splendors of God’s government in the world? Yes, it is the cradle and the birth of the Child who will soon appear as the way or the path for the return of man to God (I, Q. 119, Art. 2, ad 4).

In 1945-47, having had to leave Africa by decision of the Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, where I had been since 1932, to take direction of the philosophy scholasticate for the French Province situated at Mortain, I was thus responsible for spiritual conferences.  To plan them, I relied on the treatment of virtues in the Summa Theologiæ, and I drafted a few notes which helped me to give these conferences.

The years have passed, my convictions on the subject of the treasure represented by the Summa Theologiæ, in conformity with the constant Magisterium of the Church, have only grown stronger.

Given that the Summa of St. Thomas represents the framework of knowledge of the Faith for each seminarian or priest who wishes, according to the desire of the Church, to enlighten his intelligence with the light of Revelation and to acquire accordingly divine wisdom, it seems to me supremely desirable that these priestly souls find in this Summa not only the light of faith, but also the source of sanctity, of a life of prayer and contemplation, of a total and unreserved offering of themselves to God by Our Lord Jesus Christ Crucified, thus preparing themselves and preparing the souls which are entrusted to them for a blessed life in the bosom of the Holy Trinity.

This ideal is without doubt much too lofty for my capacities. I hope that, with the grace of God, priests of the Society more gifted than I undertake to put together a spiritual summa from the Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas. But choosing some principal ideas from the Summa, I will try to focus attention on the immense spiritual richness  that it contains, and especially on the spiritual security procured by these meditations based on an enlightened faith and not on religious sentimentalism or on a subjectivist charismaticism.

May these modest meditations inspire a spiritual immutability, a sharing in the immutability of God!

I

God

According to the example of St. Thomas and following him, our reflections will be based on the Faith, on Revelation, and eventually on arguments of reason. “Justus ex fide vivit”: the just man, the holy man lives by faith, because faith carries in it, like a germ the Beatific Vision; and this is the end for which we were created. Faith elevates the light of our understanding and confers on it an incomparable wisdom.

The first subject of study presented in the Summa Theologiæ is God. That is also the first subject of the prayer of Our Lord: “Our Father who art in heaven.” It is the first affirmation of our Credo: “I believe in God...” It is the First Commandment: “You shall worship one God.” For it is God who is the first good of man, and also the last, his origin and his end. His happiness everyday, as well as for eternity, is God. From its first hours of consciousness, the soul of a baby must turn toward God and open itself to that great sun which God is, “qui illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum—who enlighteneth every man who cometh into this world” (Jn. 1:9).

Blessed are the angels who have written in their hearts “quis ut Deus—who is like God?” and who have not stumbled in the test.

Blessed is the Virgin Mary, immaculate in her conception, who ever turned her soul towards God from her tenderest childhood.

Blessed is the soul of Our Lord, illuminated by the Beatific Vision from the instant of His creation.

Why do we encounter these excuses, these delays, this blindness in the knowledge and love of God, even by many who are baptized? This obvious fact is what inspired the lamentations of Our Lord, in the Psalms, in the Reproaches of Good Friday, in the first chapter of St. John. One might conclude that His agony in the Garden of Olives resulted from the sight of atheism in action. Love is not loved: “non requirunt Deum...non receperunt.”

Does this drama leave us indifferent? We are indeed baffled by this reality of man’s ignorance of God. What can we do about it? All of modern society encourages this ignorance. But isn’t there in ourselves too much ignorance of God? Should we not make an effort to meditate on God, to approach this unfathomable mystery of “the Alpha and the Omega,” the Principium et finis—the beginning and the end—of the mystery of love which is expressed in the Word Incarnate?

St. Thomas invites us to know God better, in His Unity, in His Trinity, in His works.

Cannot this contemplation of the Blessed Trinity by faith and by the grace of the Holy Ghost procure for us a foretaste, a fragrance of this happiness?

Here are some studies which can help complete or explain the teachings of the Summa:

—The Divine Perfections, by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange;

—The Commentaries on the Summa Theologiæ of Fr. Pègues and of Fr. Hugon;

—The Divine Names by Fr. Lessius;

—God and The Trinity by Fr. Emmanuel;

—Christ, the Ideal of the Monk, Chapter I, by Abbot Marmion.

It is not here a question of making a theological study, but of drawing a little nearer to the great reality that is God, humbling ourselves before His attributes and infinite perfections, adoring and ardently offering ourselves to Him in imitation of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.

A little more knowledge of God’s infinity and of His infinite Charity and Mercy should make us progress in the love of God, distancing us from sin and confirming us in virtue. It is, moreover, the path followed by all the saints, under the influence of the Spirit of Jesus.

The Existence of God

Faith is the most certain knowledge to which we can refer. It teaches us the existence of God: “Credo in unum Deum Patrem omnipotentem, creatorem coeli et terra, visibilium et invisibilium.”

Faith teaches that God is a Spirit: “Deus spiritus est.” It is Our Lord who taught this to the Samaritan woman. He is therefore an all-powerful Spirit who created everything.

There was a time when the world did not exist, when God was alone in eternity, in His sanctity and His perfect and infinite happiness, having no need to create. Our Lord, at the beginning of His High-Priestly prayer, made reference to this period: “And now do Thou, Father, glorify me with Thyself, with the glory I had with Thee before the world existed” (Jn. 17:5).

Faith teaches us that reason can and should lead to the conclusion that God exists, and St. Paul, in his first epistle (Rom. 1:18 ff.), reproaches men severely for not having known the true God who declares Himself by His works.

In effect, everything which is, everything that we are, proclaims the existence of God and sings His divine perfections. All of the Old Testament, and particularly the Psalms and the Wisdom Books, sing the glory of the Creator. That is why the Psalms have a prime place in liturgical and priestly prayers.

It is good to meditate on the creation “ex nihilo sui et subjecti—made of nothing” by the simple decision of the Creator; “qui putas se esse aliquid, cum nihil sit, ipse se seducit—if any man think himself to be some thing, whereas he is nothing, he deceiveth himself” (Gal. 6:3).

The more we look deeper into this reality, the more we are astonished at the all-powerful nature of God and at our own nothingness, at the necessity for each creature of being constantly sustained in its existence, under pain of ceasing to exist, of returning to nothing. This is exactly what faith and philosophy teach us.

This meditation and this realization should plunge us into humility and profound adoration, establishing us in this attitude just as immutably as the unchanging God Himself. We should be filled with unbounded trust toward Him who is All, and who decided to create us and save us.

With what devotion and sincerity should we, every morning at the beginning of Matins, recite Psalm 94: “Venite, exsultemus....Venite adoremus....Quoniam ipsius est mare et ipse fecit illud et aridam fundaverunt manus ejus....Venite adoremus et procidamus ante Deum, ploremus coram Domino, qui fecit nos, quia ipse est Dominus Deus noster; nos autem populus ejus et oves pascuæ ejus.”[2]

How can we not give thanks to the Church which places these words on our lips to express the most profound sentiments of our created souls—the souls of creatures!

If creation is a great mystery, it is that God is for us the Great Mystery and will remain so even in the Beatific Vision. “Nemo Deum vidit unquam, nisi qui ex Deo est—No one hast seen the Father but he who is of God” (Jn. 6:46). Only the Word and the Holy Ghost see God, being of God and one God with the Father.

A small glimpse of the attributes and perfections of God, that spiritual reality which encompasses all, which enlivens all, which sustains everything in existence, cannot but deepen the Divine Mystery for our greater satisfaction, edification, and sanctification. St. Thomas said this: The more perfectly we know God here below, the better will we understand that He surpasses all that the mind can know (II-II, Q. 8, Art. 3).

Faith coming to the aid of reason convinces us of the existence of God. It opens to us marvelous horizons on the intimacy of God by Revelation and especially by the Incarnation of the Divine Word. Thereupon we must enquire whether we can give God a name which would be proper to God and would help us to know Him better.

This is precisely what God did in the Old Testament as in the New. These are the words of God to Moses: “But,” said Moses to God, “when I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?” God replied, “I Am Who Am.” Then He added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I Am sent me to you” (Ex. 3:13-14). And Our Lord expressed the same with regard to the Jews, who said to Him: “ ‘Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I Am’” (Jn. 8: 57-58).

We will never cease to admire these luminous responses, which correspond to the conclusions of our reason. “God is”; He is ens a se, Being in and from Himself; all other beings are ab alio and do not have the cause of their being in themselves.

These simple affirmations are an inexhaustible source of meditation and sanctification. May this be our gaze upon God, which loses itself in the infinite! Whether we behold the relations of the creature to the Creator or the nothingness of the creature, we are in the face of what is most true, most profound and most mysterious in God and in ourselves.

II

The Perfections of God

We ought to remember during this entire contemplation of God that we must apply all that is said of God to Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God. We cannot separate Jesus Christ from God. We cannot separate the Christian religion from Jesus Christ, who is God, and we must affirm and believe that only the Catholic religion is the Christian religion. These affirmations have, as a result, inescapable conclusions that no ecclesiastical authority can contest: outside of Jesus Christ and the Catholic religion, that is, outside of the Church, there is no salvation, no eternal life. Whoever is saved attains to everlasting life by his adhesion to the Mystical Body of Our Lord.

Another consequence: all of the societies Our Lord created must necessarily work together, in accordance with their entire purpose, to make souls become Catholic and to keep them Catholic, in order to procure their eternal salvation, which is the end of all Creation, of the Incarnation and of the Redemption.

These conclusions are timeless and unchangeable. They are the expression of the whole Revelation and were the directive principles of the entire Church until the Second Vatican Council.

This “Conciliar Church” is imbued with the principles of 1789. These are Masonic principles with respect to religion and religions in general and with respect to civil society. Its foundation was an imposture inspired by Hell for the destruction of the Catholic religion, of its Magisterium, of its priesthood, and of the Sacrifice of Our Lord.

This new Church can no longer sing the praises of Jesus Christ, universal King of nations, can no longer have the thoughts of Our Lord with respect to the world. That is why the whole spirit of the liturgy has been modified by the changing of a multitude of details in texts and gestures.

Contemplation of the Word Incarnate as it is sung in all the liturgical feasts is henceforward rendered impossible for the new Church. We must, at any price, remain faithful to the spirit of the Catholic Church if we wish to devote ourselves to contemplation of the Divine Mysteries, of the mystery of the Incarnate Word and the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

Divine perfections are distinguished from divine operations, although nothing can be separated in God. It is the weakness of our mind which constrains us to study God in a human manner.

God is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. These are the attributes of the Being that God is. God, possessing all being in Himself, possesses therefore truth, goodness, and beauty in their complete perfection. The more beings participate in the Divine Being, the more they participate in His Truth, His Goodness, and His Beauty.

Our knowledge of God is quite imperfect here below, and it will still be so in heaven, because one would have to be God to comprehend Him in all His Perfection and His Being. It is thus that the Three Divine Persons know one another.

One way towards a greater knowledge of God consists in asserting that He does not share the limitations of creatures (which otherwise serve to prove the existence of God). We thereby cannot countenance any imperfection in God; God is perfect. We deny any limitation; He is infinite. We deny any limit in space; He is everywhere, omnipresent. We deny any limit in time; He is eternal. We deny any change; He is immutable.

One should cite at this instance numerous texts of Holy Scripture. It can be said that the entire Old Testament is a hymn to the infinite perfection of God. We marvel at the spirit of adoration of the grandeur and omnipotence of God, of His Providence in the history of humanity, and especially in the history of Israel, preparing for the Messiah.

Then the New Testament follows as the manifestation, the epiphany of the Holy Trinity, of His Infinite Charity, of His unfathomable mercy for the sinners that we are.

With what profound conviction should we pronounce the liturgical prayers which remind us unceasingly of these divine perfections! Then humility, silence, and everything which distances us from the world would come to us naturally. We would live in God, in the Holy Trinity, in Jesus Christ and by Jesus Christ, in this ocean of goodness, mercy, and omnipotence.

Then Jesus Christ will take more and more that true place in us which is due to Him as God Incarnate. Then His Eucharist, Sacrifice and Sacrament, will become the center of our lives and of our thoughts, through which we will penetrate into the immense reality of the Holy Trinity.

III

The Divine Life

After the marvels of the infinite grandeur of the Divine Being considered in a rather static manner, let us try to begin the meditation and contemplation of God in His dynamism, in His life, and in His operations, both internal and external. It is a marvelous world that we enter, like Moses approaching the burning bush. Let us purify our hearts and our souls in order to ask the Spirit of God for a ray of light, as the light of glory in heaven will be, to discover a little of the burning light, which is the divine Light of which St. John spoke with such eloquence and conviction in his Gospel and his Epistles: “The message we have heard from Him and announce to you is this: that God is light, and in Him is no darkness” (I Jn. 1:5). “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is charity. By this hath the charity of God appeared towards us, because God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we may live by Him” (I Jn. 4:8-9).

“Deus caritas est—God is charity.” These are without doubt the words which most perfectly illuminate the divine operations, internal as well as external.

We may say in truth that God is Trinity because He is Charity. How could He be Charity if there were only one person in God? God is then a burning furnace of charity in which the Three Divine Persons know and love one another eternally.

Thus the Office of the Holy Trinity crowns the entire liturgical year.

The Holy Trinity is the great mystery by which all of God’s plans are accomplished. Everything proceeds from the Holy Trinity, and everything returns to the Holy Trinity.

Nothing is explained, nothing is understood, nothing exists without the Holy Trinity, the inexhaustible and eternal source of Charity, and this both within the mystery itself of the Triune God and outside the Trinity.

“Caritas Pater est, gratia Filius, communicatio Spiritus Sanctus, O Beata Trinitas.” “Ex quo omnia, per quem omnia, in quo omnia, ipsi gloria in sæcula” (Antiphons from the Feast of the Holy Trinity).[3]

“Now as the burning sun sets, do Thou, O everlasting Unity, O Blessed Trinity, our Light, pour forth love into our hearts” (Hymn of Vespers for Trinity Sunday).

How this meditation on the Triune Charity and Charity-Trinity is comforting and encouraging, as it is also a source of unity!

Creation

If we pass from this eternal Charity to the diffusion of this Charity in God’s creatures, we will soon discover in every creature the mark of Divine Charity. God being Charity, can He communicate anything other than Charity? The mark of charity in creatures is manifest in their order towards their end. Each creature is constituted in view of its end. Its end is written in the nature and in the supernatural elevation of spiritual creatures and in the nature of corporeal beings. An “ordo ad finem,” an “ordering towards an end,” is written in each creature. It is in this order that we find the dynamism of charity, which draws each creature towards its end. Clearly this dynamism is fully conscious in spiritual creatures and unconscious in the animal, vegetable, and mineral orders.

“Homo ad Deum ordinatur—Man is ordered to God,” says St. Thomas. The final end of man, and of the angels too, is God. The Church teaches in our Catholic catechisms: “Why did God create man? God created man to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him so that by this means he might attain eternal life.” This response is but the synthesis of what Our Lord teaches in the Gospel: “Hæc est autem vita æterna, ut cognoscant te solum Deum verum et quem misisti, Jesum Christum—Now this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (Jn. 17:3).

This principle of finalization, according to which Charity is poured forth, is the driving force of all activity in creation. This principle means that even the intellect and will of spiritual beings must cooperate by free acts in order to attain their end. This is because even freedom is dependent on the end. Free acts must therefore contribute meritoriously to the attaining of this goal. Liberty is not independent of the final end, but is given so that the spiritual creature can choose the different means which lead to that end. Thus it cannot, without causing a disorder, choose a means which turns away from this end.

These principles are elementary for the realization of the divine plan: that is, to pour forth charity, which is nothing else than union with God. All of Divine Providence has been, and will always be, directed to this goal.

The true meaning of intellect, will and liberty can only be grasped through this light coming from God “which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world” (Jn. 1:9), through the living, burning Light of divine Charity. God is free and communicates freedom in view of the first commandment of love, which contains all the law: “One only God shalt thou adore, and thou shalt love Him perfectly.”

All creation depends on this First Commandment, and all persons and all societies, creatures of God, must submit to it, even civil societies. Everything must converge and lead to this love, and nothing should be opposed to it. The reign of God that Our Lord has come to re-establish is nothing else than this reign of Love.

(It is at the level of these fundamental principles of Divine Providence and of His Infinite Wisdom that the error of liberalism is situated. Liberalism tends to ignore the finalization of liberty, according it a scope it does not have in the divine plan, to the detriment of divine Law and of the duties of divers societies. These societies thereby allow sin and scandals to proliferate. This error destroys individual and social morals; it opposes the reign of Love of God and of Our Lord.)

Let us contemplate the act of love that creation was, and let us strive to bring about in and around ourselves this reign of God and of Our Lord, for the re-establishment of which God accepted to die on the Cross, manifesting anew His infinite love for disordered and sinful creatures. “O admirabile commercium...—O admirable exchange...” How we ought to delight to reread the extraordinary passage of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians (3:8 ff.), which the liturgy presents to us on the day of the Feast of the Sacred Heart. The creation of this new human family of Christians is in truth a new creation which prepares the predestined and the elect of God: “Quotquot autem receperunt eum, dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri—to as many as received Him, He gave the power of becoming sons of God” (Jn. 1:12). It is the creation of the Mystical Body of Jesus, to which we adhere by a valid and fruitful baptism. “Euntes docete omnes gentes, baptizantes eos in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti—Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Mt. 28:19). This family is the Catholic family, and it is so exclusively, because it alone possesses the entire faith in Jesus Christ and in His work: the Church.

(Vatican II’s desire to integrate into the Church non-Catholics as they are, is a scandalous and adulterous desire. The Secretariat for the Unity of Christians by mutual concessions—“dialogue”—is leading to the destruction of the Catholic Faith, the destruction of the Catholic priesthood, and the elimination of the power of Peter and of the bishops. The missionary spirit of the apostles, the martyrs, and the saints is eliminated. For as long as this Secretariat keeps the false ecumenism as its orientation and Roman ecclesiastical authorities approve it, we can affirm that they remain in open, official rupture with the Church’s entire past and with its official Magisterium. It is, therefore, a strict duty for every priest wanting to remain Catholic to separate himself from this Conciliar Church for as long as it does not rediscover the Tradition of the Church and of the Catholic Faith.)

Concluding these few considerations on Divine Wisdom in the plan of creation, let us recall that the work of sanctification of souls here below, the exercise of charity by the practice of the commandments of love against the spirit of the flesh, the world and the devil, is attributed particularly to the Holy Ghost, Spirit of Love. St. Gregory, in the lessons of the Feast of Pentecost, eloquently and forcefully expresses this link between the love of God and the observance of the Commandments, relying on the words of Our Lord Himself: “Si quis diligit me sermonem meum servabit, et Pater meus diliget eum et ad eum veniemus et mansionem apud eum faciemus—If anyone love me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and will make our abode with him” (Jn. 14:23); and on the words of St. John in his epistles: “Qui dicit, diligo Deum et mandata ejus non custodit, mendax est—He who saith that he loveth God and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar” (cf. I Jn. 2:4, I Jn. 4:20).

O Jesus, O Mary, help us to accomplish this request of the Our Father, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” so that our souls might become the temple of the Holy Trinity today and for eternity!

Let us, priests or future priests of the Lord, live in the active presence of the omnipresent and all-powerful God. May we be able to see in the Eucharist God the Creator and Redeemer; the Jesus of the crib; the Jesus of Nazareth; Jesus, Prophet, Priest, and King teaching His future priests and ordaining them before ascending the Cross; Jesus rising from the dead, ascending into heaven and sending the Spirit of Love to found His Church, His Spouse, His Mystical Body, and to draw its members to heaven!

May we acquire a missionary spirit that transmits this divine fire to souls by the example of a living faith which returns everything to God and to Jesus Christ, enlightening souls concerning the infinite wisdom of God, His goodness and His mercy; accustoming souls to exercise humility before God, to adore His will, to totally depend upon Him; and associating souls with the conquest of the reign of Our Lord, of His Sacred Heart, and of the reign of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

IV

The Angels

The existence of the angels, their perfection, their activity, the fall of the evil angels, the influence of the angels near us and in the world—all of this is revealed to us by Holy Scripture and Tradition, and is a part of the object of our Faith.

How great is the harm caused to our souls by our forgetfulness of this spiritual world of angels—who are more numerous than men, more perfect than men. The influence of good or evil angels on our souls is much more important than we think it is. The sole fact that we have a guardian angel who watches over us whilst he contemplates the face of God should encourage us to converse with him, to call on his help that he may help us to win eternal life and to share his happiness.

We are more tempted to believe in the influence of the bad angels than of the good. Let us strive to penetrate the marvelous world of these spirits, who are filled with the light and the charity of the Holy Ghost, burning with love for God and for one another.

These angelic spirits have an intelligence and a will much more perfect than ours. That is why their acceptance or refusal to share in the glory of God was final and irreversible. The pride of those who believed they could attain this glory by themselves cast them into hell forever.

What a lesson on the gravity of sin! How sinners who remain in sin should tremble with fear and resolve to distance themselves from sin by the grace and blood of Our Lord! It is still possible, for we are yet voyagers here below, but it will no longer be possible after our death.

Let us love to live in the company of the holy angels. Every day at the Preface of the Holy Mass, the Church invites us to imitate the holy angels, singing the glory of God, “Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus...” and also “Gloria in excelsis Deo...”

The liturgical offices of the Archangels St. Michael, St. Raphael, and St. Gabriel are marvelous and heavenly indeed. What beautiful lessons they give us by their example and by their words! Nothing is as celestial as the Office of the Dead, which places us in the hands of the angels: “Subvenite, angeli Dei—Come to our help, O angels of God,” and “In paradisum deducant te angeli—May the holy angels carry you into paradise.” How encouraging is the Church’s faith in the holy angels! Let us cherish it and communicate it to the faithful.

The fact that some of the angels fell is too important in itself and in its consequences for us not to consider it, for all men suffer the terrible consequences of the sin of the angels, and therefore every soul is affected by this event in what pertains to salvation. Original sin and all of its disastrous consequences and the evil action of devils on human beings are the result of this abominable sin of the angels.

In what did the sin of the angels consist?

God justly requires that intelligent and free spiritual creatures merit eternal happiness and spontaneously manifest their love of God by directing themselves towards the happiness for which God created them, under the influence of divine grace.

The angels, much more perfect than men, aided by the sanctifying grace with which they were endowed at their creation, were able to grasp with perfect understanding the happiness of the Beatific Vision to which God invited them. A choice, morally obligatory but free in itself, was proposed to them. This choice being proposed to each angel as clearly and luminously as possible, it had to receive an instantaneous response and final acceptance. All should have responded: “Quis ut Deus?—Who is like God?” To fail to do so was to fail to love Him and to refuse to submit to the manifestation of the infinite charity of God for His spiritual creatures that was proposed to them.

Alas, the pride and self-sufficiency of a certain number of angels led them towards a negative choice. “What we are is sufficient for us, we choose to glory in ourselves.” The result was immediate. They lost sanctifying grace, and they were thrown down into the darkness, fire, and hatred of hell forever because they remain forever in their evil choice.

Was this supreme happiness proposed to them by the intermediary of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by requiring of them to adhere to the Mystery of the Incarnation? It is likely, for how could Our Lord be King of the Angels if they had not consented to His reign? This is the best way to understand all the expressions of Scripture: “Rex coeli et terra—King of heaven and earth,” “Rex universorum—King of all things,” “Data est mihi omnis potestas in coelo et in terra—All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth,” “Omnium creaturarum dominatum obtinet essentia sua et natura—He obtains by His essence and nature the governorship over all creatures” (Feast of Christ the King). The letter of St. Paul to the Colossians (Col. 1:3-23) is explicit on the reign of Our Lord over the angels.

Thus can be also explained the devils’ hatred for Our Lord.

We cannot be indifferent to the reality of the existence of myriads of angelic spirits and—alas!—also of myriads of devils, neither to the influence over us of good angels which is willed by the Providence of God, and that of bad angels, which is permitted by God. We must take all this into account when making judgments regarding our spiritual lives and even regarding the events of everyday life.

The thought of the holy angels should be second nature to us and should thereby prepare us for the reality of heaven. Likewise we should do everything we can to avoid the bad influence of the fallen angels.

Our attitude towards devils, be it in our interior personal life or in our pastoral activity, should be conformed to the thought and Tradition of the Church. On this subject, let us delight in rereading the prescriptions of the Ritual, which gives precious and wise counsel.

The increased influence of devils in this time of disorder, and the abandonment of the practice of exorcism on the part of the progressive clergy, has provoked a surge of requests for help from traditional priests. Our attitude in this domain will be one of great prudence and wisdom: first, eliminate the cases that are really medical; then request traditional religious practice, especially frequent assistance at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the sacrament of Penance, the recitation of the Rosary, the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel; then, the little exorcism of St. Michael; and finally, rarely, the full exorcism.

In the course of exorcisms, never ask indiscreet questions, never enter into conversation with demons, but command them imperatively in the manner of the prayers of the full exorcism. The devils are very intelligent and deceitful. They excite curiosity, so as to slowly but surely hypnotize the exorcist-priest and finish by making him accomplish their will. This they do by suggesting, at first, acts which are generally good, so as to bring about bad acts when they dominate wills. We must, then, refuse all dialogue; it was in such a way that Satan perverted Eve, who agreed to dialogue.

Be careful to limit this pastoral activity so that it does not become overwhelming. This is but one of the goals of the devils, so as to prevent us from accomplishing our apostolate.

Thus this pastoral activity will contribute to our sanctification, and not trouble us or attract us to sin.

V

The Creation of the World

Man

We will never be able to pray enough to ask Jesus and Mary to open the eyes of our mind and to communicate to us the understanding and light their souls had, which enabled them to perceive the infinite perfections of God, the diffusion of His Charity, and the superabundance of His mercy in creating the world and man. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God” (Mt. 5:3, 8).

How can we understand that what should unceasingly lead us to God should become an obstacle, a screen blocking our knowledge of God? All of Scripture invites us to sing the glory and the power of God manifested by His creatures. Scripture does not cease to remind us of the absolute sovereignty of God over the spiritual and corporeal universe. Our Lord, True God, has shown us that He ruled every creature, and that all obeyed Him instantly.

Let us accept with simplicity, humility, and faith the account of Genesis which describes for us the work of creation realized by Him who is the source of all being. “Venite, adoremus et procidamus ante Deum, ploremus coram Domino, qui fecit nos, quia ipse est Dominus Deus noster.—Come, let us adore and fall down: and weep before the Lord that made us. For He is the Lord our God” (Ps. 94). It is the only true attitude we can have before the unfathomable mystery of God, the Creator.

Let us take advantage of the contacts people have with creation, constantly traveling as they are, and help them to see God through the marvels of creatures. Thus, creatures that we are, we shall be led to our proper relation to God, Our Lord, and the Holy Ghost. Let us encourage our faithful to live in the country and to distance themselves from the cities, which are becoming more and more places of perdition and scandal. Let them take advantage of available correspondence courses, both for the religious and for the secular education of their children.

Not only does all nature sing the glory of the Creator, but it reveals the Charity which rules all creation, enabling each creature to attain the end prescribed for it with remarkable perfection, in perfect obedience to the laws established by God: laws of gravity; laws of attraction; laws of vegetation and of the animal kingdom. Nothing in the application of these laws escapes God, except if man intervenes to upset them. The innate Charity that the natural laws in this world without intelligence reveal to us should encourage us to follow the law of charity that God has written in our souls, our hearts, and our bodies, and that He has deigned to express to us in His Revelation.

Thus the work that God in His sovereign wisdom willed to be realized in man is laid open for our meditation and contemplation.

This work without doubt constitutes a harmony between the material world and the spiritual world, but it also results in a contrast, which was not the case in the creation of the pure spirits.

This union of two worlds, the physical and the spiritual, in one person is both a cause for thanksgiving for the extraordinary gifts of the spiritual nature, elevated by the addition of supernatural gifts, but also a source of humility, and indeed of humiliation, for the soul in this corporeal envelope is dependent in every way on the body if it is to know and accomplish the will of God. That is why instruction, education, and human authority are necessary to help the soul to attain the end assigned to it by God, namely, eternal happiness in the bosom of the Divine Trinity by the fulfillment of the law and with the help of grace.

Certainly, God provided our first parents with all the means to obtain this marvelous end by observing the laws imposed by Him. But under the influence of Satan, Eve disobeyed the law of God and led Adam to his horrible sin, which was to have astonishing and dire consequences, namely, disorder in his descendants and in all the history of humanity. But equally astonishing was the manifestation of the mercy of God provoked by this fault: God going to His death on the Cross in the person of the Word, who put on this sinful flesh (yet without sin) in order to make for Himself a family of the elect, purified in His Precious Blood and members of His Mystical Body.

By this decision, foreseen from all eternity, the Word decided to give Himself a Mother, the Virgin Mary, Immaculate, Mother of the family of those He would sanctify.

What must be our reaction to this mystery, which was already announced to our first parents? What should be our feelings, we who are not only of the family of the sanctified, but even chosen from amongst the sanctified to become and to be sanctifiers? They must be the feelings of gratitude expressed by the Church in the chant of the Exsultet: “O beata Nox...—O blessed night.” They must be those of the Church in the prayers of Good Friday which fervently implore  the conversion of all souls to Jesus Christ.

What was the intent of the Creator, of the omnipotent God, in His creation of man? What did He intend the psychology of man to be, as a creature composed of soul and body?

It is impossible to get to the truth about the nature of the different creatures, and especially of man, without examining God’s goal in their creation. God harmonizes everything in creatures in view of the end to which He destines them. It is characteristic of intelligence, of wisdom, and of a will animated by charity, to assign a precise end to each work, each operation, and each being.

The desired end is unchangeable, necessary, and obligatory under pain of grave sanctions for spiritual creatures endowed with liberty.

How do we know the end that is assigned to us by our Creator and our Savior? We know it by reason as well as by faith in divine Revelation and in the teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Prophet par excellence.

The most serious duty of parents is to make known this end to their children as soon as they have the use of their reason. This is done especially by faith. It is also the most urgent duty of apostles and priests to make known to parents the true religion that they may know God, love Him, and serve Him, for ignorance of their end is the worst evil that can befall men. If they do not know their end they will misuse the means God has placed at their disposal to enable them to obtain that end. Consequently, they will make bad use of their faculties, and especially of their freedom. They will live in sin and place themselves on the way to hell.

Their intellect, under the influence of Satan, will make them invent false religions with laws and customs contrary to divine Law. The impulse of charity that God has placed in their nature will be used for false goods.

Holy Scripture gives us abundant teaching on the sinful man.

When the impulse of charity is well directed towards the true final end, it is nothing other than the breath of the Holy Ghost. Then all of the corporal and spiritual faculties blossom under the divine influence of law and grace. The different faculties acquire habits, which are called virtues. Men become virtuous, in the likeness of Our Lord and of the Virgin Mary. Men grow in perfection and permeate all of their thoughts and actions with the spirit of faith and charity.

Thus appears the fundamental principle of human morals: how to achieve a good use of the freedom which is present in human acts, that is to say, acts which are conscious, free, and meritorious, and for which we have moral responsibility.

The study of morality can be envisioned either with respect to the law or with respect to the blossoming of grace in the virtues, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the beatitudes, the fruits of the Holy Ghost.

Catechisms generally study morality with respect to the law, passing in review the commandments of God and of the Church. On occasion they speak of charity and the virtues, but only occasionally. Many books on moral theology do the same.

St. Thomas preferred the study of the virtues in a more profound way, connecting the commandments with the virtues. The reasons for this choice are developed convincingly in the commentary of the beginning of the Summa Theologiæ IIa IIae by Father Bernard. In effect, the acquisition of virtue is presented to the soul as a magnificent ideal to pursue. It is a blossoming, enriching work of sanctification accomplished by the help of the Holy Ghost so as to attain the goal pursued. This goal is nothing other than accomplishing, in obedience to the will of God, the work of charity towards God and one another that is asked of us, and thus meriting eternal life.

This manner of studying the moral and spiritual life inspires us of itself to undertake the spiritual fight against sin, against all malevolent influences of the world and of the devil, and places us in this state of vigilance so recommended by Our Lord, “Orate et vigilate—Watch and pray” (Mt. 26:41). “Watch ye therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Mt. 25:13).

In spiritual direction it is more encouraging to incite souls to acquire virtues—and to avoid by the very fact, vices—than to concentrate on the application of the law. Laws are nevertheless absolutely necessary to direct us in the correct use of our freedom.

(To wish to define human liberty and its limits without taking account of our final end and of the laws established by God and legitimate authorities is to propagate an illusion; it establishes the principle of revolution in the human conscience. It is the principle of liberalism, or rationalism, which makes liberty and reason absolute values and not essentially relative to the plan of Divine Providence.)

“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall have their fill” (Mt. 5:6). It is those who hunger and thirst for sanctity who will have their fill. Sanctity is attained to by the exercise of all the virtues, and especially of the theological virtues, which have no limit. We can grow indefinitely, without limit, in our belief in God, our love of God, and our hope in God. The right measure of our love of God is to love Him beyond all measure—this is the object of the First Commandment.

The moral virtues, both natural and supernatural, have a just measure. That is why the virtue of prudence, helped by the gift of counsel, has as its role to determine the correct degree in the use of the virtues of justice, of fortitude, and of temperance in the accomplishment of the will of God. “Non plus sapere quam oportet sapere—not to be more wise than it behoveth” (Rom. 12:3).

The supernatural virtues can lead us to accomplish heroic acts, such as martyrdom, which is the act par excellence of the virtue of fortitude.

The virtue of religion, which is connected to the virtue of justice, would seem to have no limit. However, this virtue directs exterior acts of worship, and in these there can be excesses. It is obvious that the interior virtue of devotion is connected with charity and as such has no limit. But when the virtue of religion produces an exaggerated multiplication of exterior acts of devotion or exterior manifestations of disordered devotion, it does have a limit.

One ought to refer to St. Thomas or to an approved author for a detailed study of each virtue, of each gift of the Holy Ghost and of the corresponding vices (cf. Father De Smedt, De la vie et des vertus chrétiennes). This is especially useful for correcting our habitual faults. The study of the virtues is a precious source of sanctification.

However, nothing is as effective in this domain as contemplation of Jesus, and Jesus Crucified. That is why we are eager to find ourselves near Him, to learn from Him the horror of sin, and to receive from His pierced Heart the effusion of the Spirit of Love, the resurrection of our souls and the means to remain Christian, participating in His divine Life—“divinæ consortes naturæ” (II Pet. 1:4).

The Practice of the Virtue of Religion—The Essential

Link between a Holy Life and a Life of Prayer

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth

If God is sanctity itself, if we sing of Our Lord that He alone is holy,

“Tu solus sanctus,” it is that God is the source of all sanctity, and that it is inasmuch as we are united with God and Our Lord that we will be saints. But how can this union with God be concretely realized? Under the influence of the grace of the Holy Ghost. This union has a name: prayer—oratio.

In studying deeply both the nature of prayer and its extension in our human and Christian existence, we become convinced that the profound life of the created spirit must be one of continual prayer. Every angelic or human spirit is ordered to God by its spiritual nature, by its intellect and will, and gratuitously elevated by grace to enter and participate in the eternal beatitude of the Holy Trinity. Therefore every spirit is fundamentally religious, and its religious life manifests itself in prayer: vocal, mental and spiritual.

Vocal prayer, which includes all liturgical prayer, instituted by God Himself and by God Incarnate and fashioned by the Holy Ghost, especially in the Roman Liturgy, is the most sublime source and expression of mental and spiritual prayer. The place of this prayer in the life of the priest is considerable. To neglect it, to limit it, to render it superficial, is to ruin the essential prayer, the spiritual prayer, to which vocal prayer is ordered by the Holy Ghost.

It is good to read what spiritual authors such as St. Louis-Marie de Montfort in his “Prière embrasée” (Oeuvres compl., p. 673), or Father Emmanuel in his Traité du ministère ecclésiastique, or Abbot Marmion in Christ, Ideal of the Monk (Chapter XIII, “Monastic Prayer”) think on this subject. The chapter by Abbot Marmion is remarkable, and would sanctify all priests if his counsels were put into practice. Finally, Dom Chautard in The Soul of the Apostolate (“Prayer: The Indispensable Element of the Interior Life”).

All the saints practiced mental prayer, which is at the same time an effect and a cause of sanctity. Many have written on this subject, in particular St. Teresa of Avila and St. Francis de Sales. This they did because they had a very elevated notion of this life of prayer. Penetrating both the will and the heart, it enables us to attain the end for which God has created and redeemed us: namely, to adore Him in a total offering of ourselves, following the example of Our Lord coming into this world and saying to His Father: “Ecce venio ut faciam voluntatem tuam—I come...to do Thy will...” (Heb. 10:7).

The conception that reduces prayer to vocal prayer or mental prayer is a disastrous one. For prayer should involve all our being, like the prayer of the angels and of the elect in heaven. The petitions of the Pater Noster cannot be separated. The first three petitions are indissolubly linked. Likewise, the First Commandment of God cannot be separated from the other Commandments.

“Ignem veni mittere in terram et quid volo nisi ut accendatur—I have come to cast fire on the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled” (Lk. 12:49). The fire is the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Charity which fills the Holy Trinity and which created spiritual beings to set them afire with this charity.

This burning fire is the prayer of every soul adoring his Creator and Redeemer, surrendering itself to the holy Will, following Jesus Crucified, who offered His life in a great transport of charity toward His Father and to save souls.

Whence the “oportet semper orare—we must always pray” (Lk. 18:1). If that prayer ended, that would signify that the Holy Ghost had abandoned us!

May we be able to live this ardent prayer of the will and of the heart in a constant manner even in our absorbing apostolic activities, which should never absorb us to the point of hindering our wills and our hearts from belonging to God! May our apostolate actually nourish and promote our self-offering to God.

This profound attitude of our soul, in such great conformity both with its nature and with grace, will foster in it a desire for silence and contemplation which will be fulfilled in the common and private practices of piety. Our spiritual life will find there its unity, its constancy, and its truly Christian peace.

These brief considerations open horizons on the accomplishment of the divine will in our daily lives. It is the introduction of this program for our sanctification which must be the thread of our priestly life. “Elegit nos in Ipso, ante constitutionem mundi, ut essemus sancti—He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy” (Eph. 1:4).

The young seminarian entering the seminary should strive to penetrate with all his soul this life of prayer, which unreservedly hands him over to Our Lord and to the Holy Trinity, placing his mind in subjection to Revelation, which enlightens for us the Mysterium Christi, by the virtue of faith and obedience: “Redigere omnem intellectum in obsequium Christi—bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ” (II Cor. 10:5); placing his will and his entire soul under the impetus of the charity of the Holy Ghost in imitation of Jesus Christ, in obedience to the law of charity expressed by the Ten Commandments and especially by the First Commandment as well as by Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5 through 7). Thus, his entire soul will be animated with the virtue of religion, and with virtue both natural and supernatural, in union with the Sacrifice of Our Lord renewed and continued on the altar. Thus will he be best fitted to ascend the degrees of holiness, the goal desired by God the Creator and Redeemer, expressed in the first three petitions of the Our Father.

VI

Jesus Christ by Whom Man’s Return to God Is Accomplished

The mystery of Jesus Christ is so profound, so extraordinary, that it would seem more natural to adore Him in silence than to speak of Him. For we must rightly fear that our words, like our thoughts, are vastly inadequate to express all of the riches contained in the ineffable sanctuary which is Jesus Christ. St. Paul certainly thinks so: “Orantes simul et pro nobis ut Deus aperiat nobis ostium sermonis ad loquendum mysterium Christi...ut manifestem illud ita ut oportet me loqui.—Praying withal for us also, that God may open unto us a door of speech to speak the Mystery of Christ...that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak” (Col. 4:3, 4).

St. Paul’s descriptions of Our Lord are marvelous and incite us to make of Jesus Christ our life—“mihi vivere Christus est—for to me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21)—and always to become more Christian:

Qui est imago Dei invisibilis, primogenitus omnis creaturæ, quoniam in Ipso condita sunt universa in coelis et in terra visibilia et invisibilia, sive Throni, sive Dominationes, sive Principatus, sive Potestates. Omnia per Ipsum et in Ipso creata sunt. Ipse est ante omnes et omnia in Ipso constant.—Who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature; for in Him were all things created in heaven, and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by Him, and in Him; and He is before all, and by Him all things consist. (Col. 1: 15-17)

The presence of the Incarnate God in the history of humanity cannot but be its center, as a sun towards which everything tends and from which everything comes. And if one thinks and believes that this mystery of the Incarnation is ordered towards the mystery of the Redemption, then it goes without saying that without Jesus Christ, there can be no salvation possible. Every act and every thought which are not Christian are without saving value, without merit for salvation.

To try to place this mystery, we will reproduce a beautiful page of Father Pegues in his Catechism of the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas, where he begins the tertia pars of the Summa, which puts us in contact with the mystery of Jesus Christ or man’s path of return to God:

What is meant by the mystery of the Incarnation or of the Word made flesh? It is that truth, absolutely incomprehensible for us on earth, according to which the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, viz., the Word or the only Son of God, existing from all eternity together with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the same, one, and only true God, the Creator and Sovereign Master of all things, came, in time, upon this earth by His Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary of whom He was born: lived moreover our mortal life and evangelized the Jewish race in Palestine to whom He was personally sent by His Father; was rejected by this people, was betrayed and delivered up to Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor; was condemned and put to death on a cross; was buried, and descended into hell, and rose again from the dead on the third day; ascended into heaven forty days afterwards; sits at the right hand of God the Father, from whence He governs the Church established by Him on earth, and to which He sent the Holy Ghost, who is His as well as the Father’s; sanctified this Church by the sacraments of His grace, so preparing it for His second coming at the end of time; at the last day He will judge the living and the dead, having made the latter rise from their tombs; and this in order to make the final separation of the good from the bad; the good He will take with Him into the Kingdom of His Father, and the bad He will curse and condemn to everlasting punishments.

This brief dogmatic and historic survey of the mystery of the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ enlightens us somewhat on the gifts and privileges of God Incarnate, and the consequences which proceed from the Incarnation for all of humanity and for every man individually. For all are profoundly affected by the coming of God among them, and their future for eternity will depend henceforward on their relationship with Jesus Christ, whether they be conscious of it or not, whether they wish it or not.

We shall never meditate enough on the riches of the treasure which is Jesus Christ. “Si scires donum Dei—if thou didst know the gift of God” (Jn. 4:10), said Jesus to the Samaritan woman. “There hath stood one in the midst of you,” said St. John the Baptist, “whom you know not...the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to loose” (Jn. 1:26-27). God the Father and God the Holy Ghost manifest themselves that we might discover the mystery of Jesus: “And forthwith coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit as a dove descending, and remaining on Him. And there came a voice from heaven: Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased” (Mk. 1:10-11). “I saw the Spirit coming down, as a dove from heaven, and He remained upon Him. And I knew Him not; but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me: He upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining upon Him, He it is that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and I gave testimony, that this is the Son of God” (Jn. 1:32-34).

Everything which followed confirmed this judgment of John the Baptist. From the Annunciation of the angel to Mary on, all events concerning Him had shown this to be true.

Jesus is indeed the Emmanuel—God among us.

If this man is God, what an abundance of gifts must fill His soul and His body! In taking to Himself this soul and this body, God confers on this man unique attributes, rights, gifts, and privileges which surpass all that we can imagine.

Let us draw near this divine sanctuary so as to better appreciate Him and adore Him more perfectly and more profoundly, and so as to consecrate ourselves, with enthusiasm and without limit, in His service. How can we not feel called, like the apostles who immediately abandoned everything to follow Him?

Three particular graces adorn the body of Jesus from the moment of His conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary and from the very infusion of the soul into the body which had been prepared for Him.

1. The first grace, which is also the source of the other two, is unique in all of creation. By His eternal decision to unite to His Person a soul and a body, God the Word communicated to these creatures in an ineffable and mysterious manner His own divinity in all abundance, inasmuch as these creatures, by the divine will, were capable of receiving it. It is spoken of as the Hypostatic Union, which conferred upon this soul and this body a divine dignity. All of the acts of this soul and this body are consequently divine and are justly attributed to God, who assumes the responsibility for every activity of this soul and this body.

By its very nature, and necessarily, this grace of union conferred upon the Person indwelling this human nature some unique titles: Mediator, Savior, Priest, and King. All mediation, all priesthood, all royalty among creatures is by participation in these properties which are the natural and proper jewels of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

How, then, can we not be convinced of the sublimity of our priesthood, which is a participation in the grace of union which is proper to Our Lord? It is, in effect, by His Priesthood that Our Lord exercises His mediation, His role as Savior; and the essential act of His Priesthood, His Sacrifice on Calvary, by which He merited for us all the graces of salvation. The Cross appears already, by this grace of union, as the sign of the immolation of His divine body and the oblation of His holy soul to His Father, a supremely efficacious prayer.

This is the essence of the heritage He bequeathed to the Church: His eucharistic and propitiatory Sacrifice, continued on the altars by those who are chosen to share in His unique priesthood.

Would that the seminarians, priests, and bishops find the meaning of their priesthood in these few fundamental truths on the grace of union in Our Lord. Would that they might appreciate the sublimity of the heritage which is bequeathed to them, which ought to be the source of their sanctification and of their apostolate: the act of sacrifice. Our Lord’s act of sacrifice being the act which constitutes the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the life of Christ, Priest and Victim, must be the basis of their interior life and also the basis of their ministry, which is to give Jesus to souls.

This indissoluble union of the Sacrifice and the Sacrament which, in His Wisdom, the Word Incarnate willed, is precisely what the Protestants reject and what the innovators of Vatican II have practically abolished by ecumenism!

2. The grace of union confers on Our Lord’s body and soul a sanctifying grace which is quite unique in the world. It is so abundant that it becomes the source of all sanctifying grace, which is nothing other than the communication of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Charity of Our Lord, “de quo nos omnes accepimus—of His fullness we have all received” (Jn. 1: 16).

This sanctifying grace produces in Our Lord’s body and soul marvelous effects. His soul, as soon as it came into being, received the Beatific Vision. He enjoyed this vision in His soul right throughout His existence and even on the Cross. It is indeed a great mystery that His soul was at the same time inundated with the most perfect bliss and flooded with pain and sorrow!

Since He had in His soul the Beatific Vision, Our Lord could only have the theological virtue of charity, but not faith and hope, which disappear in the Beatific Vision.

It is difficult fully to appreciate the profoundness and riches of the charity of Jesus’ soul. It is quite clear that this grace, though it was created of ineffable perfection, cannot be compared to the infinite source of charity from whence it proceeded, which is none other than the divine life of Jesus in the bosom of the Trinity.

This sanctifying grace, unique in its riches, filled the soul of Jesus with the virtues, gifts, beatitudes, and fruits of the Holy Ghost.

3. To this grace gratum faciens, source of the sanctity of Jesus’ soul and body, were added as well all the graces gratis datæ, or extraordinary graces. By these latter Jesus was able to accomplish His unique role of Savior, Sanctifier, and Glorifier: graces of healing, miracles, marvels, of diversity of languages, of interpretation of speech, and especially of prophecy. Jesus being the Prophet by His divine and human nature, no other prophet was to follow Him. The apostles were not prophets, but instruments of the Prophet to constitute by Tradition and Scripture the deposit of faith, which was closed at the death of the last of the apostles. The successors of the apostles simply have to faithfully and exactly transmit the truths contained in this deposit.

The prophetic period thus gave place to the dogmatic period, during which the popes and bishops have the charge of conserving and transmitting the deposit without alteration in eodem sensu et eadem sententia, until the end of time.

This gives us the true understanding of Jesus the Prophet, a notion of capital importance.

Jesus’ body also possessed marvelous gifts of performing miracles. It should have been glorious, as a fruit of the Beatific Vision. But it is by an additional miracle that Jesus did not manifest the glory of His body, except on the day of His Transfiguration and of His Resurrection. The entire Gospel manifests the power of the body of Jesus. Even in the sepulcher, the incorruptible body of Jesus remained united to the Word, who returned His soul to it and caused it to rise from the dead.

Jesus’ grace is such a unique and abundant source of salvation that it justly carries a name which is proper to Our Lord: Gratia Capitis, the grace of the leader, or of the head. This signifies quite clearly that it is to Jesus Christ alone, to the Son of God Incarnate, that all in the work of salvation and all that is ordered towards supernatural good must ultimately be related and return.

“Non est in alio aliquo salus—there is no salvation outside of Our Lord.” Those who work to save souls must found their actions on this principle of the capital grace of Our Lord. Anything done without regard for Our Lord, either directly or indirectly, is vain and in no way profitable for eternal salvation.

This must be a directing principle of our pastoral activity. We must strive to supernaturalize everything by prayer and charity, refusing to involve in our activities too many participants who manifest their opposition to any religious and Christian act. But it is another thing to accept those who have good dispositions but are ignorant and can convert to Our Lord. Since everything in God’s plan is ordered to the salvation of souls by Jesus Christ, and by Him alone, we are to encourage in every domain, society, politics, economics, the family, those who strive to attach their actions to the law of Our Lord, both natural and supernatural. For Our Lord rules all; His law should be the law of all nations and of all men without exception.

In time, as in eternity, the reign of Satan is opposed to that of Our Lord. Satan is not the head of the wicked in the sense that he can communicate evil from within as Jesus Christ communicates good, but in the sense that, in the order of external government, he tends to turn men away from God, as Jesus Christ tends to bring them to Him, and that all those who sin imitate the rebellion of Satan and his pride, as the good imitate the submission and obedience of Jesus Christ (III, Q. 8, Art. 7).

We will never fully understand the struggle between the good and the bad throughout history so long as we do not see it as the personal and unyielding battle for all time between Satan and Jesus Christ.

What duty is incumbent upon every man because of this fundamental and unyielding battle between the two opposed leaders of mankind? It is the duty never to compromise, in any matter whatsoever, with what is of Satan or his followers, and to enlist ourselves beneath the standard of Jesus Christ, and there to remain always and to fight valiantly (Pegues, p. 383 [Fr. ed.]).

Because the blessings of sanctifying grace come to us through the hands of the priest and the Catholic Church, let us take care not to forget that every grace, and every increase of grace, comes to us from the inexhaustible source of the grace of Jesus, and can only come from Him, our only Savior.

The reality of Jesus’ divine life circulating in our souls and our bodies should be for us a subject of continual thanksgiving and also a source of active vigilance so that we do not let our lamps go out as the foolish virgins did.

Let us meditate and contemplate the pierced Heart of Jesus, whence come the fountains of eternal life.

The ornamentation of this sanctuary which is Jesus is not limited to the three graces about which we have spoken. The union of the person of the Word to the human soul of Jesus confers on this soul the unique privilege of the Beatific Vision from the instant of His creation.

Certainly, Jesus (God) has no need of this knowledge. His divine knowledge infinitely surpasses the knowledge of the Beatific Vision, but nevertheless the Creator of all things, having wanted to personally assume a human soul and body, assumed also their faculties of knowledge and understanding and carried them to their greatest possible perfection. It was thus that the soul of Jesus possessed the Beatific Vision, the infused knowledge of the angels, and the experiential knowledge of men; and this, to the most perfect degree which can be given to an angelic creature and a human creature.

Thus from the very first instant, the Incarnate Son of God could see by His human nature everything and all things in the Divine Word that He was Himself, in such a way that there is nothing whatsoever in the present, past, or future, whether actions, words, or thoughts, with respect to whomever and of whatever time period, that the Incarnate Son of God did not know from the first instant of His Incarnation, by the human nature He hypostatically united to Himself in the Divine Word that He was (cf. III, Q. 10, Art. 2 and 4).

These divine realities in Jesus Christ clarify His intimate and personal relations with all the created spirits in heaven and on earth. Even in His human soul, Jesus knew us all, and in all the details of our lives. Nothing escapes Him, neither as Creator nor as Savior. And this knowledge gives rise to a boundless love for the souls who turn towards Him, who give themselves to Him, who accomplish His will. His soul ardently desires to communicate His glory to them. That is why Jesus will be the Judge of all souls.

Let us be aware of these realities, of the absolute necessity of offering ourselves to Jesus, as the prayers at the Offertory of the Mass say, and of living this offering unceasingly. Let us be a part of the “quotquot autem receperunt eum—as many as received Him,” in order to be His children: “Dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri—He gave them power to be made sons of God” (Jn. 1:12). These words weigh heavily in the history of souls. They are eternally powerful and will separate the just from the unjust.

Jesus is not optional. “Qui non est mecum, contra me est—He that is not with Me is against Me” (Mt. 12:30). To deny this is the fundamental error of religious liberty and ecumenism.

The consequences of the union of the Word of God, of God Himself, with a human soul and body (over and above those of which we have just spoken in the last few pages) are such that they truly make of this human creature a subject unique in His kind, more divine than human, and more spiritual than corporal. Our Lord’s entire life proves it. He lives more in heaven than on earth, for He is heaven. His Person has all power over His soul and His body, even to separate and reunite them as He wishes and when He wishes.

His glory, His power, His sanctity, His wisdom, the permanence of the eternal mission which comes from His Father, in the exact realization of His temporal mission of salvation, all these shine forth in His life, in His acts, and in His words.

That is what St. Thomas discloses in detail in studying every step of Jesus’ life and His mysteries up to the Ascension.

This meditation on the life of Jesus in all its details puts us little by little in an atmosphere of supernatural reality, and delivers us from the customary way in which men live, so deceived as to take no account of this great reality. Sin, and the results of sin, has succeeded in creating a world of mirages, illusions, and errors. This has developed to such an extent that men eventually grow accustomed to this world, sensitized, sensualized, humanized, no longer being able to see that all this is vain and ephemeral in relation to the true spiritual and supernatural life, in relation to eternal life.

The holy and admirable life of Jesus is a constant reminder of the spiritual and divine realities which alone are valuable and eternal. Everything in Jesus returns to God, to the truth, to reality, to wisdom, and to sanctity.

Would that we might always be more convinced of the necessity of following Jesus, as He asks of His disciples: “Si quis sequitur me non ambulat in tenebris—He who follows Me does not walk in darkness. If someone wishes to be My disciple, let him carry his cross and follow Me.” For there is no other choice: either follow Jesus or rejoin Satan.

It is not at all surprising if Jesus suffers to see men prefer the darkness to the Light—and what Light! It is the Light which created the world, which supports it in existence, which enlightens every man who comes into this world, which brings to them the Light of salvation and of eternal glory. But they prefer the darkness of the world, of this world which is against Our Lord, of this world of the flesh, of money, of egoism, of pride—the threshold to hell!

Before we leave the person of Jesus Christ, let  us concentrate on understanding His redeeming work of salvation and on meditating upon the means instituted by Jesus to communicate anew the grace of salvation; let us strive to impress indelibly upon our minds the real, living image of Jesus, who should illuminate and direct all of our lives.

Here is the perspective of Father Pegues in his catechism (p. 411 [Fr. ed.]):

Yes! When we say Jesus Christ, we are speaking of the only Son of God, who, being from all eternity with His Father and the Holy Ghost the same, one and only True God, by whom all things were created and who sustains them and governs them as Sovereign Master, took our human nature on Himself in time. Thus He is truly man like us, yet continues to be with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the same God that He is from all eternity. Consequently, in His human nature and since He is a man like us, He possesses privileges of grace that are, in a certain way, infinite. Paramount is His quality as Savior of mankind, which constitutes Him, as man, the unique Mediator between God and men, Sovereign Priest, Supreme King, Prophet without equal, and Leader and Head of all the assembly of the elect, angels and men, all forming His true Mystical Body.

VII

The Sacraments

of Jesus Christ

The Word of God was made flesh on account of the sin of man, to make reparation for it and to bring about a rebirth of divine life in souls, so that they might again become acceptable to God and glorify Him in this world and for eternity.

Thus Jesus, in His merciful love, chose to assume in a certain way the sins of humanity and to offer Himself as a sacrifice of redemption and of propitiation to His Father in order to restore the life of the Holy Ghost, the life of charity, in souls through a participation in His own life, which has become the sole source of life and salvation for men.

The Sacrifice of Calvary appears, then, as the Light which shines in the darkness, as the only fountain of life in the middle of the desert.

By what means does God communicate this new life to us? It is by perpetuating Calvary. There will never be but one Sacrifice of the Cross, but one Victim, but one Priest: it is Jesus Himself.

We will never be able to insist enough on this marvelous invention of Divine Mercy, which sheds light on everything ordered by Divine Providence in the establishment of the Church, the Priesthood, and the Sacraments, of which the Eucharist, fruit of the Sacrifice and source of our sanctification, is the center and, in a certain way, the raison d’être.

Which is the greatest and the most important of all these sacraments, and the one to which the rest are directed and whereby they are in some sort perfected?

It is the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. For in this sacrament, our Lord Himself is present substantially, whereas in all the other sacraments there is only a power or a virtue which comes from Him. Further, all the other sacraments would seem to be directed to the Holy Eucharist, as Holy Orders which effect the sacrament; or as Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, and Extreme Unction, which make one worthy or more worthy to receive the Holy Eucharist; or as Marriage which signifies it, in so far as it is a union. (Pegues, pp. 247-8, III, Q. 65, Art. 3)

Would that we were able to give to the Mystery of the Cross its full value, its full place in the divine plan of the Redemption and in its application to souls throughout the history of the Church!

We must recognize that proper place is not always given, even in the teaching of the Church, in catechisms, to the Sacrifice of the Cross perpetuated on our altars. There is a tendency to give all recognition to the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and to make but an accidental allusion to the sacrifice. This is a great danger for the faith of the laity, especially in face of the violent attacks of the Protestants against the Holy Sacrifice. The devil is not mistaken when he is out to make the Sacrifice disappear. He knows that he is attacking the work of Our Lord at its vital center, and that any lack of esteem for this sacrifice brings about the ruin of all Catholicism in every domain.

The devil’s action since Vatican II is very revealing. It obliges those who wish to remain Catholic to courageously defend the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Priesthood as Our Lord instituted them.

It is essential for the spiritual life of priests as for that of the faithful to clarify our faith and our knowledge of the act, willed by Divine Wisdom, which has spiritually and supernaturally revived humanity. This act is the reason behind the Incarnation. It is the accomplishment of the Redemption. It is the act which glorifies God infinitely and opens the gates of heaven for sinful humanity. It is the Sacrifice of Calvary.

One cannot but be struck by the insistence of Our Lord during His entire earthly life on His “hour.” “Desiderio desideravi—greatly have I desired,” said Our Lord: Greatly have I desired this hour of My immolation. Jesus is stretched forward, as it were, towards His Cross.

The Mysterium Christi is, above all, the Mysterium Crucis—the mystery of the Cross. That is why, in the designs of the infinite Wisdom of God for the accomplishment of the Redemption, for the Re-creation and Renovation of humanity, Jesus’ Cross is the perfect, total, final, and eternal solution. It is by His Cross that all will be resolved. It is with respect to the relation each soul has with Jesus Crucified that the judgment of God will be delivered. If the soul is in a living relation with Jesus Crucified, then it prepares itself for eternal life and already participates in Jesus’ glory by the presence of the Holy Ghost in it. It is the very life of the Mystical Body of Jesus: “If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up, and cast him into the fire, and he burneth” (Jn. 15:6).

For our justification, for our sanctification, Jesus organizes everything around this fountain of life which is His Sacrifice of Calvary. He founded the Church, He transmits His Priesthood, He instituted the sacraments to share with souls the infinite merits of Calvary. St. Paul does not hesitate to say: “For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (I Cor. 2:2).

This Sacrifice of Calvary becomes on our altars the Sacrifice of the Mass, which at the same time as it continues the Sacrifice of the Cross brings about the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, which makes us participants in the divine Victim, Jesus Crucified. It is therefore around the Sacrifice of the Mass that the Church, the Mystical Body of Our Lord, is organized. It is around the Sacrifice of the Mass that the Priesthood lives, in order to build up this Mystical Body by the preaching which attracts souls to purify themselves in the water of Baptism so as to be worthy to participate in the Eucharistic Sacrifice of Jesus, in the consuming of the divine Victim, and so as to unite themselves more and more to the Holy Trinity, beginning celestial and eternal life already here below.

It is also from the Cross that the grace of matrimony, received at the Sacrifice of the Mass, builds up Christendom, the social reign of Jesus Crucified, in families and in society. Christendom is society living in the shadow of the Cross, in the shadow of the parish church constructed in the form of a cross, surmounted by the cross, sheltering the altar where Calvary is renewed daily, in which souls come to receive and feed the life of grace by the ministry of priests, who are “other Christs.”

Christendom consists of this village, of those villages, cities, and countries which, following Christ on the Cross, accomplish the law of love under the influence of the Christian life of grace. Christendom is the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. The authorities of this Christendom call themselves “lieutenants of Jesus Christ,” for they simply stand in His place and are thus charged with the application of His law, with protecting faith in Jesus Christ and with aiding its extension by all means possible, in full accord with the Church.

One can say in truth that the blessings of Christendom come from the Cross of Jesus and from Jesus Crucified. It is the resurrection of a fallen humanity thanks to the power of the blood of Jesus Christ.

This marvelous program, put together by the eternal Wisdom of God, could not be realized without the Priesthood, whose particular grace is to perpetuate the unique Sacrifice of Calvary, source of life, of redemption, of sanctification, and of glorification.

The radiance of priestly grace is the radiance of the Cross. The priest is at the heart of the renovation merited by Our Lord. His influence is the determining factor on souls and for society. A priest enlightened by faith and filled with the virtues and gifts of the Spirit of Jesus can convert numerous souls to Jesus Christ, raise up vocations, and transform a pagan society into a Christian society.

Clearly, the role of the bishop—who is priest in the full sense of the term—is considerable. His function is the multiplication of true priests, the encouragement of religious vocations, the building up of Christian institutions, for the vitality of Christendom and the growth of Our Lord’s universal reign.

The bishops are responsible for keeping an unfailing, uncompromising faith in the virtue of the Cross of Jesus, unique source of salvation. They must not turn, as does the world, towards the use of human means as a so-called more effective apostolate. This would be a sign of their loss of faith in Jesus Christ Crucified.

It is precisely this which we have observed for many decades and which has led to the self-destruction of the Church, according to the word of Paul VI, himself a decisive collaborator in this self-destruction.

It is Israel abandoning Yahweh, the one, true God, to prevaricate with false gods from neighboring tribes, whose daughters they took for wives and whose gods they adopted. Israel ended up by being guilty of deicide. But its glory would come from a virgin of the tribe of Judah, predestined to be the Mother of God and the Mother of the New Israel.

Thus, in spite of the promises of Our Lord, which in truth do not cease to be fulfilled, the majority of Church authorities prevaricate with false modern gods by ecumenism! These false, modern gods are not only those worshipped by false religions, but also the false deified ideologies: the goddess Reason, the goddess Liberty, and the goddesses Democracy, Socialism, and Communism.

God, Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church, the Holy Sacrifice of the Cross and of the Mass, and the true Catholic Priesthood are not ecumenical because they proclaim a Credo and practice an anti-ecumenical Law: they work towards the universal reign of the King of Kings: Jesus Christ Crucified: “One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism” (Eph. 4:5).

Along these lines, since we have touched on the meaning of the sacraments, it seems an opportune time to return to the importance given to Baptism of water and of the Spirit by Our Lord. It is by this Baptism that Our Lord intends to constitute the new people of God, destined for the promised land, for eternal life.

The fact that He wished to be baptized by St. John the Baptist, and that all the significance of Baptism by water and by the Spirit was then manifested in a marvelous fashion, is of paramount importance for the work of the Redemption.

During His baptism, the whole Trinity deigned to make Itself manifested—[the Second Person] in His human nature, the Holy Ghost under the form of a dove, and the Father in the voice that was heard—in order to make known what would be the form of the Sacrament. He also made known the effect of this new baptism by the fact that the heavens were opened above His head; this was to show that by His baptism the gates of  heaven were opened for men, in virtue of the baptism of blood where He washed away in His own person the sins of the world. (III, Q. 39, Arts. 1-8)

Thus the universality of the power of the Cross is manifested. By the character imprinted on the soul, the soul becomes able to participate in the Church, in the effects of Our Lord’s priesthood. But it cannot exercise the hierarchical acts of this priesthood.

Those who have received the grace of Baptism and who carry forever its indelible character, insofar as they are faithful to its grace, surpass in dignity and in excellence all creatures, considered in their own nature.

Our Lord wanted us to learn of His conversation with Nicodemus in St. John’s Gospel. His words were clear: “Amen, amen, I say to thee, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God....unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (Jn. 3:3-5).

It is also the command that Our Lord gives in a solemn manner when, before ascending to heaven, He sends the apostles on mission: “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost” (Mt. 28:18).

It is this valid baptism of water which confers the sacramental character and constitutes a person as a full member of the Church, with rights and duties; and this even if baptism does not confer sanctifying grace, that is, even if it is not fruitful. This is the case with Protestants when their baptism is valid. Not having the true faith, they cannot receive grace, and yet they do receive the sacramental character, from which they can receive grace if they foreswear their heresies.

There is in the Church a teaching filled with errors, if not heresies, on the subject of the sacraments and especially of Baptism. It is very important to remember the doctrine of the Church on this subject. The new Rite of Baptism has been influenced by these errors, especially in what concerns the effects of Baptism. The true doctrine concerning Baptism corresponds well to the missionary spirit Our Lord inspired in His apostles. The visible outpouring of the Holy Ghost on the baptized at the beginning of the preaching of the Gospel confirms the capital importance of Baptism. Still today, in pagan regions, missionaries recognize the baptized by their faces—faces which are open, relaxed, trusting—while the pagans breathe fear, servility, and distrust.

Henceforward, the blood of Jesus, in which Christians have been baptized, calls them to unite themselves to Jesus’ Sacrifice every Sunday and thus to accomplish the most important act of the virtue of religion in union with Our Lord and all His Mystical Body for the glory of the Holy Trinity.

Before closing these meditations on the Holy Mass and the sacraments, it seems useful to consider especially the sacrament of Penance, which in numerous circumstances occupies a great part of the time that the priest consecrates to the apostolate. Given the weakness of souls and the scandals of a corrupt society in the midst of which they live, falls are frequent. Our Lord, in His infinite wisdom, instituted “a second plank of salvation” for us to hold on to.

The Fundamental Principle of the Spiritual Combat

The Wounds in Our Soul after Baptism

The acquisition of that holiness which is necessary for the salvation of our souls is not a simple thing. In effect, our daily experience and the teaching of the Church inform us that the grace of Baptism, although it gives us sanctifying grace by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost and frees us from original sin and from the control of the devil, does not free us from all the consequences of original sin. These consequences explain why our spiritual life takes on the bearing of a spiritual battle lasting throughout all our lives here below.

This teaching is fundamental and governs all of our apostolate. We remain sick and in need of the Doctor of our souls and of the spiritual helps He has provided for.

Here is the teaching of the Church, expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas (I-II, Q. 85, Art. 3; Father Pegues, Catechism of the Summa, p. 128 [Fr. ed.]):

Original sanctity was lost by the sin of the first man. That is why all the powers of souls remain disordered, in a certain measure, with respect to their proper end, by which they were adapted to the practice of virtue. This absence of order is called the wounding of nature (vulneratio naturæ).

Insofar as reason is without its order to the truth, it is the wound of ignorance (vulnus ignorantiæ).

Insofar as the will is without its order to good, it is the wound of malice (vulnus malitiæ).

Insofar as fortitude is without its order to the accomplishing of difficult things, it is the wound of weakness (vulnus infirmitatis).

Insofar as fleshly desires are without the government of reason in that which is pleasurable, it is the wound of concupiscence (vulnus concupiscentiæ).

In his First Epistle, St. John confirms this truth: “All that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life” (I Jn. 2:16).

These four wounds undermine the four cardinal virtues and thus provoke in us a continual disorder. The most devastating seems to be that of ignorance or blindness, that is to say ignoring God and Our Lord Jesus Christ. For it is in this knowledge that eternal life resides: “Now this is eternal life: That they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (Jn. 17:3).

How, in effect, can we render to God the love and the worship which are due to Him if we remain blind with respect to Him? The seminarians and priests will never be able to thank God enough for having led them to the seminary, where all studies teach them to know God and Our Lord, and where all life is directed to render to the Holy Trinity by the person of the Word Incarnate the honor, worship, and love which are due Him, “per Christum Dominum nostrum.”

May priestly souls enter courageously into the spiritual combat to heal their souls of these wounds and thus learn to become doctors of souls by their preaching, by the prayer of the Holy Mass, by the Eucharist, and by the sacrament of Penance. Retreats are a powerful means for diminishing the blindness of souls and for healing the other wounds.

Without knowledge of these elementary truths, one cannot comprehend the Catholic spirituality of the Cross, of sacrifice, of despising temporal goods so as to be attached to eternal goods.

The demons use all that appeals to the senses and is delectable to deepen our wounds. What happened to Eve continues to happen now. Having listened to the word of the devil, Eve saw that the fruit was delectable—pulchrum visu et delectabile (Gen. 3:6). She would say to God, but, alas, too late: “The serpent deceived me” (Gen. 3:13). Hence the insistence of the Church, in all its spirituality, and especially for priestly souls or those consecrated to God, on distancing oneself from the world and its spirit so as to seek nothing but eternal things, following Jesus and Jesus Crucified.

But it is yet another of the disastrous consequences of the Council that this traditional and Catholic spirituality, a spirituality of self-denial, of the cross, of contempt for temporal things, of being invited to carry one’s cross following Our Lord, is destroyed. The alternative proposed is the search for social justice based on envy and the desire of the goods of this world. Thus whole populations are thrown into a fratricidal struggle, and the poor increase in number. On the contrary, it is the true Catholic spirituality which will change hearts and bring about a turn towards greater social justice.

This bad spirit of the Council—the spirit of the world—has invaded priestly and religious life and has led to a destruction without precedent of the priesthood and of religious life. The great triumph of Satan is to have accomplished by men of the Church the destruction which no persecution has ever produced.

The priest has received the power to apply the merits of the Cross and of the Blood of Jesus to souls who confess their sins with contrition and make satisfaction for the punishment due for sins already pardoned. The fruitful exercise of this ministry requires of the priest numerous qualities: knowledge of the divine law and of the laws of the Church so as to judge the gravity of the sin confessed; prudence, discretion, counsel, merciful charity following the example of Our Lord, in order to bring appropriate help to the sick soul. Souls generally are more appreciative of sweet firmness than of liberal laxity; they yearn to be healed, even if this desire is not explicit.

Contrition being essential to the reception of the sacrament of Penance, it is often useful to insist on this disposition, as also on firm resolutions. To be effective, contrition must be interior and habitual. This profound sentiment of regret for sin, if it persists, shelters the soul from further sin, maintaining it in humility, self-distrust, and in a state of continual vigilance. This is indeed the advice constantly repeated by Our Lord: “Vigilate—Watch!”

Satisfaction is, of course, accomplished by the prayers or actions imposed by the confessor, but it should also be continuous; in our daily prayers, in sacrifices and self-denial, in fasting and almsgiving. In the context of that satisfaction which is applied by indulgences, the reality of the Mystical Body appears in all its effectiveness. Without doubt, in the course of history, indulgences were abused for financial gain. But these simoniacal abuses, although condemnable, do not obliterate the priceless reality. Indulgences do help us to pay back in satisfaction for the debt which we still have with respect to God before the particular judgment at the hour of our death.

In this apostolate we should act in such a way, publicly and socially, that nobody would have any reluctance to ask for the sacrament of Penance; that is to say, we should always conduct ourselves in a truly priestly manner.

VIII

The Church

St. Thomas did not write a treatise on the Church “ex professo,” but wrote on it on the occasion of the “gratia capitis—capital grace,” i.e., the grace of Christ as Head of the Church, which grace is the source of all sanctifying grace, and from which the Mystical Body of the Church benefits. He asks who are the members of this Mystical Body of which Our Lord is the Head. His response is very instructive: he distinguishes between those who are only members in potency and those who are actually members, be it definitively—this is the Church Suffering and the Church Triumphant, including the angels—or those who are actually members, but “in via—on the way” by faith and charity in this world; or be it the sinners who have faith but are dried up members, not having charity.

The Church considered as Mystical Body is a spiritual reality comprising all the souls and angels who live by the divine life communicated by Our Lord. They are as living branches attached to the vine. During this earthly life, alas, many can detach themselves from the vine and perish. Others, on the contrary, are grafted on to the vine by a valid and fruitful baptism, and then live by it. At the same time this Body, which is mystical and invisible for us, presents itself here below as a visible, hierarchical society founded by Our Lord for the purpose of augmenting the Mystical Body according to the command given to the apostles by Our Lord: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Mt. 28:19). “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mk. 16:16).

The final goal of salvation is linked to the Faith. The whole hierarchy was instituted by Our Lord in service of the Faith, which Faith then permits the faithful to drink from the sources of charity, of the Holy Ghost and of His grace. The entire history of the primitive Church is a quite instructive illustration of the importance of the commands given by Our Lord.

The Church is born in its vitality with the outpouring of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. It can then, instructed by Our Lord, institute a sacramental liturgy for its baptized members, comprising prayers, preaching, the Divine Office, the celebration of the mysteries of the Cross and of the Eucharist. The Church rapidly multiplied bishops, priests, and others in Holy Orders for the multiplication and sanctification of those who have the Faith.

From the Israel of the Old Testament is born the New Israel of the New Testament, of which the Incarnate Word is the Head, directing and instructing His people across the desert of this life to lead them to the Promised Land, which is none other than the Holy Trinity itself.

Just as the Israel of the Old Testament had a troubled history because of continuous infidelities towards God, which were often the works of its leaders and its Levites, so the Church Militant in this world endlessly experiences periods of trial on account of the infidelity of its clerics and their compromises with the world.

The higher they come from, the more these scandals provoke disasters. Certainly, the Church itself guards its sanctity and its sources of sanctification, but the control of its institutions by unfaithful popes and apostate bishops ruins the faith of the faithful and the clergy, blunts the instruments of grace, and favors the assault of all the powers of Hell which seem to triumph.

This apostasy makes its members adulterers, schismatics opposed to all Tradition, separated from the past of the Church, and thus separated from the Church of today, in the measure that it remains faithful to the Church of Our Lord. Everyone who remains faithful to the true Church is the object of savage and continuous persecution.

But we are not the first to be persecuted by false brothers for having kept the Faith and Tradition. The Martyrology teaches us this every day. The more Holy Church is insulted, the more we must cling to her, body and soul, the more we must force ourselves to defend her and to assure her continuity by drawing from her treasures of sanctity to reconstruct Christianity.[4]

IX

The Virgin Mary

St. Thomas evokes the great privileges of the Virgin Mary when he speaks of the sending of the Word into this world by His Incarnation (III, Q. 27-30).

Mary holds such a place in the realization of the work of salvation of humanity by the Word Incarnate that she merits to be spoken of in a very particular manner.

Mary, by her fiat, miraculously became the Mother of God, the Mother of the Savior. Thus she became by this very fact the Mother of His Mystical Body, that is to say of all those who live by the life of Jesus here below and will do so for eternity. She became Queen of Angels and the terrible enemy of the devils.

Consequently, we have become her children by Baptism, and we nourish ourselves by her Son in the Eucharist. She is truly our spiritual Mother.

This divine Motherhood procured for her unique privileges and, first of all, her Immaculate Conception and fullness of grace from the instant of her conception. She is the sole human creature to be exempt from the results of original sin.

Another extraordinary privilege is that she is the Mother of Jesus and remained virgin before, during, and after her childbirth. Nothing is impossible with God, as she was told by the Angel Gabriel. The Infant Jesus left the womb of the Virgin januis clausis, without destroying her hymen. She did not suffer the pains of motherhood. How many errors do we find on this subject in modern catechisms!

She was thus made exempt from the slightest sin and every sickness, for they are the consequences of original sin.

Finally her body, not being susceptible to corruption, was raised up and assumed into heaven. This is the privilege of her glorious Assumption. She is henceforward the Queen of heaven and earth.

She is also, thanks to her divine Motherhood, the Mediatrix of all the graces which we are given. Her spiritual Motherhood is universal. If Jesus is the Head of the Mystical Body, Mary is the neck, as the Fathers of the Church say.

Mary, being the Mother of the Eternal Priest, exercises a particular motherhood with respect to all those who participate in Jesus’ priesthood. May the Virgin Mary deign to form us into priests in the image of her Divine Son!

May devotion to Mary be honored in every house and chapel of the Society, and in all the hearts of all its members! Mary will keep us in the Catholic Faith. She is neither Liberal, nor Modernist, nor ecumenical. She is impervious to all errors and, with even greater reason, to heresies and apostasy.[5]

X

The Last Things

With the Assumption of the Virgin Mary we cross the boundary which separates the earthly and heavenly worlds.

Certainly, since Divine Mercy came to be manifested among us in the person of the Incarnate Word, innumerable graces tie the heavenly world to the earthly world. But we know, all the same, that for each of us, in spite of the grace of the sacraments, there remains a consequence of original sin from which no one can escape: death.

But is it not true that for Christians the death of Our Lord softens the rigor of this punishment, of this chastisement? With Him we die with whom we lived; with Him also we will live and we will arise from the dead.

The entire life of faith and of grace teaches us to turn ourselves toward heavenly things: “Terrestria contemnere et amare coelestia!” How many times do the liturgical prayers repeat this maxim to us: “Despise the things of this world and love those of heaven”! St. Paul gives us the reason: the former are passing, the latter are eternal. Death makes us thus pass from this ephemeral world to the spiritual world, in which even the risen bodies will be spiritualized. “Seminatur corpus animale, surget corpus spirituale—It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body” (I Cor. 15:44).

That is why the Last Things ought to interest us supremely, and this all the more because our actions here below prepare this future eternity. To live in indifference to or unawareness of our final end is insane! It is the fundamental motive of the Incarnation, of the Redemption: the return to God by Jesus Christ. This is the essential perspective of the Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas, for it is the essential reason why we exist: to be with God forever.

Hence the great necessity of constantly returning to the Last Things in our preaching. The retreats of St. Ignatius and all other retreats have no other goal: to save souls, in sanctifying them by Jesus Christ.

All the inspired writings of the New Testament have no other purpose than to make us attentive to the attainment of eternal life and to help us avoid damnation. The entire liturgy of the Church surrounds us, accompanies us, and nourishes us, so that we might attain this essential goal. The Church’s entire missionary spirit is directed towards the sending of pastors: “Euntes, docete... Ite ad vineam meam—Go and teach... Go into My vineyard.”

The Church’s teaching on these Last Things, like that of Our Lord, is formal and clear, although certain aspects remain yet mysterious. The certainty of our salvation, the numbers of the elect and of the damned, the manner in which personal judgment takes place at the instant of our death, the exact nature of purgatory, its duration when we are no longer subject to time, the status of the elect before the General Judgment and the Resurrection, are all realities which remain mysterious for us. Meanwhile, we know, and this is the essential thing, that the happiness of the elect surpasses all that they can imagine and that hell is a place of atrocious torments.

Let us try, with the help of St. Thomas, to clarify a little the teachings of the Church concerning that which Providence has foreseen for us after death. It is good for the priest who has charge of souls to be quite familiar with the world beyond this one, to live always with this reality in mind, and to be able to exactly instruct the dying and the relatives and friends of the deceased. Isn’t it one of his principal duties to watch over the faithful during their last hours here below, to enlighten them, to encourage them, and to prepare them by the last sacraments, by the prayers for the dying, and finally to take their mortal remains to the altar of sacrifice and to accompany them to the cemetery? How many precious teachings can be given to those who surround the dead on such occasions!

The conciliar novelties in this area are scandalous for the faith of Catholics and border on heresy. The ceremonies leave it to be understood that all souls are saved, for even the worst enemies of Catholicism have access to the Church, even the urns of cremated bodies. Priests no longer accompany the body to the cemetery. Purgatory is ignored, rendering prayers and sufferings for the deceased incomprehensible—whereas these are also a manifestation of the faith of the Church which touches the faithful profoundly.

What happens at the precise moment when the soul is, in a way, expelled by a body which no longer finds itself capable of being animated by such a soul? St. Thomas, basing himself on Our Lord’s words themselves, expresses the opinion that souls are automatically drawn to the place to which they are destined, just as bodies are drawn to a place by the attraction of their own weight. Souls in the state of grace, where charity is perfect, are drawn to heaven, where they immediately enjoy the Beatific Vision, awaiting the complement of happiness which the resurrection of the body will give them. Souls in the state of grace, but where charity is diminished and imperfect because of venial sin and who have still to expiate the punishment due for sins already pardoned, go to purgatory. Souls still stained with original sin but without personal sin are sent to Limbo; they will be deprived of the vision of God, but will enjoy a natural happiness. Souls in a state of mortal sin, without charity, go to hell forever, awaiting the resurrection of their bodies, which will be a cause of further suffering.

Three places are final: Heaven, Limbo and Hell. No suffering, no prayer, no good deed, no intercession, can modify the state of souls which are there.

It is clear that all the prayers, supplications, indulgences, and alms, advised and realized by the Church for the deceased, only have as a goal the soothing and deliverance of souls in purgatory, who can no longer do anything for themselves.

That is why it is necessary to insist on the fact that the existence of purgatory is an article of faith. He who denies purgatory is heretical. If purgatory did not exist, all that the Church has done since its origin or asked to be done on behalf of the dead would be pointless.

Certainly the souls in purgatory progressively approach heaven and will be freed after their purification, but the supplications of the Church Militant can effectively help them to be delivered more rapidly, especially by the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Nevertheless, the souls in purgatory, animated by charity, can intercede for us. They will do it so much more ardently if we come to their aid. If we wish to conform ourselves to the spirit of the Church, we must have true devotion towards the souls in purgatory, where very probably we will spend a longer or shorter time—let us hope so, for this will be the sign of our election. If we could know the holiness and incomparable purity of God, we would not be surprised that He discovers in us imperfections which are discordant with the sanctity of the Holy Trinity.

We will not develop the subject of Limbo, where souls are found who only have original sin, but no personal sins. These souls are deprived of the Beatific Vision, but knowing that they have an absolute incapacity of possessing it, they do not suffer; this is the opinion of St. Thomas and of the majority of the Doctors of the Church.[6] This is a precious help in replying to parents whose baby has died before it could be baptized without any fault on their part. But what responsibility, by contrast, for mothers who use abortion and for those who contribute to it! How can we not fear the curse of God in this world and in the next for these crimes?

Now that all dogmas are placed in question even inside the Church, it is important to know the doctrine of the Church in order to reaffirm it and to save souls.

“The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” Without doubt, filial fear is more desirable than servile fear, and contrition more desirable than attrition. The fear of hell is salutary because it keeps souls far from mortal sin. Men are right to fear this horrible punishment that Our Lord speaks of in terms which make us tremble. For it is an immediate and eternal chastisement, without possible remission, because hatred destroys all charity and the absence of charity is hell.

What we must strive to destroy at any price is the habit of mortal sin or of remaining for a long time in the state of mortal sin. When speaking of this we ought to repeat and unceasingly meditate on the gravity of mortal sin and its consequences.

Two subjects of meditation, unveiling for us the seriousness of mortal sin, which can be said to be infinite, should be before our eyes. The sole sin of disobedience of Adam and Eve provoked two effects, which ought to suffice to distance us from all mortal sin. The first consequence is that all evils, including the most horrible that can be imagined right down to hell, were unleashed on their descendants. The history of humanity is the history of sufferings, of wars, of sickness, of the cruelty of men towards one another, of death; but it is especially a history of moral misery deserving an eternity of fire. One single sin provoked these innumerable evils. The second consequence is the death of God on the Cross; a death valued by God Himself as the sole suitable means to thwart the consequences of sin and to make those who believe in Him live again spiritually, and one day even physically. They will receive from Him the grace of Divine Life, the prelude to Life Eternal.

Let us ask Our Lady of Sorrows about this Passion and this Death. May she help us to understand the sorrow and the charity of God, crucified in the flesh He deigned to receive from her.

A single sin provoked the Passion and the Crucifixion of the Incarnate Word! Would that, by these considerations, we might avoid all serious sin, and help our faithful to do likewise, and in case of a fall, to use the plank of salvation—the Sacrament of Penance.

Here again we see Holy Mass, the Sacrifice of the Cross, lifted up as a sign of salvation and of victory against Satan, against sin, against death, against the world. “Mors mortua tunc est—Death has now died,” “Ave crux, spes unica—Hail, O Cross, our holy hope,” “In hoc Signo vinces—By this sign you will conquer.”

We should not hesitate to speak of hell, as Our Lord Himself did in many circumstances. He described for us the fire of hell, the unending sorrows, its eternal duration. We must echo these words of Our Lord to save the souls of the faithful.

Every day we offer the Holy Sacrifice for this intention: to save the Christian family from eternal damnation—“ab æterna damnatione nos eripi.”

We should now meditate on the heavenly homeland where are found the sanctified and purified souls who finally enjoy eternal happiness. Meanwhile, like St. Thomas, before contemplating the dwelling place of the Holy Trinity, let us say a few words about retribution and the General Judgment.

Our Lord teaches us that this world will have an end when God, in His all-powerful wisdom, decides that the number of the elect has been completed. Preceding signs will announce this end, in particular the coming of the Antichrist. But no one knows the day nor the hour. God reserves this secret to Himself.

Meanwhile, Holy Scripture and Tradition teach us that this end will take place suddenly—in ictu oculi—in the blink of an eye. Then the predicted events will unfold, the omnipotence of God and of Our Lord Jesus Christ will be manifested by the immediate purification of the souls in purgatory and by the death and immediate purification of the souls who will have to be purified and who will be witness to all these events.

At the sound of the trumpet of the angels, all bodies will rise again, to complete the glory of the elect and increase the sufferings of the damned. Then Our Lord will appear in His glory to accomplish the General Judgment, which will place a final end to the history of humanity. For He will glorify His Mystical Spouse, the Church, and all the members of His Mystical Body, drawing them after Him into the bosom of the Blessed Trinity forever, and He will also throw into eternal darkness all those who have not believed in Him, or who in their lives refused the charity of the Holy Ghost in opposing the law of charity written in their hearts, preferring to follow their passions and their suicidal egotism.

St. Thomas thinks that the General Judgment will be perceived by a particular mental illumination, making obvious to all the sentence applied to each.

We can believe that from this instant the elect will be luminous, as though enveloped by the nuptial robe, while the damned will be in darkness. The angels then will soon group the predestined around Our Lord, and thrust His enemies into hell. Thus Our Lord will accomplish the Return to God.

Blessed are those who pass their life making the Hearts of Jesus and Mary reign in them and around them, and who strive to always accomplish their will, filled with the grace of the Holy Ghost, which they received especially by the baptism of water, or the baptism of blood, or the baptism of desire.

Then there will be no ecumenism, no religious liberty—nothing but Catholic Christians, including converts from false religions.

What a marvelous and consoling doctrine is that of the Catholic Church which was revealed by the Incarnate Word of God in the course of human history, which He brought to its final perfection when He dwelt among us. The Apostles faithfully transcribed and transmitted this precious deposit, and thus closed the prophetic era. Then began the dogmatic era in the course of which the Church defined what constituted the deposit.

The Fathers and theologians of the Church, under the vigilance of the Church, have faithfully scrutinized this deposit, interpreted it, organized it, and defended it against heresies.

St. Thomas shines among them like a light. His Summa Theologiæ is a masterpiece of collaboration between faith and reason, to establish Revelation on irrefutable foundations. It clearly shows that these two are of divine origin and thus cannot but mutually confirm one another. Faith remains nevertheless the surest source of the knowledge of God and of divine things. It remains the golden rule of wisdom.

The Summa can be summarized thus: to come from God, to return to God, by the means of God—such is man’s destiny. What a marvel! What an ideal! When we discover this program in the school of St. Thomas we are thrust constantly into admiration and contemplation of the mysteries of the Wisdom, of the Knowledge, and of the Charity of God and of His mercy towards His human creatures.

This study must conclude with a consideration of the ineffable gift that God makes of Himself to His elect by the Incarnate Word, a gift which surpasses all expression and all description, as St. Paul affirms: “Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him” (I Cor. 2:9).

God, pure and eternal Spirit, has created us in His image, spirits also, endowed with intelligence and will, in order to enable us to know Him, to love Him, and to rejoice in Him eternally. For this end—that is, to see Him and rejoice in Him—He had to confer on our spirit, on our soul, an additional perfection to make us participants in His divine nature and to elevate our faculties above ourselves that we might be able to contemplate Him as He knows Himself. It goes without saying that our contemplation of Him is not to the same degree that He knows Himself. This is reserved to the Divine Persons.

Our minds will not see an image or an idea of God, but God Himself, without intermediary. God, who is supremely intelligible, will become Himself the immediate object, the form, of our understanding. We will know Him in truth as He is. That is why it is impossible for us here below to imagine what this vision could be, which will set our souls afire with an unfailing love for Jesus and the Holy Trinity.

Then, the glory of God, His splendor and His light will cover us and make us glorious. Then this glory will extend to our spiritualized bodies, endowed with the properties of impassibility, subtlety, agility, and clarity.

What we will see in God will surpass all that we can imagine in terms of beauty, goodness, and splendor. We will admire the Church Triumphant and especially Our Lord with all His royal and divine privileges, Mary Queen of Heaven, adorned with all her gifts, the myriad of archangels and angels, and all the elect with their diversity of glory measured according to their degree of charity. God will truly be all in all, honored and adored as He should be. Nothing will be out of place. In the light of the Infinite Being of the Holy Trinity and of His perfections, our souls will be transported in thanksgiving for all that God has deigned to undergo for our salvation. We will be confounded by the mercy that God has exercised on our behalf.

Tradition teaches us that the virgins, the martyrs, and the doctors will have particular halos which will add to their glory.

Before these perspectives, which are the object of our faith and the goal of our existence, how can we not weep, like Our Lord in His agony in the Garden of Olives, at the thought of all the souls separated from Our Lord, despising Him by indifference, by forgetfulness, by sin leading themselves to hell?

Our Lord in His missionary charity climbed the Cross, for it is by it that He wished to open the gates of salvation and earn merits capable of saving all of humanity. He then chose twelve apostles, communicated to them the power of His Sacrifice, power over His Body and His Blood, making them priests of His Priesthood. He instructed them and sanctified them through the Holy Ghost, then sent them to the ends of the earth to announce the news of salvation, sanctifying by Baptism and the sacraments those who believe in His name.

In following the apostles, we also are destined to participate in His Priesthood; or we already participate in it. Let us place all our trust in Him who sends us, Our Lord Jesus Christ Crucified. Like the apostles, let us preach the true doctrine of salvation by Our Lord and let us offer the redeeming Sacrifice.

The results will be like those of the apostles. Some will believe, and others will turn away: “We will listen to you another time” (Acts 17:32). Some will persecute us, as they did Our Lord and the apostles: “They hate Me, they will also hate you” (see Jn. 15:18-20). What matters for us, in our priestly lives, is to avoid everything which can be an obstacle to the effectiveness of our apostolate, and especially to abandonment of the spirit of prayer and union with God.

Let us keep the Faith above all else. It is for this that Our Lord died, because He asserted His divinity. It is for this that all the martyrs died. It is by this that all the elect are sanctified. Let us flee from those who make us lose the Faith or diminish it.

“O Timothee, depositum custodi, devitans profanas vocum novitates....Certa bonum certamen fidei, apprehende vitam æternam—O, Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane novelties of words....Fight the good fight of faith; lay hold on eternal life” (I Tim. 6:20, 12).

“Elegit nos in Ipso, ante mundi constitutionem ut essemus sancti—He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy...” (Eph. 1:4).

Complementary Notes

1. The Absolute Necessity of the

Catholic Religion for Salvation and Sanctity

The search for Christian sanctity in Jesus Christ and by Jesus Christ is not optional. “Elegit nos, in Ipso ante mundi constitutionem, ut essemus sancti—He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy” (Eph. 1:4).

No human creature can escape this absolute necessity in order to arrive at salvation. All of Scripture demonstrates this. And Our Lord, by whom all things were made, instituted the Church, the State, and the family to contribute, each according to its nature, to the sanctification of souls by Jesus Christ.

The liberty that God gives us is essentially directed as its final end towards Truth and Goodness by the law of Charity. We are not free to love or to not love God, the Holy Trinity, and our neighbor. Liberty is correlative to the law of love and of charity.

God took care to give us His laws by His Word. These are divine laws entirely inspired by the Spirit of Charity, the Holy Ghost. The laws of the Church, of the State, and of the family should be conformed to these divine laws and thus come to the aid of souls tempted by error and sin. Thus they help them to convert to the only Physician: Jesus Christ, Truth and Sanctity.

To unbind souls from obedience to the laws of civil society, which are but the application of divine laws, and make of this liberation a natural right is a crime of rebellion vis-à-vis God, vis-à-vis Our Lord. The laicization of Catholic states and their liberation from all religion is the crime of apostasy, which cries out for vengeance when one calculates the consequences for the loss of souls. Freedom of worship, and the ecumenism which encourages it, are a “delirium” as St. Gregory XVI said in his encyclical Mirari Vos.

2. The Objectivity of Our Spiritual Nature

and of Sanctity; Dangers of Conciliar Subjectivism

Our spirituality is objective in the sense that everything which sanctifies us comes from God by Our Lord. “Without Me,” says Our Lord, “you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5). The whole of Chapter 15 in St. John’s Gospel is an affirmation of this reality. Our mind is sanctified in the truth which is taught it, which does not come from it. Our will is sanctified in the law and the grace of the Lord, which do not come from it.

This dependence vis-à-vis divine reality, which is not us, is essential in keeping the soul profoundly anchored in the virtue of humility, in adoration, in thanksgiving and in an ever-stronger desire to fill and nourish itself at the sources of sanctity, especially those of the Heart of Jesus.[7]

It is difficult to measure the spiritual damage accomplished by the subjectivist tendency of the Council and by its personalism. It strives, wrongly, to turn a blind eye to the purpose of human nature and to the ordering of man’s liberty to his final end. Thus is explained the exaltation of man, of human rights, of human liberty, especially freedom of conscience. This amounts to a pagan humanism which ruins Catholic spirituality and the priestly and religious spirit.

How much must we meditate on these realities to remain Catholic and keep the principles and the sources of true sanctity! Blessed are the esurientes—those that hunger—and the pauperes spiritu—the poor in spirit—of the Magnificat and the Beatitudes. Woe to the divites—the rich, who are filled with themselves and have no need of either God or of Jesus Christ.

Coming from a world where subjectivism rules everywhere, which enshrines the individual conscience, freedom of conscience and the autonomy of the person as foundations of social relations, justifying all errors and all vices, young seminarians will have at heart to rediscover the path of truth and virtue in the objectivity of our faculties, and to discover Truth and Sanctity anew in Our Lord.

3. The Providential Choice of Rome as the Seat of Peter, and the Blessings of This Choice for the Growth of the Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ

I believe I must add some words to draw the attention of our priests and our seminarians to the indisputable fact of the Roman influences on our spirituality, on our liturgy, and even on our theology.

One cannot deny that this is a providential fact. God, who leads all things, has in His infinite wisdom prepared Rome to become the Seat of Peter and center for the radiation of the Gospel. Hence the adage: Unde Christo e Romano.

Dom Guéranger, in his Histoire de sainte Cécile, recounts the great part which members of great Roman families played in the foundation of the Church, giving their goods and their blood for the victory and the reign of Jesus Christ. Our Roman liturgy is the faithful witness of this.

Romanitas is not a vain word. The Latin language is an important example. It has brought the expression of the Faith and of Catholic worship to the ends of the world. And the converted people were proud to sing their Faith in this language, a real symbol of the unity of the Catholic Faith.

Schisms and heresies are often begun by a rupture with Romanitas, a rupture with the Roman liturgy, with Latin, with the theology of the Latin and Roman Fathers and theologians.

It is this force of the Catholic Faith rooted in Romanitas that Freemasonry wished to eliminate by occupying the Pontifical States and enclosing Catholic Rome in Vatican City. This occupation of Rome by the Masons permitted infiltration of the Church by Modernism and the destruction of Catholic Rome by Modernist clergy and Popes who hasten to destroy every vestige of Romanitas: the Latin language, the Roman liturgy. The Slavic Pope is the most determined to change the little which was kept by the Lateran Treaty and the Concordat. Rome is no longer a sacred city. He encourages the establishing of false religions in Rome itself, accomplishing there scandalous ecumenical meetings. He everywhere pushes for “inculturation” in the liturgy, destroying the last vestiges of the Roman liturgy. He has modified in practice the status of the Vatican State. He has renounced coronation, thus refusing to be a Head of State. This relentlessness against Romanitas is an infallible sign of rupture with the Catholic Faith that he no longer defends.

The Roman pontifical universities have become chairs of Modernist pestilence. The coeducation of the Gregorian is a perpetual scandal.

All must be restored in Christo Domino—in Christ the Lord, in Rome as elsewhere.

Let us take delight in seeing how the paths of Divine Providence and Wisdom pass through Rome. Our conclusion will be that one cannot be Catholic without being Roman. This applies also to Catholics who have neither the Latin language nor the Roman liturgy. If they remain Catholic, it is because they remain Roman—like the Maronites, for example, by the ties to the Catholic and Roman French culture which formed them.

It is, moreover, an error to speak of Roman culture as Western. The converts from Judaism brought with them from the Orient all that was Christian, all that which in the Old Testament was preparation and could be a component of Christianity, all that which Our Lord had assumed and that the Holy Ghost had inspired the apostles to adopt. How many times do the epistles of St. Paul teach us on this subject!

God willed that Christianity, cast in a certain way in the Roman mold, should receive from it a vigorous and exceptional expansion. All is grace in the divine plan, and Our Divine Savior disposes everything as the Romans are said to act, that is, cum consilio et patientia or suaviter et fortiter—with counsel and patience, sweetly and mightily (Wis. 8:1). Ours is the duty to guard this Roman Tradition desired by Our Lord in the same way that He wished us to have Mary as our Mother.

[1]  O Wisdom, who hast come forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one extremity of the world to another, directing all things forcefully and mildly, come and teach us the way of prudence (Antiphon for December 17th).

[2]  “Come, let us rejoice....Come, let us adore...for the sea is His and He made it and His hands formed the dry land. Come let us adore and prostrate ourselves before God. Let us weep before the Lord who made us, for He is the Lord our God and we are His people, the sheep of His pasture.”

[3]  “The Father is charity, the Son is grace, the Holy Ghost is their communication: O Blessed Trinity!” “From whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things, to Him be glory forever.”

[4]  On this subject we recommend reading the books of Fr. Calmel and the truly admirable writing of Fr. Emmanuel on the Church.

[5]  We will benefit from reading the books of St. Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort, as well as the books of Fr. Terrien on the glories of Mary.

[6]  Cf. P. Lachat, Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, Vol. XV, p. 480, Q. 21.

[7]  Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, in his introduction to De Christo Salvatore, has some very profound things to say concerning the objectivity of spirituality, which are very useful in our time of subjectivism.

Table of Contents

Preface

Prologue

Dedication

Spiritual Journey

God

The Perfections of God

The Divine Life

The Angels

The Creation of the World

Jesus Christ by Whom Man’s Return to God Is Accomplished

The Sacraments of Jesus Christ

The Church

The Virgin Mary

The Last Things

Complementary Notes