Sermon for Lent IV

These are the sermons I give on Fridays and Sundays during this Lenten season. The four firsts sermons are not really mines, but a translation of sermons given by Father Chanut, then Pastor of Saulx-les- Chartreux (France), in 1997 at Notre Dame des Armees (Versailles). These first sermons were originally two. I translated them and reordered them in 4 sermons with some minor adaptations and changes for our Community of Cherokee Village. To the Highest Glory of God !

Sermon IV: Suffering and Dying!

We tried Friday to see the connection between faith and charity, and we said that the junction of these two virtues has to be found in the Cross of Jesus. We dwelled on the words of Saint Paul, who wanted to know only Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. (1 Cor 2:2) Yet, we have to go further than a mere intuitive and sentimental comprehension of these words. Yes, these words are the sublime expression of the love that Saint Paul had for Jesus Christ and His Cross, but we still have to explain why the Cross is the point from which everything radiates and toward which everything converges.

We are subjects, in this valley of tears, to different kinds of sufferings and pains, and we are all in the expectation of death, which is the only certitude we have concerning our future. Certainly, we find consolations and comforts when we turn to Christ crucified. He did not simply suffer and die as any other man. As the liturgy of Holy Week will soon remind us, He suffered and died in the most horrible ignominy, relegated to the rank of the criminals of the worst sort, though He was the Just One, par excellence. Do we have to conclude that suffering and death are the whole lot of our existence? Certainly not! It is rather the opposite. The Cross is the proof that we cannot be resigned to the fact that suffering and death are the whole lot of our life. Aroused by an invincible inspiration, we look for more than consolation and comfort. We look for a remedy, and even more than a remedy, we look for a liberating victory.

When we turn to Jesus Christ crucified, if we only contemplate the sorrow of Christ that is beyond compare, according to Isaiah, and if we only contemplate a death that has been so dramatic and so cruel, it would quickly appear to be useless. The sufferings and the death of Christ cannot be the end of everything. But when we turn to Jesus Christ crucified, we learn why He suffered and why He died, and we also learn why we have to suffer and why we have to die. The Cross, that is temporally the end of the life of Christ, is also spiritually its completion, its crowning, and its achievement. When the Savior accepts to carry the Cross as the instrument of His torment, and accepts to be crucified, He also expresses the sense of His suffering and of His death. Thereby He explains what sense we can give to our sufferings and death, through Him, with Him, and in Him, as the great conclusion of the Canon of Mass reminds us every day. If you think for one moment about this, you will understand that everything is said in these words.

It is obvious that it is only insomuch as we make sense of our suffering and our death, and we overcome the incessant scandal of our suffering and our death, that the mystery of our existence becomes clearer. Our religion is the science of life only because the science of suffering and of death exists in the light of the Cross. Our religion teaches us how to recognize in suffering and death some accidents and means by which we are called to find our fulfillment in the fullness of being and of life.

Thus, what Saint Paul means when he says that he wants to know only Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ crucified, becomes now clearer. He tells us in what does the science consist, especially this supreme science without which any other science is not only vain, but also blinding. He who does not know why he suffers and why he dies, which is opposed to the aspiration to life and to happiness that is in our nature, has only a darkened knowledge of the other things. He may bustle, he may move heaven on earth, he may rearrange the world just as he likes, but he only undergoes his own existence after all.

So, again, when Saint Paul says that he wants to know only Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ crucified, he certainly expresses the deep sentiment that attaches him to Jesus. But we have to admit that he also he formulates a doctrine that is inseparable from his sentiment. Saint Paul exclaims that he loves Christ, and that he is bound up with Him, only to teach us that such an adherence is the essential and universal condition of salvation.

Therefore, for the Apostle, the Cross is not only a fact, but it is also an idea. When we say an idea, we do not mean an idea such like the concepts of the Greek philosophy that are abstractions. No, it is an idea as a living principle to which Saint Paul refers in order to explain the living reality that we are, and to propose the idea of salvation that we have to pursue. And the scholastic theology tells us what such an idea means when, with Saint Thomas Aquinas, we contemplate ideas in God. The Divine ideas are, for the great Doctor, the spiritual and intellectual place of theology. In them, there is both a rational and a religious explanation of these things. And of course, when we say rational and religious, we do not oppose the two terms, but we consider the same reality under different points of view.

Saint Paul presents Baptism as a death. It is the death of the old man, or the carnal man, the man of evil or the man of sin. The death of Christ on the Cross is not only the type of this death, but its reason as well as its justification, as the death of Baptism receives from the Cross its whole effectiveness. “Know you not that all we who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in His death?” he writes to the Romans. “In His death” means dying with Him and like Him. And then Saint Paul clarifies his thought: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin may be destroyed to the end that we may serve sin no longer. For he that is dead is justified from sin.”

Thus, dear brethren, at Baptism and by Baptism, the man of pride that we all are is called to die and to be crucified with Christ. But let us not delude ourselves. The man of pride dies at Baptism, but not in a way that he does not have to die again, and not in a way that he does not have to be crucified any longer. By Baptism we can say that this man of pride feels obliged to die, and that he receives the grace of dying, but he still has to actually die by voluntarily renouncing himself. This is what Saint Paul reminds the Colossians when he urges them with these vigorous words: “Mortify therefore your members who are upon the earth.” By members who are on earth, we have to understand fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which are idolatry. It means all the desires and all the actions in which pride manifests itself are the members by which the devil exercises his malice upon us.

It is clear that the task that Saint Paul urges us to perform is a permanent and constant work that will end only with our death freely accepted. So we can summarize the doctrine of Saint Paul in this way. Living in bodies of flesh, which means bodies that comprise carnal appetites, with such a tendency for selfishness, we are inclined to be unaware of God and of others, and to consider ourselves a whole. Therefore, we are doomed to suffering and to death, because our reciprocal selfishness clash with everything else and usually ends in being crushed. No matter what we do, we cannot escape from our condition. But instead of enduring this like powerless slaves, we have to suffer and to die by renouncing the old man, the carnal man, and the man of pride. This is how we accept to be crucified as Christ accepted to be crucified. So, Christian life should be a continual death, and this is why Saint Paul says, “I die daily.” (1 Cor 15:31)

Nevertheless, dear brethren, do not be mistaken. It is only one aspect of Christian life, and you would be completely wrong in pleasing yourself by wallowing in this state. You would give such a negative image of our religion, which has been so many times decried as a religion of suffering and of death, and which glorifies suffering and death for themselves, a religion comprised of faithful who would have to suffer and to die just for the sake of suffering and dying, as if God were a Moloch pleased to see His worshipers struggling in tortures and vanishing in emptiness.

Yes, suffering and death are daily realities. There is no point in negating this. There is no point in diverting oneself in order to forget this. There is no point in trying to eliminate this reality without fighting our selfishness, which is the principle and source of suffering and death. Again, there is no middle. Either you endure suffering and death as slaves, or you accept them and want them by voluntarily suffering and dying. It is precisely through the Cross, as Saint Paul presents it, that Christianity offers us the means to accept and to want suffering and death as free men.

Let us be clearer. It is not a stoical resignation to what is inevitable, suffering and death, without the hope that exceeds them. Such a resignation is nothing else than an enslaving subjection. Along with this kind of resignation, there is always a protest that is more or less admitted. In order to not revolt against suffering and death, and to accept them with a cordial and sincere acceptance, we have to see through them something more, and to believe in something higher than them. This is why Saint Paul says that if we die with Christ, we shall live with Him, and if we suffer with Him, we shall reign with Him. Ultimately, the Apostle does not invite us to suffering and death, but to happiness and Divine life. “Buried with Him in Baptism,” he says, “in Whom also you are risen by the faith of the operation of God, who has raised Him up from the dead. (Col 2:12)

So, understand well that if Christian life is a continual death, it is only to our pride and selfishness that we have to die in order to increase daily in the true life. By doing such, we eliminate from our life any miscomprehension in the light of faith. We eliminate any interior conflicts, and we can blossom in the peace of eternity above the tribulations of time and of space.

When you consider the effects of pride that are present everywhere, within ourselves and at all the levels of society, within families and individuals, and when you hear Saint Paul and Christ speak of dying to yourself daily, if you are tempted to say that these words are too hard, please, reject this temptation. These words are too hard only because of the selfishness within and amongst us that only knock against each other. Consider the richness of the words of Christ who says, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For he that will save his life, shall lose it, and he that shall lose his life for My sake, shall find it.” (Matthew 16:24) These words are nothing else than a call for a true, sincere, and total generosity. It is what, in the language of a Christian, we call charity. And charity, as it is something that proceeds from God, is something immense and tremendous like God, Who made man, Who becomes man, and Who dies on the Cross to redeem the sins of the world. To be and to remain in charity requires that we die to ourselves, to get rid of our selfishness, to get away from our individuality as flesh and blood. This is the gift of self, realized in the union to the God Who gives Himself in perfect charity.

And do not believe that God asks you for things that are above your strength, even though these thing might be impossible without the Divine grace. Before even thinking about martyrdom or any great work, simply thing about faithfully persevering in your daily thoughts, words and actions. The victor is the one who keeps the works of God unto the end. (Apo 2,26) To deny yourself means preferring the word of God to your own thinking and preferring the Commandments of God to your own will. This is what we call the new life in the Spirit.

It appears then that when Jesus teaches us how to suffer and to die, he simply teaches us how eternally live. The Cross of Jesus reveals and teaches the value of charity because by offering ourselves we forget ourselves and we can efficiently help to the conversion of sinners, the propagation of faith and to the salvation of the world as much as it depends on us.

In this in this light, dear brethren, that we have to consider during this Lenten season, our penances and mortifications, our public and private prayers, and our works of mercy. If for your own misfortune, you would refuse this high expression of charity that are the exercises of Lent, be aware that because of you, something would lack to the sanctification of the name of God, to the realization of His reign and to the accomplishment of His will. Because of you, the treasure of the Divine grace would become impoverished, while the power of darkness would be stronger in the world.

Sermon for Lent III

These are the sermons I give on Fridays and Sundays during this Lenten season. The four firsts sermons are not really mines, but a translation of sermons given by Father Chanut, then Pastor of Saulx-les- Chartreux (France), in 1997 at Notre Dame des Armees (Versailles). These first sermons were originally two. I translated them and reordered them in 4 sermons with some minor adaptations and changes for our Community of Cherokee Village. To the Highest Glory of God !

Sermon III: Knowing Jesus Christ crucified

We speak during this Lenten season about faith, but it would be vain if we were not talking about the works, too, simply because faith without the works is vain. Now, when we speak about the works, we have to understand not the materiality of the acts, but mainly the spirituality that penetrates them, and which makes them the works of Jesus Christ Himself.

The Christians who truly confess Jesus Christ from their heart can be recognized by the fact that they are always unsatisfied with themselves. What they know of the Divine science and of the evangelical knowledge is never enough for them, and they always want to know more. What they do, with regards to the works of mercy and of piety, is never enough, and they always want to do better.

According to a deep thought of Saint Augustine, which they may not have ever read but which they certainly realize in their interior life, is that what they find in the endless field of the truth is for them a new reason to continue their quest. They tell themselves with the great Doctor, whatever we have already found, we still have infinitely more to look for, and as we never stop searching, we are certain of finding. Notice, dear brethren, that it is their faith that tells them that they will find, as Our Lord told them, “For every one that asks, receives, and he that seeks, finds.” (Matthew 7:8) The faithful know that their quest is not vain, and cannot be vain, because God has never and will never deceive anyone.

They never grow tired of listening to the magisterial and apostolic teaching of the Church that unrolls for them the demands and the beauties of the Christian virtues. Since you are here, I can suppose that, dear brethren, you have to be counted among them. And you know with Saint Paul that we can sum up the entire doctrine in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

The Cross is to the true faithful the symbol of the renouncements entailed by Christian life. It is also the supreme revelation of God and the highest expression of His love, the unique secret of His Heart, and finally the triumph through which the disciples of Christ win over the world. The Cross appears to them as wisdom, light, and salvation. In one word, it is the Christian conception of Christian life.

Alas, and very far from it, is the Cross accepted by all the Christians. It is not rare, let us acknowledge it, to see among us some non-Christian perceptions of the Christian religion. Look at those who show the Cross as their emblem, and who refuse it as the principle of their life! Who, among ourselves, has never met one of these Catholics who walk with confidence, and whose soul is free from concerns? By the way, why would they be anxious? They strive, more or less deliberately, to not be involved in the questions, the doubts, and the anxieties that torment their co-religionists. They have certainly learned how to see in the Cross of Christ the symbol of the religion of Christ, but the idea that they form and which they demonstrate by their conduct is totally opposed to the Cross that they wear. If those prideful persons would only take an instant to think, they would immediately abandon the sign of the Cross, which appears to them as a weakness, as a reversal of the values of their life, and this, considered in the extreme, would exist, in their eyes, the disorder. It reminds me of my pastor when I was younger, who said about these sort of Catholics, who we see in various pilgrimages, who are facades of faith, that the banners they carry are often more Catholic than them. Our Lord had already spoken of them when He said, “This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines and commandments of men.” (Matthew 15:8)

The Beatitudes are to them a kind of extravagance for cranks. Listen to them, those lovers of the established situation in which they firmly settle and triumphantly flaunt themselves. They see God and His worshipers absorbed with power, and who have to claim their rights only by force. Listen to them, those poor glorious Catholics, who ensure that their Catholic identity resounds loudly, and who like to claim that they fully possess the truth. Let us ask them, what is the purpose behind the precepts of Christ that they know so well? They can list all of them, but they live their lives far from the light and the spirit of these precepts. They make the religion of Christ one of the elements of their worldly honorability. They take possession of Christ like a suit that they make to their own measure, according to their own manners and tastes, so that they can pride themselves on being in the truth and look down upon those who are not.

Let them be warned! Let them be careful not to be like the Pharisee of the Gospel, he who is pleased with himself, dwells on the misery of others, and finds in it the occasion of exalting himself above them. In fact, he does exactly the opposite of what Christ does for him. Jesus, indeed meek and humble of heart, presses upon our misery out of compassion in order to assume and bear it, as if He has been responsible for it.

What about you, dear brethren? Have you really accepted the dramatic scandal of the Cross where strength once became weakness? From the day when you entered into the life of faith, the Cross was marked on your forehead. You have been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which means in the name of the God of goodness, of light, and of love. And today, do you happen to be a true witness of the One who, on the Cross, gave the supreme proof of His goodness, the One who has made the true light shine, and the One who has manifested His love by the pouring out of all His blood?

Catholics, are you here on earth the imitators of the suffering God who dies on the Cross like a criminal, He who generously and freely became the brother of those for whom He dies? Ask yourselves, in all sincerity, if the Cross of Jesus Christ has not been until this day, maybe even not wittingly and consciously, not only a scandal but also a folly. When asking this question, I do not think only about the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the mount of Calvary, but also about the union we should have with this Divine Sacrifice, which is the scandal and folly. If in reality the Cross is such a scandal and a folly for so many Christians, how can we be surprised that it is only a scandal and a folly to so many unbelievers?

There are not a few, in fact, of those who nowadays turn away from the Cross, like in olden times when the Jews and the Gentiles turned away from it. Nevertheless, we have to make a distinction between those who are decidedly deniers of Christianity and those who live in incertitude and doubt, and who struggle more or less grievously in the darkness. The latter deserve all our compassion, but we have to expose and to relentlessly fight the former. It is not rare that some people, who are dogmatic to the extreme, and who head the field, assume the position of humility in order to disarm us. They are second to none in their claim to be the victims of those that they imperiously despise, raising their aggressive hypocrisy to the sublime level of the defense of mankind. There is not a week when the Holy Father is not the object of such vile attacks. Let them allow us to point out to them that their militant unbelief along with their incontestable savoir-faire, which may impress vain people, could not supplant in souls the faith that they intend to destroy.

We have enough of these new evangelists who have succeeded in destroying, but who cannot manage to build. With the help of the juicy contributions of the money moguls, they have consistently undermined and methodically ruined everything that humanity used to believe, which rendered right reason. But we have to notice that mankind is more than ever morally and spiritually in incertitude and in confusion. All of these fine gentlemen are entirely responsible for this, and have nothing in which to boast. But they forget that they are the adulterous fathers of the silliest superstitions, of the most insane sects, and they haughtily retort that thanks to them, a breeze of pity for human misery came into the world and, for this, the need for great social progress.

Let us say a word about that. This breeze of pity certainly comes from the Gospel, and no one can argue this fact, but mankind has already lost all its benefit. All deniers of faith are responsible for this failure. By rejecting the message of Christ, they made the western man lose the sense of man and his value, which Christ has so clearly and emphatically highlighted. They might be filled with human knowledge, or think that they are, but we have to tell them the facts. We have to tell these people, who set themselves up with so much confidence as the judges of Christianity, that they condemn out of hand, that they have absolutely nothing that can substitute for the Christianity which they have rejected. The real environment that they have imposed upon us, and in which we now struggle, is only a bloody chaos, where we discern at first sight only self-interests that fight against each other. What true sense of life have they given in this social and moral decadence? What ideal have they produced so as to overcome the intellectual and spiritual scandal they have set everywhere? What resolutions have they proposed in order to remedy the solitary and common misery that they have established?

We can see clearly that as much as they have deprived the western man from the Cross of Christ, they have broken the liberating impulse that was in him, they have dried up the source of beneficial and placatory generosities.

What is the Cross of Christ? We do not speak only and mainly about the sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, even though there is nothing dearest to our piety or nothing richer for our instruction. But understand well, that in order to answer such a question, it would not be enough to be moved by the appalling spectacle of the sufferings of Christ. It would neither be enough to be edified by the example of His resignation. Even Saint Paul, who proclaimed that he knew nothing but Jesus, and Jesus crucified, speaks in his epistles about many other things that are not at a first sight directly related to the Cross. Did the Apostle forget the foundation of his profession of faith? Or did the Apostle express himself in such a sudden fervor so as only to tell of his ardent love for Jesus Christ? If you thought so, you would considerably wane the impact of his predication, and to tell the truth, you would roughly misread it. There is absolutely no doubt that the exclusive profession of faith to Jesus Christ crucified is a cry of love from Saint Paul, but it is infinitely more than that. This cry of love knows from where it comes and where it goes. It springs forth from a soul that is entirely irradiated by the integral truth of Christ. Whatever he knows and whatever he teaches, Saint Paul maintains that he understands it only in the light that shines from the Cross. And so can we understand and comprehend things only in the same light.

Since Saint Paul, dear brethren, nothing in this regard has ever changed, and nothing will ever change. Therefore, like Saint Paul, let us take the Cross as the center of our faith. Otherwise we have to renounce our understanding of, in its whole truth, the message of the Gospel. Do not imagine for one second that by wanting to know only Jesus Christ crucified, we have chosen to remain in ignorance. Furthermore, it is by knowing only Jesus Christ crucified that we shall know everything as everything should be known. Is the Cross the center of our faith because the apostolate of Jesus Christ ends on the mount of Calvary in the manner of the most desolate drama and of the most sublime martyrdom? This view is undoubtedly correct, as well as it is undoubtedly incomplete, because it does not show us any essential links between the Cross and the doctrine of Jesus in the way that this doctrine, as it reveals God and explains to us the world, also explains ourselves to us. So, is the Cross the center of our faith because it is the tragic symbol of the suffering of mankind, which only finds in the Cross the strength to not succumb to the temptation of despair and of blasphemy? No, it is not for this reason either.

Yet, we can all testify that the thought of Christ crucified has put back on their feet many cowards. It has provoked so many repentances. It has made so many pains endurable. It has eased so many agonies. But this is not sufficient to explain why the Cross is the point from which everything radiates, and toward which everything converges.

With the help of grace, we shall try to see why Sunday. Meanwhile, let us turn to Our Lady, whose faith, throughout her life, remained unflagging. Like any other believer, she used to see through a glass in a dark manner during her life on earth. Now she sees face to face, and she knows as she is known. Her faith had not been vain, because her charity was great. We said last week, and we maintain still, that it is possible that faith remains in a soul without charity, but it would be vain. This is even an extra motive for condemnation and reprobation, as we know by faith that we should love. It is charity that gives faith its full measure, and this explains the mystery of the Cross, bringing a light to the darkness that remains here, even in faith. It is charity which urges us to work towards our salvation, as it is charity which brought Our Lord to the mount of Calvary. May Our Lady always help us to remember this!

Sermon for Lent II

These are the sermons I give on Fridays and Sundays during this Lenten season. The four firsts sermons are not really mines, but a translation of sermons given by Father Chanut, then Pastor of Saulx-les- Chartreux (France), in 1997 at Notre Dame des Armees (Versailles). These first sermons were originally two. I translated them and reordered them in 4 sermons with some minor adaptations and changes for our Community of Cherokee Village. To the Highest Glory of God !

Sermon II

The other enemy of Faith: Corruption

Last Friday, we were contemplating ignorance as a major enemy of Faith. We said, with Pope Benedict XIV, that most of the souls perish because of ignorance, and we were deploring the lack of knowledge of so many faithful regarding the object of faith and the reasons that support the Faith. Today, we focus on another and more pernicious enemy of the Faith, namely corruption. Corruption also, corruption above all, I should say, conspires against the Faith.

You all remember, dear brethren, that the Son of God has revealed a very deep truth when He said, “Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God.” With these words, He does not only tell us that those who have a pure heart will see God face to face at the light of glory, but He also tells us that those people will see God in our present condition with the light of Faith, which is like the dawn of the light of glory. The soiled souls do not have this privilege; the perverted hearts do not receive such an honor. Or, if they actually do, it is in a limited measure with a restricted grace.

It is not that the loss of Charity always leads to the loss of Faith. Losing the friendship with God does not always mean losing His light. Faith can subsist without the works. It can still shine through the darkness of a corrupted soul. But it is not less certain that corruption is often more than an obstacle to the Faith. It is often its ruin because a guilty life makes man unworthy of Faith, and also makes him its enemy.

Corruption makes man unworthy of Faith. There is no need to demonstrate this, as you all know, at least since Friday, that Faith is not only a science that one can acquire by studying, or lose by a lack of culture, but that it is first a gift from God, a particular grace that He offers to men, and a supernatural virtue that enriches them. God is Master of His gifts, the free dispenser of His grace. God gives to whomever it pleases Him the virtue that makes the believers so as to make them Saints. But to whom does He give such favors? For whom does He keep such a treasure? Is it for those who have no respect and no consideration for such a gift? For those who fear it instead of desiring it? For those who respond to this gift only by abusing or neglecting it? It would be a weird and bizarre idea in God’s wisdom, mercy, and justice to think that He is as liberal and magnificent toward those who have no other laws than His will, and no other rules than His word, as He would be for those who despise His will and His word, and who claim to be the disciples of the free-thought and of the independent moral. We read in the Gospel that He orders those who announce His doctrine to go forth from those who refuse to hear it, to shake off the dust from their feet. He acts in the same way when He is not heard. He withdraws from an unfaithful soul and takes with Him His despised gifts. According to the word of Jesus, the Kingdom of God shall be taken from them. When Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of God, we have to understand first the Faith that shows its way and that is the principle of justification.

It is the effect of sin to envelop with darkness the pervert souls. Sin puts between God and a sinner a distance that increases as much as the prevarications multiply. Saint Augustine remembered the state of his soul when he wrote in the Second book of His Confessions: “Instead, the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh, and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and overcast my heart that I was unable to distinguish pure affection from unholy desire. Both boiled confusedly within me, and dragged my unstable youth down over the cliffs of unchaste desires and plunged me into a gulf of infamy. Thy anger had come upon me, and I knew it not. I had been deafened by the clanking of the chains of my mortality, the punishment for my soul's pride, and I wandered farther from Thee, and thou didst permit me to do so. I was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured out, and I boiled over in my fornications.”

To those who do not have Faith any longer, or who have just a flagging Faith, we can ask what they have done in order to prove themselves unworthy of the Divine grace. After all, we can wonder: You had Faith once! And now you have ceased to believe? But when did you stop believing? I bet you did not lose Faith as an inattentive person loses his keys. It happens - and we have examples - that Faith becomes suddenly established in a soul but there is no way that Faith can abruptly disappear. Let us take a closer look! Did you lose your Faith when you were becoming better, and when your determination for virtue was growing? I’d rather reckon that you noticed the extinction of your Faith only after a more or less long period of its fading, when little by little you became more and more oblivious of God and of His Law, more and more an enemy towards yourself and towards your duties.

It is the old story of an adolescent, who is bothered by disordered desires, and who finally decides one day that God does not exist, or at least that the Religion is not God, so that he can free himself and abandon himself to the temptations that gnaw at him, unless it is simply to laze better and to run away from the fight. All the priests have seen such a weak and prideful person, who, after a life of piety and of observance, walks away slowly but surely from the altar and the confessional, moves back to the last pew of the church, and finally end by passing the door to sink into the darkness of apostasy. After that, because of a certain concern for convenience, and in order to give a good image of themselves, these souls would readily add to their apostasy a sacrilege of the day of their marriage, and often a perjury later, as they will certainly not keep the promises of their marriage.

Do not believe that they lost their Faith on the day of their defection, or even during the following days. God is so good! God is so good and so constant in His love that He cannot abandon His poor creature so quickly. It is as deliberately as they multiplied revolts and prevarications that they eventually lost their Faith. It is only after they had despised so many times and for a long time the Master, who called them back, that the Divine light could no longer shine before their eyes, or that it could shine only in the midst of the darkness, and they were unable to understand it. The darkness did not comprehend it, Saint John says in his prologue.

Thus, dear brethren, unbelief comes slowly, on a way that is not the way of virtue, nor the way of honor. It is a sinister ghost who slips in during the middle of the night. It is an unhealthy plant that grows in the muck of revolt.

That explains why, alas, the Faith remains languid, if not dead, in so many souls. Look where our contemporary generation is now, if we consider it at all the ages and all the levels. Look at the youth, deceived by bad masters and flattered by vile seducers! They get carried away by their passions, and they rush headlong into depravation while being too busy deifying themselves through the fleeting idols that the media like to incense. Some statistics published in 2007 say that 62% of the population in the country had their first sexual intercourse by the age of 18. The media, which we were denouncing Friday for participating in the work of the destruction of the Faith, would tell you that this is normal. There is no doubt, for whoever is a little bit lucid and aware of the situation, that television is one of the greatest means of corruption in our society. It is unfortunately not the only one.

Look at the middle-aged, manipulated by ignoble, ambitious people, and deceived by incapable liars! Blinded by their interests, they blithely run after their fervid greed, while being too busy deifying themselves through the terrible idols of the enslaving consumerism.

Look at the elderly, dazed by fiddled mirages and reassured by costly artifices! Blinded by indifference, they leisurely damn themselves in a sacrilegious oblivion, while being too busy deifying themselves behind an immoral minstrel of criminal betrayal.

Weep over these living dead! Weep over these living dead of every age who fall asleep in the arms of indifference, where everything fades and everything is forgotten. Listen to them who mutually lead each other toward perdition and live a life of pleasure. They claim to be irreproachable because they have some principles. Their principles are vaguely generous, covered by the mask of tolerance, the great universal virtue of our time that allows them to hide their betrayal. Listen to them who justify themselves in the name of guilty prejudices! Listen to these harbingers of the evil spirit whose pride serves the virtues that they give themselves!

Pride! This is what is certainly contrary to the spirit of religion. A proud person is unable to receive the gifts of God, and first of all, the gift of Faith, which is hidden from the wise and prudent of the world but revealed to the little ones, according to Jesus. The primary condition required of a soul to receive and to keep the Divine light is first to feel its need, which means to confess one’s own darkness and insufficiencies. Without this confession, and if you think yourself wise and savant, and if you remain filled with the sentiment of your own excellence, then you are for sure one of these proud people who will be scattered by God Almighty, and one of these mighty dethroned, as the Blessed Virgin reminds us in her Magnificat.

Lent calls us to a detailed examination of conscience and to different kinds of penance, so that we can spotlight what we still lack in order to remain children of light, or to be better and better children of God. It is not enough to sing out loudly Attende Domine. We have to pray it with our whole heart. It is one of the best remedies against pride. You tell the Lord that He is your King. Be sure that He truly reigns over you by keeping His laws. You tell Him that He is your Redeemer. Be sure that He really saves you by accepting His graces. You tell Him that you weep and groan. Be sure that He listens to you by weeping over your sins. You ask Him to wash away the stains of your sins. Be sure that He forgives you by going to the confessional and doing penance.

Vice cannot come to an agreement with the truth that repudiates it. A guilty life does not ally with a faith that disturbs its false peace and condemns its shameful distractions. There are between the heart and the spirit such connections that if one is unhealthy, so is the other. When the heart is in evil, the spirit remains rarely in the truth.

Most of those who believe no longer have some interests for not believing. They reject religion less because it lacks of proofs to support it, and more because it lacks of tolerance for their guilty passions. The truth of religion is banished from their convictions only because its moral is banished from their lives. When you believe, you feel obligated to do good and you suffer from doing evil, because after the Creed that imposes on us to believe in the dogmas, there are the Commandments that impose on us to carry out our duties.

Certain of the formerly faithful, before they deserted and perjured themselves, tried to keep to some external marks of respect, and changed only little by little their sentiments and their habits. How long did this hypocrisy last? Faith does not accept any compromises of this sort. It blackens all hypocrisies, tears off all the masks, and accepts nothing without the reform of morals. This is what troubles and exasperates, or at least what frightens, so many souls. We would be less timid concerning the Faith if we would be less corrupted. We would feel stronger if we would be more virtuous. But corruption costs little while virtue costs a lot. Then we prefer self satisfaction rather than sacrifice, and thereby apostasy rather than faith.

It is today as it was at the time of Saint Augustine, and as it will ever be. Faith has two kinds of enemies, the ignoramus and the pervert. The first reject faith because they don’t know, or they have forgotten, that it is salutary. The latter reject it because they know that it is hostile to their passions.

What about you, dear brethren, who have the joy to possess the Divine Faith? You can be saintly proud of it and keep it as a treasure. However, be well aware that this treasure can escape you, if, by any chance, you do not apply your intelligence and your will, always enriched by grace, to it. Remember that you will escape the misfortune of others only if you take care to keep in you the treasure of Faith by the observance and the practice of the Commandments and of the virtues. Lent reminds us that among these practices, there are penance and alms.

Now that you know that you can lose your faith because of ignorance and of corruption, make sure that you fight against them within yourself, and never think that you are definitely safe and protected from either of them. Take great care to always know more and more the science of God, while hunting down the darkness that overshadows it, and seeking the light that makes it radiant. Be attentive to receive the graces that God has prepared for you in His great goodness. Try to practice the Christian virtues the best you can by applying yourself to the observances that support them, and by running away from the occasions that weaken them. The more we become worthy of the Faith by a holy life, the more we believe in its truths.

Lenten Sermons

These are the sermons I give on Fridays and Sundays during this Lenten season. The four firsts sermons are not really mines, but a translation of sermons given by Father Chanut, then Pastor of Saulx-les- Chartreux (France), in 1997 at Notre Dame des Armees (Versailles). These first sermons were originally two. I translated them and reordered them in 4 sermons with some minor adaptations and changes for our Community of Cherokee Village. To the Highest Glory of God

First Sermon

The enemy of Faith: Ignorance

God has revealed Himself through Our Lord Jesus, and He has given the mission to His Church to teach the truth to all men. But God did not promise that all men would be faithful to His teaching. On the contrary, when going to Jerusalem, and right after He told the parable of the unjust judge and of the troublesome widow, Our Lord announced bad days when Faith would be so flagging that He wondered if the Son of man will find faith on earth when again He would come. Most certainly, these days of universal defection have not yet come, since you are here present at the foot of the altar, and, throughout the world, many Christians desperately try to remain inviolably faithful to the Faith and to the promises of their Baptism. Yet, if it is true that faith is not extinct in all, no one would deny that it is weakened in most of the people.

The splendor of the revealed truth is too often mixed with obscure opinions that have been invented, that is, when they are simply not otherwise destroyed by some aggressive impious negations. It seems that these terrible days predicted by the Son of God are now approaching. There will be only miscreant hearts with blasphemy on the lips.

What are the reasons for such a situation? Is it because the Divine truth, the object of faith, would have ceased to be true, and therefore it could no longer earn men’s respect? Or, is it because the Divine truth, the object of faith, would have changed, and therefore no longer establish itself in the spirit of men with its sovereign authority? To say this, or simply to think it, would be an outrage against God’s authority. We profess that the truth comes from God who is the source of any truth, that it has descended from eternity, and that it is as immutable and permanent as eternity. It cannot be distorted in its source or in the organs that deliver it to us, because God did not want His Gift to be derisive. Indeed, it would have been a derisive gift if God would have permitted that the truth could have been corrupted by those whose have received the deposit of truth, and by those who are its organs in the Church.

Now, you could say that there might be some hybrid theologians whose theories infest all the levels of the teaching of the Church. But should we be surprised? Did not Our Lord warn us when He denounced them? Have you forgotten that many false prophets shall rise and shall seduce many? And that because iniquity has abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold?

We all know that the stewards of the truth can fail. But we also know from our personal experiences that Sacred Scripture and Grace always keep the fullness of truth’s strength in those who want to adore in spirit and in truth. We all know that the truth cannot change toward men, but that, on the other hand, men can change in regard to the truth, and actually, they do. They can despise it because they know it no longer. They can fear it because it accuses them. The worst is that they can ridicule it when it no longer satisfies their desires. Ignorance on one hand and corruption on the other: this is what diverts them from the way of truth and puts them on a wrong path that always leads to a lie.

The most illustrious and enlightened Pope of the eighteenth century, Benedict XIV Lambertini, said that most of the souls perish because of ignorance. It is even truer nowadays when ignorance in matters of faith has become such a common evil and a quasi-general wound. There are certainly lights in the beginning of this century, and nobody in this congregation would deny the scientific and technological progresses since. But men have extended their knowledge in temporal things as much as they have limited it in the things that pertain to eternity. It is now an incontestable fact that in matters of religion, ignorance is almost universal. Some people even consider religion as the enemy of progress, but this is an old chimera from the philosophers of the eighteenth century. It is not worth to speak about this, as I don’t see any people in this congregation who prefer to ride a horse instead of driving a car, or who have candles instead of electric lighting.

Faith is first of all a supernatural virtue, and as such it has for an enemy corruption, as we shall address later. But faith is also a science: the science of God. In this regard, its enemy is ignorance, since science and ignorance are two incompatible things, because they are contrary. The science of faith has two objects: the doctrine itself, and the reasons upon which this doctrine is based. The doctrine bears its own justification within itself, and it is already a proof of its divinity, an intrinsic proof. The motive of credibility on which it is based justifies it, too, and this is the second proof of its divinity, an extrinsic proof. These two proofs are the two flying buttresses that support the edifice of Christianity. To whomever ignores them, Christianity is but an edifice without solidity, simply good as a shelter for simple and credulous souls.

Let us say at this point that the knowledge of the proofs that support the faith must be proportionate to the degree of the fitness and culture of the mind, and that unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required. God proportions His demands to His giving, as we can hear from the parable of the talents. For the humble and little people who can lend to the faith only a straight mind and a sincere heart, the God of goodness has particular attentions and truly paternal considerations. For them, He gives sudden illuminations and intimate lights that compensate for many things. Their faith, that we unjustly sometimes call blind faith, is as valuable as the faith given to the great genius.

On the other hand, let us be well aware that this special grace from God - faith - is not given to those who are guilty of serious negligence. It is refused to those who can learn more and who actually content themselves with learning less. This negligence can concern the doctrine itself. The doctrine comes from God, and nothing comes from above without the lights that flow from such a source. For that reason, the Catholic doctrine has always delighted those who study it, who appreciate its cohesion, who penetrate in its depth and discover the Divine secrets that make it a doctrine entirely different than any other, the most sublime that has ever been proposed to men. In just a few lines, the Creed tells much more than all the philosophies of the earth. The Decalogue teaches with its ten precepts much more than all the codes issued from the hands of men. The Gospel, to one who knows how to read it, is such a Divine book, that a ravished soul has no more words to say than the Apostle Thomas, my Lord and my God!

Hopefully, dear brethren, you do not receive these words without thinking, and you do not cover an intellectual laziness with the sumptuous dress of the simple hearts. Whoever can learn the heavenly things must learn them. There is no indulgence for those who can read, and yet do not know by heart their Creed and the Ten Commandments, and who do not read frequently the New Testament, especially if they claim to follow the ancient Latin liturgy. If we go further, and if we strain our ears to the words of the Doctors, we penetrate with them into the intimate depth of the sacred doctrine where a dazzling light shines, the Divine light that shines into the eyes of the soul and uncovers for it the most ineffable marvels of God. And yet, who, among the great thinkers who are in vogue, even thinks about these Divine and sublime things? Who, among them, try to discover them with a studious desire? And even among those who still pretend to be Christians, do we have to mention those who do not have any more religious knowledge than that which they acquired during their childhood, especially in our time, when for more than thirty years, the initiation to the Christian doctrine has been too often reduced to sensations and feelings? Whoever can learn the heavenly things must learn them. There is no indulgence for those who have been to college, and yet balk at referring regularly to the great spiritual authors, especially if they claim to follow the ancient Latin liturgy.

Our generation is dealing with everything except the science of God. The life of most of our contemporaries passes in the preoccupations of their personal interests, in the agitations of business, in the inebriations of pleasures, in the aspirations for glory or fortune, and sometimes in the fear or the hatred of the truths of the Faith. This is where so many Christians are today, puppets of the lies and errors of the world. Too often they have just been able to put up some contestations that were as weak as their religious instruction, and ended by lowering their flags and capitulating in front of the spirit of the world. In these Christians, ignorance is great, and is graver as it is deliberate. Because they did not know the doctrine, or simply because they had but insufficient notions of it, this doctrine has perished in their souls.

It has also perished for another reason. They have ignored the truths of faith, but their ignorance of the reasons that support these Divine truths was not less. God indeed did not speak to men without proving that the word that they heard was His word, and, therefore, they must listen to Him. He took great care to teach men about this, as He knows very well, He who knows very well our nature, that if faith would remain in the state of a teaching without any other proof than the ones drawn from its own truth, this truth would be perpetually contested insomuch as man’s spirit is subtle and ingenious when the truth is at stake. We can incessantly argue about truths, even when they are evident. When the spirit lacks of rectitude and of sincerity, and above all, when the heart lacks of honesty and of generosity, there is only one thing that cannot be held in honest discussion, and this thing is the well established fact. Facts are obvious by themselves, and nothing is starker than a fact. God has established the truth on facts, and these facts have filled the world. They have moved it. They have changed it. And their marks remain still visible to the eyes of everybody. In spite of all, the Church exists. She exists even sometimes in spite of herself, as Pope Pius VII pointed it out with keenness in front of Napoleon, but she still exists. The Church, established over the ruins of the ancient world that she had vanquished, that appears in the midst of the new world as a visible phenomenon, throughout all times and history, always close to her end but always re-emergent, still exists. Jesus Christ is the center of all these facts and it is toward Him that they all converge, from the prophecies that had announced Him, to the prodigies that have accompanied Him during His life, and that have been repeated after Him by His Saints. They give the most authentic and the most striking testimony of the divinity and authority of Christ and of His doctrine. It is a whole story that is History, which began in the Garden of Eden and will end on the shards of the universe. All its pages have been written by God, either composed by His own hand or by His using the hands of the Prophets, the Apostles, the Martyrs, or the faithful. Brethren, do you know well the Holy History and the History of the Church, or even the profane history, insofar as it is related to the economy of salvation? What are your usual readings and favorites books? Is it the Bible? Is it any serious work on Christianity and its mysteries that may enlighten and strengthen your faith? When did you last read the Scriptures on your own accord? When did you last read the catechism? When was the last time you read the life of a Saint? Which authentically Catholic magazine or newspaper do you regularly read? This Lenten season is certainly a good time to put aside profane books and magazines and to open some that would be beneficial to your souls.

Such is our contemporary generation, indifferent, or even hostile, to the faith. Yet neither indifference nor hostility leads toward truth and universal happiness. Ignorance comes often from the environment in which we live, where religion is often the butt of jokes, mockeries, contempt, and sarcasms. It comes from education that is often not enough serious or enough Christian, and that which is often provided by unworthy mercenaries and agents of the enemy. It comes from the teaching of history that is so often distorted and falsified to the point that we can say for the last two centuries it has been a flagrant lie. Finally, it comes from philosophy that has forgotten what it owes to Christianity and has brought back the crassest errors of the pagan centuries by adding all the subtleties of cluttered and messed-up metaphysics, wrapped with sophism as much despicable as they are perfidious. Thus we can hear so many alleged scholars and savants who blaspheme. They blaspheme what they ignore, and they don’t forget to object that our predication is awkward, as our generation is enriched with so many new experiences, intoxicated by so many scientific progresses, and altered by important moral innovations. They tell us that our doctrine, conceived in the distant time of antiquity that has now vanished, was maybe suitable for the past ages of the Christian society, but it cannot interest our current society when thousand of upheavals have changed the lives of everyone. They maintain that all these social, cultural, technological, and moral changes compel our contemporaries to turn toward a future of evolutions that we cannot even imagine. This doctrine eventually expose them, and they consider the past as a period of childhood, which might be still susceptible of arousing the curiosity of some erudite persons, but certainly not capable of enlightening the conscience of modern men. They would demonstrate, with certainty, that we are doomed to failure, and that the only thing we can arouse is the same sarcasm that the Athenians of the Areopagus once threw in the face of the Holy Apostle Paul: We will hear you again concerning this matter.

They do not content themselves with fighting the religion. You also have, dear brethren, to feel guilty for their rejection. In the old days, they just had to make people laugh with some caricatures or jokes, or to make people cry with pathetic examples in order to attack the religion with success. But today, in a time when the religion becomes almost invisible and silent on matters that concern it, it requires more effort and cleverness to touch the faithful. Almost every week they present certain prestigious brains in vogue imbued with science, philosophy, and history, who declare with pride to the good people that like everything flashy and new, that they repudiate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. They bring instead new beliefs that are finally not so new, since they have been running in the world forever. The New Age is certainly more ancient than Christianity.

The loose and carefree multitude receive without discernment all the inanities, the lies, and nonsense words that are chucked everyday on the television, the radio, the newspapers, the internet, and so forth. We all know what the Evil Genius has already done with the media. Common people engage without effort the so called “information.” The periodic dissemination of the scandal and of the poisoning of souls is very well managed. You may be startled by a book or alarmed by a newspaper, but it is not enough. Then there are radio and television, which tell, narrate, entertain, and amuse. They slip in the midst of their programs scandalous narratives, perfidious insinuations, odious lies, and impious and subversive doctrines. Once the news or so called information programs are over, they deliver, under the cover of fiction, things that are as surprising as they are painful. The more expert they are in the art of impiousness, the more they have an audience. Evil becomes in our modern society an object of speculation.

How can religion not be shaken and weakened in so many souls in such a context? Religion assures first and mainly the eternal interests of men, but the great majority of men is not concerned with religion until they pass the door of death. In such an environment, it is not surprising that faith is weakened. It would be the greatest of miracles if faith would conserve all its vigor in the faithful at a time when the powers of hell are more than ever stirred. We should rather marvel at the fact that the Divine truth still subsists in so many faithful even though they are only a remnant. It is such an admirable thing to see that this Divine truth continues to reign, victorious and triumphant, over the spirit of the faithful. How strong it is in their souls, so strong that it cannot be shaken by so many attacks! It is because God is there to defend it and to guard it. God makes Himself its invisible Protector after He made Himself its infallible Revealer. God does not permit that the gates of hell prevail against this Divine Truth, and avenges this Divine Truth on all its enemies. God makes from the multitude of the true faithful a guard of honor of the Divine truth, as worthy of it as much they are faithful and generous.

Brethren, let us thank God for our faith if it is still strong in our souls. Let us beg His mercy if it has weakened, and let us think about what we should do to invigorate it again. Let us not accept ignorance and do what it takes to learn more and more our faith. Ignorance is certainly one of the greatest enemies of faith, and, therefore, of men. We still have to deal with another and certainly more pernicious enemy: corruption.

Summer Latin Session for Clergy

Place: Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, Denton, Nebraska (Airport access: Lincoln NE).
Dates: Noon on Monday 6 June-Noon Friday 10 June
Cost: $400 for instruction, room and board
Instructor: Prof. John M. Pepino, PhD
Entrance requirement: to have done seminary-level Latin and to be a priest or seminarian in good standing (testimonial letters required; sample available upon request).
Purpose: to help clergy whose Latin has become rusty to understand liturgical texts better.
Means: review of the core grammar and vocabulary of liturgical Latin. Afternoons are spent on lessons; mornings on homework.
Texts: Roman Missal and Breviary, 1962 edition; work is done on photocopies. Bring a grammar and Latin dictionary.

For an application packet or questions, please email or write to John Pepino:
patres@fsspolgs.org
c/o Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary
7880 West Denton Rd
Denton, NE 68339.

Upon this Rock

The issue of February is now available online with just one click:

http://www.arlatinmass.com/images/uponthisrock/2011/02February11.pdf

Nova et Vetera

"When they are arranged under these spiritual values – Nova et Vetera – , the attempts, works and institutions of men, even when they just meet a current usefulness, and satisfy a transitory need, seem to be filled with divine peace. Then, they cause an impression of order, of continuity and of stability. They are at once known and unforeseen, familiar and surprising, new and old. In their clearness, the ancient and young Beauty that made Saint Augustine so amazed – tam antiqua et tam nova – glows. And the scribe who explains them resembles a father, who brings forth out of his treasure, for the greatest joy of his family, expected but still always beautiful fineries, old but always new – Nova et Vetera (Matthew 13:52)"

Editorial of the first issue of Nova et Vetera, 1926

We have the regrettable habit to lower, to depreciate, and to reduce everything that God has made. You would tell me that it is in our nature, so what can we do? After all, it can only be this way when our finite and created human nature touches the infinite and uncreated divine essence. There is such heaviness in us that we are inevitably inclined to lowness; the law of gravity is universal. It seems that it does not concern only the matter but also the spirit and morals. We do need to rise up into the heights, so that instead of depreciating the divine realities we can be dilated by them.

Spiritual life puts us in state of weightlessness. It is the realization of the words of Saint John the Baptist: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” It allows us to be seized by Christ and to be introduced into His mansion, and not to seclude Him within our dimension as we are so inclined to do. Spiritual life is the life of Christ in men, and Christ elates those who cultivate it.

So does the Church unsurprisingly, for the very simple reason that “Our Lord and the Church are one,” according to the Maid of Orléans. What an act of faith it requires in order to understand this! What an act of charity and of humility it takes in order to accept this! The Saints show us how to understand and how to love the Church, even when the Church, or rather churchmen, make them suffer. The sentire cum Ecclesia of Saint Ignatius of Loyola truly is the practical application of the call of Jesus Christ: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24) It offers us the grace of living the Beatitudes.

But again, we have the tendency to enclose the Church in our own little dimension. The Church is this subtle and harmonious combination of new and old things, Nova et Vetera. This is precisely the principle of Tradition: bringing forth out the treasure of the Revelation old and new things. On one hand, there are those who take only the Nova part. They are the innovators – but innovating is not renovating – who believe that the Church began with the Second Vatican Council. They want to make all things new, as if Jesus Christ did not do it two millennia ago before them. They have a constant and obsessive thirst for novelties that Pope Saint Pius X has well described in his Encyclical letter, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, condemning the Modernist error. Everything must be new: a new liturgy with a new Ordo of Mass, a new calendar, a new Ritual, and so forth. Even the Dogmas are not spared. “Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion,” Saint Pius X said. Ruin and wreck; this is what is usually left over after a revolution. And a revolution is usually made by revolutionaries – this is evident – whose marks are hatred and tyranny: hatred for any vestiges of the previous order that they try desperately to destroy, and tyranny toward those who are attached to this previous order. This is certainly what the future generations of Christians will remember when they look at the history of the Church in the last decades of the twentieth century. In the best case, we find among the innovators, who are not all monsters, a certain commiseration for those poor traditionalist Catholics attached to an older fashion of worshiping God that no longer adapts to the needs of our time, provided that they accept the Council. But have they read it well, those who make the Council their new Bible, and yet who have banished from the Liturgy Latin and Gregorian chant? Let us turn the page before my itching envy for sarcasm takes over!

On the other hand, we can find those who take only the Vetera part. They claim to be traditionalists, but I see them as conservators, as they desperately try to conserve identically things as they were fifty years or so ago. For them the Church stops at the Second Vatican Council or even before. Since Pius X said that novelty is a mark of Modernism, they reject all novelties without discernment. If they had a little bit of logic they would know that it is not because novelty is a mark of Modernism that every novelty is necessarily marked with the seal of Modernism. If they had a little bit of understanding of the History of the Church, they would see that many things had been new one day. They would also notice that every time new things came, there have been some narrow-minded persons who opposed them. If novelties were always evil, we ought to get rid of the Mendicant Orders, just to give an example, a novelty from the twelfth century, which had at its time its detractors. If these traditionalists are afraid of losing their faith by praying the luminous mysteries of the Rosary, I advise them to not pray the Rosary at all, which is a novelty from the twelfth century, too, that has known different developments, additions, and modifications throughout the centuries.

They often enjoy themselves with a certain apocalyptic literature based on some revelations to prove themselves right, and all others are condemned. I do not mean that we do not have to take seriously the last messages from heaven that have been approved by the Church – Fatima, for instance – but it is not a reason to set aside the reading of the Fathers and of the great Doctors of the Middle Ages, which are still so accurate for our modern time. They would certainly enlarge their vision of the Church that is without question, wherever we stand, bigger than any idea of her we may have. The Church is a mystery and a great one. It is only with humility that we can appreciate and love her. Then we can peacefully rejoice with her while contemplating her ancient and young Beauty. The acceptance of the new things that are given to us today supposes the understanding of the old things that have been given to the previous generations.

May Our Lady, seat of Wisdom, help us to see clearly with prudence and discernment. May she open our minds and hearts to the comprehension and the love of God’s mysteries.

The Papal Zouaves

Fourth part: Toward the Battle

By June 1860, the training of the new recruits could begin. The battalion went out for a first exercise. The Holy Father himself reviewed the troop in the evening and exhorted the men. Enthusiasm and cheerfulness were not lacking, and Monsignor Talbot, a camerier of the Pope, would tell that Pius IX appreciated the spirit of the men. Then, the battalion left the Eternal City for a few weeks of training that gave full satisfaction to Becdelièvre. The people from the country displayed cordiality when the troop went through their villages. It was quite comforting to see that many Italian people loved and supported the Pope. Meanwhile the organization of the corps was set up: supplies, equipment, weapons and ammunition were distributed. The fusion between the French and the Belgian was well carried out, and new recruits continued to arrive. Other units composed with volunteers of different countries were organized at the request of General de La Moricière, such as a corps of cavalry. In less than a month, La Moricière muffled all the critics that had said it was impossible to create an international corps. The General, who had served in North Africa, certainly remembered the example of the Foreign Legion created in 1831, and he knew that with discipline, everything was possible. The cohabitation of men from different countries even fostered a sound competitiveness that pushed the whole group toward a greater perfection. Yet, it was a difficult task that required many efforts and attention from the officers.

A new uniform was finally presented to Monsignor de Mérode who approved it. It was a combination of the uniform of the Zouaves of Africa and the one of the French infantry: the dress was blue with red trimmings. This uniform would change the title of “bataillon de tirailleurs” into the famous “zouaves pontificaux.”

During the summer, the situation became more tense as the revolutionary troops intensified their pressure. With an impulse of greatness, La Moricière exclaimed: “If France abandons Rome, and if Austria permits the violation of the treaty of Villafranca and the invasion of the Papal States, we shall go to the sanctuary of Loreto and pick the standard given by His Holiness Pius V to Juan of Austria, the hero of Lepanto. We shall lead the Pope to Ancona. Then we shall see if Christian Europe would contemplate without stirring Pius IX besieged and bombarded by the barbarians of the XIX century.”

The strength of the Papal Army was now 18,000 men. La Moricière organized the Army in three columns positioned on the line that goes from Rome to Ancona. General de Pimodan received the order to deploy his brigade around the city of Terni. This little corps was composed, in addition to the Zouaves, of two battalions of Italian volunteers, one battalion of Swiss Carabineers, one battalion of Austrian Bersaglieri, a squadron of cavalry, and six pieces of artillery. The two others corps were deployed around Foligno and Macerata. La Moricière remained with a reserve in the middle of his deployment in Spoleto. He could join one of his corps and reinforce it wherever a serious menace would appear. He knew that something would happen in the very near future. Garibaldi had to attack before the Army of the Pope became too strong. But its General–in–Chief had no idea about the huge wave that would break soon.

In fact, it was not the little troop of Garibaldi, considered as a gang of bandits, that would frighten the Papal Army led by well experienced officers who have fought on many battlefields. Colonel de Becdelièvre explained that the morale was excellent in the camp. French and Austrian officers met every evening and the “gatherings were joyful as long as it was just about fighting against Garibaldi.” But in the beginning of September, an event changed the situation. Piedmont had officially declared the war on the Papal States, with the passive approbation of Napoléon III. La Moricière took this as a betrayal and an act of hypocrisy. As a result, some Italian troop of the Papal Army refused to fire on other Italian fellows.

La Moricière received an ultimatum from General Franti, who led the Army of Piedmont, which was composed of 35,000 men. Franti’s Army had already taken possession of Perugia and Spoleto. La Moricière found his communication cut off and decided to reach the last fortress in the power of the Papal troops: Ancona. He urged General de Pimodan to redeploy his brigade as fast as possible around the city. It was necessary to arrive before the Piedmont Army. By the 12th of September, a column of 4,000 men were en route toward Ancona. The weather was extremely hot and it took four days to arrive. La Moricière was already there. He ordered a day of rest and of preparation for the battle that would be on the 18th.

“His men passed the day of the 17th in religious exercises and in going to confession, Countess Cesaresco wrote in The Liberation of Italy. The vicinity of the Holy House of Loreto, brought hither by angels from Bethlehem, filled the young Breton soldiers with transport of religious fervor. La Moricière had taken from the Santa Casa some of the flags of the victors of Lepanto to wave over his columns. In the battle of the next day the French fought with the gallantry of the Vendéens, whose descendants they were, and the Irish behaved as Irishmen generally behave under fire.”

Colonel de Becdelièvre gathered his Zouaves on the eve of the battle. “The hour that you were longing for since you joined the army of the Holy See is now near. Tomorrow you will see the enemy, and we know that this day will be hot. You will do your duties as valiant soldiers, and you will not forget that we fight for the cause of God. For that reason you must prepare yourselves to appear in front of Him. Tomorrow, many of us will be gone. Therefore I urge you to do what many military chiefs would not dare to tell. Go to our chaplain, as I am going to do now. Let everybody be prepared for tomorrow.”

The sun rose on the morning of this bloody day of September 18th, 1860. It was to be a fatal day.

The Papal Zouaves

Third part: creating a new army

General de la Moricière was now officially appointed Commander in Chief of the Papal army, but this would create some tensions with the French Government. La Moricière had been an opponent to the regime of Napoleon III from the beginning. He had promised to never take arms against France, but this did not mean he would accept the politic of her Government. “I gave my sword to the Pope, I recommend my soul to God, but I do not want to take anything from the Emperor, to keep my honor safe,” he wrote. General Goyon, who was the head of the French troops in Rome, had a great admiration for La Moricière, and he did everything he could to make the situation better for everyone, but Napoleon displayed more and more impatience. In fact, the attitude of the Emperor and his politics regarding the Roman Question were quite ambiguous. On one hand he was in favor of the Italian unity, and on the other he claimed to be a defender of the Papal State.

By April 9th, 1860, General de la Moricière issued his first Order of the Day, by which he took possession of his commandment:

“Soldiers, our Holy Father, Pope Pius VII, having deigned to call me to defend His rights, which are unrecognized and threatened, I did not hesitate to take again my sword. To the echo of that venerable voice which, not long ago, from the high of the Vatican, made the world know the perils that threaten the patrimony of Saint Peter, the Catholics have been moved. Their emotion quickly expands across the earth. Indeed, Christianity is not only the religion of the civilized world, but it is even the principle and the life of civilization, since the Papacy has been the center of Christianity. All Christian nations show in this time that they are aware of these great truths that constitute our faith. The Revolution, as in former times Islam, threatens today Europe, and today, as it was the case then, the cause of the Papacy is the cause of civilization and the liberty of the world.
Soldiers, have courage, and be assured that God will keep up our courage and raise it for the cause He entrusted to our arms.”

General in Chief de La Moricière.”

Now, there was an urgent task to begin, which was to organize an army. Uprisings had begun in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and by May 6th, Garibaldi boarded with a troop of one thousand volunteers. King Francis II would not hold too long his defense. Cavour had managed to have Napoléon III on his side with the condition that Rome remained with the Pope and that Nice and Savoy are given to France. In 1859, the French-Piedmontese army had defeated Austria, which was no longer in position to help the Holy Father. At the end of the year 1859, Tuscany, Parma, Modena and the Legations became the United Province of Central Italy. Austria was powerless and the Pope could not rely upon Napoléon. It was necessary to act quickly.

In April 1860, the Papal troop was composed only of eleven battalions, for a total of 600 men, very poorly equipped. Cavalry and artillery were almost inexistent. La Moricière would need first some fine officers that he could trust entirely. Messieurs de Pimodan, de Chevigné, de Lorgeril, and de Bourbon-Chalus accepted to organize the Headquarter and the new army. Officers of the former Papal Army joined them. Then it was necessary to recruit at least 20,000 soldiers. The call of the Holy Father had been heard. Soon, 5,000 Austrians, 3,000 Swiss, 3,000 Irish, and hundreds of French and Belgians, and even a little contingent from Quebec, would arrive. Organizing an army with volunteers of different countries, speaking different languages, and having different habits and traditions was not an easy task, but La Moricière, who had gained a great experience in North Africa, could manage this situation.

The French and the Belgians were joined together in a battalion of “tirailleurs pontificaux,” which would soon become the famous “Zouaves Pontificaux.” It was a valiant former officer of the French Army who took command of this unit, Lieutenant Colonel de Becdelièvre, who did not remain in charge for a long time (as we will see later), but whose testimony is precious, as evidenced in his writing, “Memories of the Papal Zouaves.”

De Becdelièvre had served eight years in the French Army and was no longer in active duty when he heard the news that General de La Moricière needed men. He went to Rome and met with the General and Monsignor de Mérode. By June 1st, he was officially appointed as “Chef de Bataillon des tirailleurs pontificaux.” La Moricière instructed him to begin his duties immediately. The newly appointed “Chef de Bataillon,” who did not even have a uniform, obeyed and went right away to his new quarters. He had to begin the organization of the battalion with only 70 men. Captain de Charette gathered the troops and Becdelièvre delivered his first message:

“Messieurs, this is the first and last time I call you this way. I have received from the General in Chief, who himself has his power from the Pope, the honor to command you. I do not yet have a military uniform, but this is my patent, and from now I take command of this corps. We have been called to defend the cause of God, and we must keep in our minds that, in a Pontifical army, distinctions of nationalities and of races have no place, especially in such a critical time when union is our strength. You would give a sad representation of your dedication, and we could suspect your intentions, if you would not immediately understand that, belonging to the French nation, you cannot shrink from privations and fatigue. On this day, the first company will be constituted. The Belgians will be mixed with the French, and it will always be like this. You will submit to this order; such is the will of your General in Chief, and I have been appointed by him in order to execute his orders. "



Lieutenant-Colonel de Becdelièvre would tell later that the orders were quickly understood. “As I appealed to their Catholic hearts, I was understood. One has to acknowledge that never I have met in the French army more submissive or braver soldiers.” The story of the Papal Zouaves was about to begin.

The Papal Zouaves

Articles published in Upon This Rock, April and June 2009

First part: historical background

The French Revolution had initiated a process that has totally changed the face of Europe. In the XIX century, the borders and the sovereignties had become the pieces of an international chessboard that constantly moved according to the result of the military actions and the revolutions within the states. Italy had not escaped from the wind of the great changes of this time. After the proclamation of the French Republic, several republican insurrections broke out here and there in the kingdoms and duchies of Italy. Many Sovereigns of Italy were allied or relatives of the House of France, such as Charles Emmanuel of Sardinia and Savoy, who was the brother-in-law of the future Louis XVIII, or Mary-Caroline of Austria, Queen of Naples and of Sicily, who was the sister of the Queen of France, Marie-Antoinette.

In 1796, the new French Republic sent its armies into Italy to help the revolutionaries overthrow the Monarchs and to create Republics. It is during this campaign that a young general distinguished himself at the Bridge of Arcole. His name would be soon known in the whole world: Bonaparte. Italy became a kind of annex of France when Napoleon, then Emperor of the French, proclaimed himself King of Italy, while he gave the Kingdom of Naples first to his brother Joseph, and then to Murat.

The Italian Campaigns of 1796-1797 brought to an end a long alliance between the Church and her eldest Daughter. In 754, King Pepin the Short promised to give the Pope the land of the Lombards in a document known as the Donation of Pepin. His son, Charlemagne, would confirm this act 20 years later. The Donation of Pepin provided a legal basis for the erection of the Pontifical States. The Kingdom of France had been predestined by God for the defense of the Roman Church (Testament of Saint Remy). Now, the French Republic would become the persecutor of the Church. The pact that has been sealed in Reims would be rejected.

By February 11th, 1798, Rome was occupied by the armies of General Berthier. The Roman Republic is proclaimed. Pius VI left Rome during the night of the 20th of February, 1798. He found a refuge in the Carthusian monastery of Florence, but he was finally caught by the troops of General Berthier and brought to France. He died, prisoner in Valence, on August 29th, 1799.

His successor, Pope Pius VII, restored the Pontifical States after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and that had reestablished the borders of the countries as they were before the Revolution of 1789. The former Monarchs returned on their thrones: Francis IV, Duke of Modena, Reggio and Mirandola; Ferdinand III, as Grand Duke of Tuscany for the House of Habsburg; Ferdinand IV, as King of the Two Sicilies; and Maria Luisa, Infanta of Spain, as Duchess of Lucca for the House of Bourbon.

But the liberal ideas inspired by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution contributed to the blooming of a national romantic ideal. The Carbonari spread throughout Italy, and in spite of their condemnation by Pius VII (Papal Constitution Ecclesiam a Jesu Christo, 1821) , realized an increasing success. Many uprisings instigated by the Carbonari broke out in the 1820’s and 1830’s throughout the peninsula. Pope Leo XII, who had been elected in 1823, renewed the condemnation of the Carbonari in the Apostolic Constitution Quo Graviora in 1826:

Would that those who were in charge of matters then had assumed these Decrees to be of such value as the salvation of both the Church and the State was demanding! Would that they had convinced themselves that they ought to respect in the Roman Pontiffs, Successors of Blessed Peter, not only the Universal Pastors and Teachers of the Church, but also the Vigorous Defenders of their Dignity, and the most diligent heralds of the dangers which threaten! Would that they had used that power of theirs for dismembering the sects whose pernicious devices had been exposed to them by the Apostolic See! Already from that time they had plainly put into effect their cause. And because they judged that this cause was needing to be treated with indifference or at least treated very trivially, whether by the deceit of the sectarians cunningly hiding their affairs, whether by the imprudent counsels of some, from those old Masonic sects which have never languished, very many others have arisen much more dangerous and more audacious than the former. The sect of the Carbonari, which was considered the leader of all the others in Italy and in some other regions, was considered to embrace as if in its bosom all these, and having divided into, as it were, various branches diverse in name only, undertook to fight most vehemently against the Catholic Religion and every topmost legitimate civil power. Which being a disaster, so that he might free Italy and other regions, indeed even the very Pontifical Domain – into which, because the Pontifical Government had been obstructed for so long a time, the sect had insinuated itself. Pius VII of happy memory, in whose place We have been chosen, condemned with the gravest penalties the sect of the Carbonari, or with the passage of time by whatever other name it might be called according to the diversity of places, of idioms and of men, by a Constitution published on the 13th of September in the year 1821 whose beginning is: Ecclesiam a Jesu Christo.

In spite of the condemnations, the movement continued to develop, led by Mazzini, Cavour, and Garibaldi. Then began Il Risorgimento - The Resurgence - with the first Italian War of Independence in 1848. After the assassination of Pellegrino Rossi, Minister of Justice of the Papal States in November, 1848, Pius IX fled from Rome to Gaeta. The Roman Republic was proclaimed in 1849. France, who was then under the Presidency of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the future Emperor Napoléon III, sent an army to support the Pope. General Oudinot took Rome and reestablished the Pontifical power.

But the Papal States had been weakened and the Pontifical armies were just a shadow of an army. It is at this time that Monsignor François Xavier de Mérode, of the illustrious Belgian House of Mérode and Minister of the Armies of Pius IX, decided to create a new army for the honor and the defense of the Papacy. The adventure of the Papal Zouaves would begin.

Second Part :The General of the Pope

Louis Juchault de La Moricière came back from Africa in 1846 with a great prestige that allowed him to deal with princes, ministers, and all the political leaders as an equal. After brilliant military successes in Algeria and Morocco, where he gained the nickname of Bou Chechia, ‘the man who wears a chechia,’ General de La Moricière thought that there would be something good to do with these great territories, especially in the area of agriculture. North Africa needed “Christian arms to work the soil.” He pacified these territories as a soldier; now he would participate in their development as a politician.

At forty years, Louis de La Moricière began a new career in which he would be as successful as he was in his military career. Deputy in 1846, he was appointed Minister of the War two years later. But in 1851, he was arrested for being opposed to the coup d’état of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. He was sent in exile to Belgium and probably thought that his career was now over. This period gave him an occasion to nurture his faith.

It is at this time that Pius IX, advised by Monsignor de Mérode, decided to reorganize the Pontifical Army. In the political context of the middle of the XIX century, the Pope could not entrust the survival of His territories to any sovereign country. The intervention of the Army of Oudinot gave Pius IX a certain respite, but it would not last long. His last recourse was then to call the children of the Church from all over the world and to organize an army under the command of a General, as Saint Pius V did when he gave full power to Marc-Anthony Colona, who defeated the Turks.

“He chose for this mission General de La Moricière, Emile Keller writes. This man had the most brilliant military reputation of this time and was then disengaged of any obligations toward his Government. He was not involved with any political party and had given proofs of his love for order and liberty. He came back to God with a pure faith matured by the harshest adversities.”

But there was still a question: would he accept? Nothing was certain. La Moricière had fought for many years, but in a well organized army and for his country. In a certain way, he was asked now to be a kind of mercenary at the head of a troop that had poor means and was hardly organized. Moreover, though he was a man of principles and faith, he was nevertheless not so certain about the necessity of maintaining a form of political power that was a vestige of the old regime.

Pius IX sent Monsieur de Corcelles, ambassador of France to the Holy See and former Deputy, to General de La Moricière. The two men knew each other very well. La Moricière’s answer was direct: “I think that it is a cause for which I would be happy to die.” We have learned from his correspondence how great a sacrifice this was for him and his family, as it was for thousands of Catholics, known or unknown, who left their families and countries to serve the Pope. The sacrifice was even greater, as many relatives and friends of La Moricière tried to persuade him to renounce such a foolish project. The answer of the great General was always the same: “When a father calls his son in order to defend him, there is only one thing to do: you go.”

In March 1860, Monsignor de Mérode, who knew La Moricière when he visited the province of Oran as a Belgium officer, paid a visit to La Moricière in his chateau of Prouzel. In the name of Pius IX, Monsignor de Mérode officially asked him to take the command of the army. The day after, La Moricière and his devoted wife offered their resolution to God in their parish church. Nothing would make him change his mind.
This great General and organizer knew that the mission was almost impossible. It was certainly a difficult cause, yet not a desperate one, as there is always a chance of victory. La Moricière was very lucid. “My hope is only in God,” he wrote to friend the day before his departure. “For what I know, the strength of a man can not suffice for the work that I am about to begin.”

By March 19th the new Commander in Chief of the Papal Army began his trip with his dear saber of Africa that he did not want to leave. It would share the glory of this cause. La Moricière asked a dear friend, François Cattoir, to come with him and Monsignor de Mérode. The three men traveled to Italy, passing by Belgium and Germany. In Cologne, they stopped to pray in the Cathedral and venerate the relics of the Wise Men. In the old days, the Family of Mérode had hosted these relics in their chateau. For this reason, the knights of the family of Mérode were granted to enter the vault of the Cathedral of Cologne with their swords. On this day, Monsignor François Xavier de Mérode had the saber of General de La Moricière under his cassock.

The three travelers arrived in Rome by April 2nd, 1860. La Moricière immediately wrote to the Pope and expressed again his desire to serve him under the only condition of never fighting against France. Pius IX accepted his service with joy and gratitude and the two men met together. The General offered his person and his saber to the Pontiff who was charmed by his prestige and his candor. From this day, the Holy Father had never refused anything to the man who represented the last chance of protecting the Pontifical States. But much more was still to be done, and the difficulties would come soon enough.

Continuation of the story of the Papal Zouaves in Upon This Rock, February 2011, soon on line!

A church for the Glory of God

Saint Pio de Pietrelcina Latin Mass Community needs your help

for a great project:

- A Romanesque Church, for the glory of God, where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass shall be offered daily according to the ancient magnificent Liturgy.

- A school for Saint John Bosco Academy and Saint Caecilia Academy where our children will receive an authentic Catholic education.

We need your help so that our dream may become reality. We found a beautiful property for sales in Ash Flat, Arkansas that would be perfect for our project. A house would serve as a rectory for the priest and a barn as a provisory chapel until we build our future Romanesque Church.

Rectory and office

A provisary chapel

The location of our future church

Help us and participate to a great project for the restoration of the Catholic culture. You may send your donation by check (order to Cherokee Village Latin Mass Community) at the following address:

Saint Pio de Pietrelcina Latin Mass Community
40 Matecumbe Drive
Cherokee Village AR 72529

Or with Paypal (click the link on the top right of the blog)

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered once a month for the Benefactors.

Ut In Omnimbus Glorificetur Deus