Fidelity Sermon
of His Excellency Archbishop Marcel lefebvre In
the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. My
dear friends, During
the days preceding the Feast of Easter, it was not without emotion,
that we followed Our Lord Jesus Christ... we followed Him at the
Last Supper when He ordained His apostles and made them priests
for eternity. We followed Him in the Garden of Olives. We followed
Him on the way to Calvary. As
St. Augustine said in one of the lessons, which we read during these
holy days, Our Lord presented Himself during these days as a man.
It was a true man who sweated blood, it was a true man who was scourged,
it was man who was presented to the Jews: "Ecce Homo-Behold
the man!" It was also a man who was crucified, whose heart
was pierced. Thus those who crucified Him were sneering in front
of the Cross where He was hanging, saying: "If thou art the
Son of God, come down from the Cross, and we shall believe in Thee!"
O wretched men! They were supposed to know the Scriptures. They
should have known that when the Messiah would come, He would be
crucified. All this had been foretold in the Scriptures, that His
Heart would be pierced, that He would shed His Blood for the remission
of sins, and that three days later He would rise again, and that
He would rise again by His own power, by His Almighty Power! As
Our Lord said: "I lay down My life willfully and I shall take
it up again." After
these days during which many of His disciples and apostles abandoned
Him - were frightened - behold, suddenly He manifested His Divinity
more brightly than lightning. It was with all His splendor that
Our Lord came out of the tomb, so much so that the guards were knocked
down by the splendor coming out of the tomb - the Body of Our Lord
more brilliant than the sun. O, how would we have liked to be present
at this event! How we would have liked to be able to follow, with
our eyes, what those who were close to Our Lord at that time were
able to see! But
now, in the face of this event, unique in the whole history of mankind,
we must make a choice: either we believe that a Man - God has risen
from the dead and therefore has established His Divinity, or we
refuse it. Well,
my dear brethren, we have made our choice! We have proclaimed it
during the Easter Vigil, when we renewed the vows of our Baptism.
We were asked: "Do you believe in Jesus Christ Our Lord, Who
is risen and ascended into Heaven?" "We believe." We
have consciously and freely re-asserted what our godparents said
on the day of our Baptism! But did we realize that this Profession
of Faith, which we have renewed during this Vigil, binds us, as
it bound us on the day of our Baptism, and that it has very serious
consequences, very important ones? Indeed,
if we believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ is Almighty God, He "by
whom all things were made," Who rose from the dead on Easter
morning, then we must follow Him. We must obey Him as the Jews did
when the Apostles reminded them that they had crucified Our Lord,
and the Jews asked: "What shall we do? What shall we do?"
The Apostles answered: "Do penance, and be baptized everyone
of you!" (Act. 2:37-38) To
do penance and receive Baptism. Yes, indeed! From now on, not a
single man, not a single soul on earth can be saved, can go to Heaven,
can attain the goal for which he has been created, without receiving
the Catholic Baptism! This is logical. It is necessary that Baptism
produces holy grace, that Baptism gives grace. What is grace: Grace
is nothing other than the very participation in the nature of Our
Lord Jesus Christ, in His Divine Nature. Through Baptism, we become
partakers in the Nature of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in His Divine
Nature. We need to belong to Him by grace in order to enter Heaven.
Without Our Lord Jesus Christ we can do nothing. He is the only
Mediator between Heaven and earth, the only Mediator. We cannot
perform a single meritorious act if we are not with Our Lord Jesus
Christ. Such are the consequences of the Resurrection! There
is only one man who can say that He rose through His own power,
that He laid down His life and took it up again. There is only the
Author of life and of death Who is capable of saying such a thing
- God Himself. Thus, if it is truly God Who rose again, men cannot
be indifferent to the coming of God among them, telling them: "You
can do nothing without Me!" (Jn.15:5) If
we glance back on the history of these twenty centuries which have
elapsed since the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we are
obliged to acknowledge that mankind is divided: there, are those
who believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ and there are those who do
not believe. Our Lord Himself told us: "He who is not with
Me is against Me." Yes, indeed, because we have the duty to
believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ, a strict duty. The fulfillment
of this duty gives us eternal life and to disregard it, deprives
us of it forever. Now,
we see that throughout history it is precisely around the Divinity
of Our Lord Jesus Christ and on the subject of the Divinity of Our
Lord Jesus Christ on which men were divided. From the beginning
of the Christian era, the errors of Anus, of Nestorius, of Eutiches,
of Pelagius were all about Our Lord Jesus Christ. Either they present
Him as God only, denying His humanity, or they reduce Him to a mere
man. They want to divide Our Lord Jesus Christ - and always in order
to escape His Law, to disobey Him, to be freed from Our Lord Jesus
Christ. Because if we believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ is God,
then we must obey His law, the Decalogue, which He gave us, we must
keep the Faith and profess the Creed, we must obey the Church that
He has instituted and through which He gave us the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass and the Sacraments. We are bound by all this. And
we can see that after all these heresies at the beginning of Christianity,
the war against Our Lord Jesus Christ increased - under the pretext
of humanism at the time of the Renaissance which led to Protestantism,
which claimed freedom from the Christian religion through "private
interpretation" of Holy Scripture, each one being allowed to
think what he deems true when he reads Holy Scripture, being "free"
from the Holy Church of God. As
time passed by, we see that men wanted all the more to be separated
from Our Lord Jesus Christ, until the moment when it became something
normal that societies and families were no longer Christian - they
no longer accepted Our Lord Jesus Christ. The civil society especially
was no longer Christian, and no longer obedient to Our Lord Jesus
Christ. Yet, all is in His hands. Nothing shall escape Our Lord
Jesus Christ when He shall come on Judgment Day, neither princes,
nor kings, nor emperors, nor any ruler of the nations of our time
and of this earth shall escape Our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore
we ought to restore the esteem for the submission, which we must
have to Our Lord Jesus Christ. He must reign in us, in our persons
and in our souls, in our wills. He is King; He is our King, because
He won His Kingdom by His Cross and His Resurrection. He is King
of our families. He has created parents and children. In our cities,
too, our civil societies have been created by Our Lord; all societies
have been created by Our Lord. If then civil societies are creatures
of God, just as families are creatures of God, then they owe obedience
to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Now,
what do we hear today, particularly since the last Council? They
precisely want to make civil societies free of the Kingdom of Our
Lord Jesus Christ. They want to give the same esteem to all religions
- they thus put on the same footing the authors of all different
religions. That, we cannot do! Because
only Our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He alone is God.
We must do all we can to bring our Faith to those who do not believe.
If we truly believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ is God then we ought
to preach Him everywhere, and to establish His reign everywhere.
We must be missionaries. They
say: "It is not possible in our times." We know that the
Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ is never perfect [on earth], but
we ought to strive for it. It is the same for holiness: we shall
probably not all be able to become saints, we still have some defects
in us, some tendencies toward sin, yet is this a valid reason not
to strive for holiness? It is not because we have difficulties in
reaching sanctification that we may say that it is useless to seek
it. The case is the same here: in this world, even if we have great
difficulties in establishing the reign of Our Lord in our societies,
it is not a valid reason to not seek His kingdom. Salvation of souls
is at stake! Souls are being lost because of all the scandals of
the world! One
may wonder: "Where is the world today?" They tell us:
"Protestants are our separated brethren." They tell Catholics:
"You can now be a member of the Freemasons; it is no longer
forbidden, the excommunication is lifted. You can have in your churches
some chapels for Buddhists or Muslims, because these people have
a right to their religion and to practice their religion as they
wish." But where is the world today? If Our Lord was still
here, what would He say? Would He no longer say these words: "The
world hates Me. And the world shall hate you because you love Me
and you believe in Me." Where is this world? Does it exist
no longer? It has never been so much in existence as today! Never
did Satan have so much influence in our world as today! And all
this influence is contrary to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore,
we must maintain our faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ. We
shall conclude by saying that we must remain faithful. Fidelity
must be the mark of the true Catholic. Do they not call us "the
faithful"? We are faithful, and being faithful, then
we must truly practice the virtue of fidelity. What is fidelity
if not to keep our promises, to keep our Faith in what has been
taught in the past. Fidelity encompasses the past in itself. There
can be no fidelity without something said or agreed upon. One is
faithful to his word, and faithful to his Faith. We
want to be faithful to our Faith, to the Faith of all times. No
one can change our Faith. We believe that today as well as in the
time of Our Lord as well as for the two thousand years in between. Satan
and the world are enraged against Our Lord Jesus Christ, against
all those who believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, we
see this "within the Church Herself, not only outside the Church.
In the very bosom of the Church they want to limit the reign of
Our Lord Jesus Christ. They do not want Our Lord Jesus Christ to
reign everywhere, in every soul, in every manner, in every domain.
For us, we want Our Lord Jesus Christ to reign; He is our King!
We just sang it a short while ago: "Tu nobis Victor Rex,
miserere! - O, our victorious King, have mercy on us!"
May He have mercy on us and help us to be faithful to all He has
given us in our holy religion, faithful to the holy Church, faithful
to the Sovereign Pontiff, successor of Peter, faithful to the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass, faithful to the Sacraments, faithful to our
Faith, to our Creed, faithful to the Ten Commandments (from which
they want to suppress a few articles). Well, today, we promise to
be faithful to what the Church has always taught us and to hand
down to future generations the Faith which has been handed down
to us by our parents, by our priests, by the Church for twenty centuries. We
shall ask this from the Blessed Virgin Mary, "Virgo Fidelis
- Virgin most faithful." She was faithful, she remained
with Jesus at the foot of the Cross, she did not run away! She did
not abandon Our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, we shall ask of the
Blessed Virgin that we be also with her near Our Lord. In
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Easter 10 April 1977
Ecône
My
dear brethren,