Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre - Vol. III - The 1982 Ordination Sermon

29 June 1982

My dear friends,

Once again we are gathered here at Ec6ne for the very moving ceremony of the ordination of Priests. If there is one ceremony which lets us live the most sublime moments of the Church, it is the ceremony of priestly ordination. It brings to mind especially the Last Supper, when Our Lord Jesus Christ ordained His Apostles. It recalls also the out pouring of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles at Pentecost. So the Church continues, the Holy Ghost continues to extend Himself through the hands of the successors of the Apostles. We are happy to be able today to confer ordination on thirteen new priests.

There was not supposed to be an ordination of priests this year, because the course of studies has been changed from five to six years, and the results of the change were to come into effect in 1982. But special circumstances dictate that we ordain today (besides the new priests) seven deacons for the Society and six others from various groups allied to us, fighting the same fight, with the same convictions and the same love of the Church. The day before yesterday I conferred priestly ordination on two members of the Society for the District of Germany, making a total of fifteen for this year.

We hope, with the grace of God, as the years go by and the numbers increase, that our seminaries, especially in Germany and the United States, will yield the fruits of the seeds planted in preceding years. The first ordinations at Ridgefield, U.S.A., will take place next year with three new priests. They have already taken place at Zaitzkofen, Germany. Let us pray that God will bless these seminaries and give those who are studying for the priesthood the many graces they need.

My dear friends, in a few minutes you will be ordained priests. You know, I am sure, today more than ever, that ordination will put you into the very heart of the work of redemption of Our Lord Jesus Christ. By His Sacrifice on the Cross, Our Lord set Himself to create priests, to create a share in His eternal Priesthood for those He chose to prolong His Sacrifice, the source of the graces of the Redemption, because it is the great work of God. God created everything to be redeemed. This is His great work of love.

For this He created everything the world which we see around us. He did it by the Cross. He did it for the redemption of souls. He did it by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. He did it for priests. He did it so that souls could be united to Him, especially as Victim in the Holy Eucharist. He gives Himself to us as Victim, so that we may offer our own lives with His, and thus share not only in our own redemption, but also in that of others.

This plan of God, this thought of God which brought the world into being, is a most extraordinary thing. We are astonished at this great mystery which Almighty God has brought into being here below. And precisely because the sacrifice of Our Lord is at the heart of the Church, at the heart of our salvation, at the heart of our souls, everything touching on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass touches us profoundly, touches each one of us, personally, because we must participate in the Holy Sacrifice for the salvation of our souls, because we must receive the Blood of Jesus by baptism and the other sacraments, especially the Sacrament of the Altar, in order to save our souls.

This is why we are so attached to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass -the more so as they want to change it and make it (so they say) more acceptable to those who are not of our faith, who do not have the Catholic Faith. All these changes in the last few years in the most precious thing in the Church, the Liturgy, have been made to bring us closer to our separated brethren, that is to say, to those who are not of our Faith.

So our hearts are troubled, our minds and our faith are aroused. We ask ourselves: "How can they water down this truth, the greatest, most mysterious, most beautiful, most divine thing in our Church, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, to bring it down to the level of heretics?" We don't understand; and in this spirit, we ask ourselves how clerics were brought into the Church with ideas that are not those of the Church, not truly fortified by the Holy Ghost, not filled with the spirit of truth, but with the spirit of error and could get to the highest levels in the Church and put through these reforms which are destroying the Church. What a mystery!

How can it be? How could Almighty God allow it? How could Our Lord make these promises to Peter and his successors, to the church and to all the successors of the Apostles, and then allow this state of affairs we see before us today? Blessed those faithful who came before us and did not have such problems to face and resolve!

Briefly, I would like to try to explain what it seems to me our course of action should be in the face of these sad developments taking place in the Church. It seems to me that we can compare this agony the Church is suffering today to the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. You see how astonished the Apostles themselves were when Our Lord was taken and bound after the kiss of Judas. He is taken away. He is clothed in a scarlet robe, mocked, beaten, weighed down with the Cross. And the Apostles run away; they are scandalized. It is not possible that He Whom Peter proclaimed: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of God"- can be reduced to this plight, this humiliation, this destruction. It cannot be. They run away.

Only the Virgin Mary, with St. John and some women remain with Our Lord and keep the faith. They will not abandon Him. They know that Our Lord is truly God, but they also know that He is man. It is precisely this union of the divinity with the humanity of Our Lord that poses extraordinary difficulties. Our Lord in fact did not want to be merely man; He wanted to be a man like us, with all the results of sin yet without sin, apart from sin; but He wanted to accept all the consequences: sadness, fatigue, suffering, thirst, hunger, death. Yes, right up to His death, Our Lord embodied this extraordinary thing that so scandalized the Apostles, as it indeed scandalized many others who turned their backs on Our Lord and did not believe in the divinity of Our Lord.

Throughout the history of the Church, one comes across these people who are so surprised at the weakness of Our Lord that they cannot believe He is God. This was the case with Arius. Arius said no, it won't do, that man cannot be God, because He said He was less than His Father, that His Father was greater than He. He is therefore less than His Father. He is therefore not God. And then Our Lord said that astonishing thing, "My soul is sorrowful, even unto death." How could He, with the Beatific Vision, seeing God in His human soul, and thus far more glorious than weak, far more eternal than temporal His soul already in eternity and blessed yet here He is, saying, "My soul is sorrowful, even unto death," and goes on to utter those astonishing words we could never imagine on the lips of Our Lord, "My God, my God, why hast Thou abandoned Me?" Hence the scandal, alas, which spreads among weak so uls. Arius takes practically the entire Church with him in saying this Man is not God.

Others, on the other hand, go the other way and say that perhaps everything Our Lord endured, spilling blood, the wounds, the Cross, all that was imaginary. They were external phenomena but not real. Rather like the archangel Raphael, when he went with Tobias and later revealed to him, "'You thought I was eating when 1 had dinner with you, but I am nourished with a spiritual nourishment." The archangel Raphael did riot have a body like that of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He was not born of an earthly mother, as our Lord was born of the Virgin Mary. Was Our Lord an illusion like that and only appeared to eat, but did not really eat, or appear to suffer but did not really suffer? There were those who denied the human nature of Our Lord Jesus Christ: the Monophysites, the Monothelites, who denied the human nature and the human will of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything about Him was God (they claimed), and everything that seemed to happen was only an illusion.

So you see what happens to those who are scandalized by reality and truth. Let me make a ccmparison with the Church of today. We thought the Church was truly divine, that she could never deceive herself or deceive us.

Well, it is true, the Church is divine; she cannot lose the truth. The Church will always be the guardian of truth. But she is also human. The Church is human and indeed more human than Our Lord Jesus Christ was. Our Lord could not sin. He is the Holy One, the Just One par excellence.

The Church, if she is divine and truly divine, transmits to us all the things of God especially the Holy Eucharist - eternal things which can never change and which will be the glory of our souls in heaven. Yes, the church is divine, but she is human too. She is made up of men who may be sinners, indeed, who are sinners, and yet who share somehow in the divinity of the Church, to a certain extent like the Pope, for example, by his infallibility; by the charism of infallibility he shares in the divinity of the Church and yet remains human. They all remain sinners. Except in those instances where the Pope makes use of his charism of infallibility, he can err, he can sin.

Why be scandalized and say, like some people following the example of Arius, that he is not pope? He is not Pope, as Arius said Christ was not God, it cannot be, Our Lord cannot be God. We ourselves may be tempted to say that it cannot be, he cannot be Pope and do what he is doing.

On the other hand, others would divinize the Church to the point that everything in it becomes perfect. So everything in the Church being perfect, we could say there is no question of our doing anything whatever to oppose anything coming out of Rome; we must accept everything coming out of Rome. Those who talk this way are like those who say that Our Lord was God to such an extent that He could not suffer, that He gave only the illusion of suffering, but in reality did not suffer; in reality it was not His blood that flowed. Those around Him had only illusions in their eyes not reality. There are some of these today who go on saying there can be nothing human, nothing imperfect in the Church. They too are mistaken. They do not see the reality of things. How far can imperfection in the Church go, how high can sin go, if I may say it, in the Church, sin in the intellect, sin in the soul, sin in the heart and in the will? The facts tell us.

As I said a moment ago, we would never have dared to put on the lips of Our Lord the words, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" So too, we would never have thought that evil and error could penetrate so deeply into the Church. But we are living in this age; we cannot shut our eyes. The facts are there; it is not merely a subjective impression. We are witnesses of what is happening in the Church, of the terrible things that have happened since the Council, the ruins piling up day after day, year after year, in Holy Church. The more we go on, the more the errors spread and the more the faithful lose the Catholic Faith. A recent study in France shows that hardly more than two million French Catholics are still really Catholic.

We are nearing the end. Everyone will fall into heresy. Everyone will fall into error because wicked clergy, as St. Pius X predicted, have found their way into the Church and occupied it. They have spread errors from the positions of authority they occupy in the Church.

Are we then required to follow error because it comes from someone in authority? No more than we should obey parents who are unworthy and ask us to do unworthy things, no more should we obey those who ask us to abandon our Faith and to abandon all Tradition. This is out of the question. Oh, of course, all this is a mystery, a great mystery, this union of the divine with the human.

The Church is divine, and the Church is human. How far can human weakness how shall I say overshadow the divinity of the church? Only God knows. It is a great mystery. We see the facts; we must put ourselves in full view of the facts and never abandon the Church, the Roman Catholic Church, never abandon her, never abandon the successor of Peter, because through him we are united to Our Lord Jesus Christ, through the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter. But if, by some misfortune, under the influence of some spirit or other, or some weakness or pressure, or through neglect, he abandons his duty and leads us along roads which make us lose our faith, well, we must not follow, although at the same time we recognize that he is Peter and if he speaks with the charism of infallibility, we must accept his teaching, but when he does not speak with the charism of infallibility, he may very well be mistaken alas! It is not the first time that something like this has happened in history.

We are deeply troubled, deeply anguished, we who love the Church so much and venerate her and have always venerated her. This is why this seminary exists, for love of the Church Catholic and Roman. This is why all seminaries exist. Our love of the Church has been badly bruised to think that her servants, alas, are not her servants any longer and render her no service at all. We must pray, we must sacrifice and, we must, like Mary, stay at the foot of the Cross and not abandon Our Lord Jesus Christ, even if He seems, as the Scriptures, say, "as it were accursed" on the Cross. Well, the Virgin Mary had the faith and she saw beyond the wounds, beyond the pierced Heart. She saw God in her Son, her Divine Son.

We too, in spite of the wounds in the Church, in spite of the difficulties, the persecution which we are enduring, even from those in authority in the Church, let us not abandon the Church, let us love the Holy Church our mother, let us serve her always in spite of the authorities, if necessary. In spite of these authorities who wrongly persecute us, let us stay on the same road, let us keep to the same path: we want to support the Holy Roman Catholic Church, we want to keep it going and we will keep it going by means of the priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by the true sacraments of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by the true catechism.

Why, my dear friends?

You see, I was ordained in the traditional, immemorial Mass myself and all my colleagues, up to a certain age - they received the power to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in this immemorial Roman Rite. Remember that: I was ordained in this rite and I do not want to leave it, I do not wish to abandon it. It is the Mass for which I was ordained and for which I wish to continue living. It is truly the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church.

Be faithful, faithful to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It will give you so many consolations, so many joys, so much support in your troubles, in your trials, in the persecutions you may well undergo. You will find the strength with Our Lord Jesus Christ to endure all these insults; you will find this strength in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In truly giving Our Lord Jesus Christ His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity to the faithful, you will give them also the courage to stay with the Church in her tradition and to model themselves on all the saints who have gone before, all who have been canonized, beatified, held up as examples of holiness in Holy Church. They will continue to be our models.

May the Virgin Mary in particular be our model. Let us ask her to make of you, my dear friends, holy priests, priests such as she wishes. If you invoke her throughout your life, she will protect you and will make of you priests according to the heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ, her Divine Son.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.